Found Poetry from Journal Entries
When I was 15, my mom came home from work and without so much as a, “Have you finished your homework,” demanded that I “break up with that boy, he’s troubled and I know you’ve been kissing him.”
If my mom didn’t like someone, she referred to that person as “that boy” or “that girl.” In this case, “that boy” was Brian, my first boyfriend. My first kiss. And yes, we were kissing in public but wasn’t that better than the alternative? Not much more is going to happen in the wide open in a west suburban Chicago neighborhood. There are no cornfields, and alleys are not an option, is what I’m trying to say.
“How do you know I’m kissing him?” I asked. Well, I screeched it really, because 1) I was totally embarrassed, 2) I was a teenager, and that’s what I did, and 3) I liked Brian. I really liked kissing Brian. I wasn’t interested in ending that particular part of our relationship.
“Someone, and I’m not saying who, saw you,” my mom said. And that was the end of that. My mom went downstairs to make dinner, and I, after slamming my bedroom door, stewed in my anger while I blasted “The Cure,” stared out of my bedroom window, and ran through all my mom’s friends wondering who the hell wasn’t minding her own business.
Brian was a smidge taller than me, and so kissing him was just like in the movies where the girl looks up and the boy looks down and in my head music was always playing. He also always had this sweet smirk on his face just before he kissed me.
No way was I going to tell my mom any of this. I’d rather throw up in my mouth and swallow it. Even if I thought it would change her mind – this discussion was for the likes of a best friend, not my mom.
The year of the public kissing also happened to be right around the time my mom had started a part-time job at the library, and she was fabulous at what she did. People from all over the Chicagoland area came to her specifically, with just an ounce of a detail about a story, and she’d find the book, plus three more on the topic. People loved my mom for this – for helping them with stories they were looking for and leading them to stories they didn’t even know they needed.
I understand this now. I did not know this, or care, even, in my boy-crazy, kissing in public days. I share it now because I think it shows a mother and a daughter finding and getting to know themselves outside of the mother-daughter relationship. There is no right way for this to happen, nor do I think it’s easy. I am not here to shed judgment on either my mom’s or my actions, rather, to illustrate the complications, hilarity, and nuances of the mother-teenager relationship.
My mother would tell this story differently, and if she were writing this, I would encourage her to. While I might focus on the thrill of having and kissing a boyfriend for the first time, she might focus on the thrill of discovering another part of herself outside motherhood. That was not a story I needed at 15, but it’s a story I need now.
That evening, I wrote in my journal. I vented about my mom. I swooned over Brian. I trash-talked pre-Algebra and I contemplated what to wear to school the next day. I did not write in the hopes that I would create anything. I wrote to get everything out. This is what a journal is for, and it’s also a great way to find a story from what’s been spilled.
Found Poetry Writing Exercise
Consider keeping a journal for five days. Record your observations, feelings, thoughts, anxieties, and joys of mothering your child. Remember: all you are doing is getting it out. Don’t worry about shape or structure or what it all means.
After a week, take out a highlighter and re-read your entries. Highlight anything that strikes or startles you.
Create 1-3 “Found Poems” from your journal entries. A found poem is pretty much what it sounds like – you pull words from what you read to create a poem. They are also called “Blackout Poems” because you can cross out the words that you don’t use, but I prefer to re-write the poetry so I can still see the entire journal entry for potential later use. (See Austin Kleon’s process for blackout poems here!)
I like this kind of writing because it’s a little like baking a chocolate chip cookie: easy – basic, delicious, doesn’t require too much effort, but the satisfaction of creating something is incredibly gratifying.
Plus, who knows what stories will grow from this practice?
Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash.
