Fear, Poetry, and More Fear
Posted: Monday, September 29, 2008
by Tex Norman
Lucy Van Pelt : Are you afraid of responsibility? If you are, then you have hypengyophobia. Charlie Brown : I don't think that's quite it.
Lucy Van Pelt : How about cats? If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia.
Charlie Brown : Well, sort of, but I'm not sure.
Charlie Brown : What's pantophobia?
Lucy Van Pelt : The fear of everything.
Charlie Brown : THAT'S IT!
Poetry is a tool for coping. In revisiting old works for revisions, I discovered I had two poems with exactly the same title.
Fear August 2005 By tex norman
For me, it was like water
to a fish. It was so much
a part of my world that I
had no idea it was
there at all. Everything I
saw was seen through fear. In fear
I lived, and moved, and had my
being. I inhaled terror
and exhaled horror. I ate
panic and had worry for
desert. I lay in a bed
of anxiety and pulled
sheets of angst up to my chin.
When I dreamed, I had nightmares,
but once I woke up, I was
sure I had not dreamed at all.
Fear September 2008 By tex norman
It is like a so long
soaking sit in a Hot Tub,
the outer me so soggy,
so wrinkled from saturation.
No. It is not something that I sit in,
it is something that sits in me-
shoes off-
unbuckled, unbuttoned at the waistband
obviously staying
clearly making itself comfortable.
Discomforting me.
No. I'm speed-walking
through the valley of the Shadow
of Death (lots of turns) and it
jumps out at me, "BOO!"
then asks,
"Trick? Or Treat?"
I find similarities between the two poems even though they were written 3 years apart. Both works seek to convey how much fear permeates everything, the speaker, -- me. I looked through my collection of poems that I send out to those folk who have asked for my Poem For The Day and found some examples of Fear poetry by other poets.
Fear By Dorianne Laux
We were afraid of everything: earthquakes,
strangers, smoke above the canyon, the fire
that would come running and eat up our house,
the Claymore girls, big-boned, rough, razor blades
tucked in their ratted hair. We were terrified
of polio, tuberculosis, being found out, the tent
full of boys two blocks over, the kick ball, the asphalt,
the pain-filled rocks, the glass-littered canyon, the deep
cave gouged in its side, the wheelbarrow crammed
with dirty magazines, beer cans, spit-laced butts.
We were afraid of hands, screen doors slammed
by angry mothers, abandoned cars, their slumped
back seats, the chain-link fence we couldn't climb
fast enough, electrical storms, blackouts, girlfights
behind the pancake house, Original Sin, sidewalk
cracks and the corner crematorium, loose brakes
on the handlebars of our bikes. It came alive
behind our eyes: ant mounds, wasp nests, the bird
half-eaten on the scratchy grass, chained dogs,
the boggy creekbed, the sewer main that fed it,
the game where you had to hold your breath
until you passed out. We were afraid of being
poor, dumb, yelled at, ignored, invisible
as the nuclear dust we were told to wipe from lids
before we opened them in the kitchen,
the fat roll of meat that slid into the pot, sleep,
dreams, the soundless swing of the father's
ringed fist, the mother's face turned away, the wet
bed, anything red, the slow leak, the stain
on the driveway, oily gears
soaking in a shallow pan, busted chairs stuffed
in the rafters of the neighbor's garage, the Chevy's
twisted undersides jacked up on blocks, wrenches
left scattered in the dirt.
It was what we knew best, understood least,
it whipped through our bodies like fire or sleet.
We were lured by the Dumpster behind the liquor store,
fissures in the baked earth, the smell of singed hair,
the brassy hum of high-tension towers, train tracks,
buzzards over a ditch, black widows, the cat
with one eye, the red spot on the back of the skirt,
the fallout shelter's metal door hinged to the rusty
grass, the back way, the wrong path, the night's
wide back, the coiled bedsprings of the sister's
top bunk, the wheezing, the cousin in the next room
tapping on the wall, anything small.
We were afraid of clothesline, curtain rods, the worn
hairbrush, the good-for-nothings we were about to become,
reform school, the long ride to the ocean on the bus,
the man at the back of the bus, the underpass.
We were afraid of fingers of pickleweed crawling
over the embankment, the French Kiss, the profound
silence of dead fish, burning sand, rotting elastic
in the waistbands of our underpants, jellyfish, riptides,
eucalyptus bark unraveling, the pink flesh beneath,
the stink of seaweed, seagulls landing near our feet,
their hateful eyes, their orange-tipped beaks stabbing
the sand, the crumbling edge of the continent we stood on,
waiting to be saved, the endless, wind-driven waves.
appeared at PoetryDaily.
Fear By -Raymond Carver
Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.
Fear of psychological profiles.
Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.
Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes.
Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty.
Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.
I've said that.
Fear By Sara Teasdale
I am afraid, oh I am so afraid!
The cold black fear is clutching me to-night
As long ago when they would take the light
And leave the little child who would have prayed,
Frozen and sleepless at the thought of death.
My heart that beats too fast will rest too soon;
I shall not know if it be night or noon , --
Yet shall I struggle in the dark for breath?
Will no one fight the Terror for my sake,
The heavy darkness that no dawn will break?
How can they leave me in that dark alone,
Who loved the joy of light and warmth so much,
And thrilled so with the sense of sound and touch, --
How can they shut me underneath a stone?
Fear By Ciaran Carson
I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea. I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.
I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.
I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.
I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be. I fear the bad decisions of a referee.
I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.
I fear the implications of a lawyer's fee. I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.
I fear to read the small print of the guarantee. And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.
I guess, if I had a point to all this it would be this: poetry is a tool for coping, and it doesn't matter if it is great poetry or not. I think it is fear that keeps people from writing poems-- fear that the poetry they might write will not be good enough, will suck, will be a mockery of the art.
The thing is, any creative act is a human act. There are a few animals that seem to make attempts at creativity, but primarily it is a human act. All art falls into two categories:
1. Creative expressions used to vent one's own emotions and
2. Creative acts used to communicate and bring insight to their target audience.
Maybe there is only that second one, the one where we create to bring insight, to move a target audience, and that target audience might be readers, or listeners, or an audience, or the self.
This Article has been viewed 400 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.