Writing Sadness

I don't write poetry too often, but when I do, I tend to focus on nature or individual objects and weave them together. Storytelling though poetry has always posed a challenge as I've tried to fit the model of not revealing too much in a poem and letting the reader connect the dots.

Recently, in the hopes to tell more stories through poetry, I began thinking of the types of memories where powerful, visual and sensory details stand out strongly. I thought of the broad term of sadness and memories associated with the feeling.

Exact moments of touch and scent and images frozen in time surrounding sad memories arose immediately. I thought of my grandmother passing away this past winter and when the time was near, leaving work mid-morning, stopping home quickly and packing an overnight bag just in case. It's such a clear memory, of gathering a toothbrush and an allergy pill, a change of clothes, opening drawers and cabinets to fill a bag, working quickly, running to my car when finished. I remember the 90 minute drive south and approaching a toll booth, waiting in line in the cash lane behind a driver who was speaking to the tollbooth worker for 3 or 4 minutes. When it was my turn to hand my dollar over, the worker, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt told me in a thick Boston accent he and the other driver were talking about "the storm." I couldn't think of any storm. But I remember his voice and accent and what he wore.

Much like joyous, happy memories, these moments of sadness feel frozen -- every visual detail, word spoken, and emotion felt is preserved. I'm not sure how they're best written, but we all experience sadness in so many different forms. Writing of it confirms that together we share the experience.

I haven't read too much Seamus Heaney, but Mid-Term Break is my favorite for telling a powerful, sad memory.

Mid-Term Break

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—

He had always taken funerals in his stride—

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.