Senior Writing Portfolio Students
Millikin University

writing theory

Last year I took Dr. Zhao’s Applying Writing Theory course, and it was there that I realized why writing was so important. It wasn’t a revelation of my own, so I can’t claim it by any means. It was actually Dr. Zhao who said it. We were reading a text from one of our theory books, and I remember she was standing in the middle of the room talking about the piece when all of a sudden she said something to the effect of, “We create ourselves when we write—we continually shape our own identities. We create our writing, and our writing creates us.”

That idea is something I still think about frequently. We create our writing, and our writing creates us, and the world.

I don’t know why that seems so important to me, but it does. I think that is why I write. Does it seem selfish? I guess it is, a little bit. But I feel like this expression and creation not only of myself, but of the world, is an interpretation that the world cannot do without. The world needs artists—visual artists, fiction writers, dancers, poets, etc., etc., because we need to look at ourselves, really examine ourselves.

When I first started writing, I was concerned with pretty language and classical allusions. Now, I am convinced that my preoccupation with these things overshadowed the reflection and the exploration that is the main goal of a poem. I think that language and references to other writers are good, but they should not be the main focus of a piece, and they should not be the main goal of a writer. I am not interested in heightened language and allusions just for the sake of it. I am not interested in pretension.

Good writing, and other art, examines the Self and the Self-Other connection. Good writing encourages deep reflection and raises questions about the way we interact with each other and what we consider important. I want good writing to make me think about how true connection with another individual is possible. I want good writing to examine those hairy moments when we almost connect with someone and miss. I want good writing to explore the way we know ourselves and learn about ourselves.

This thing that I think writing and art should be doing is not something that can be the job of only one person. In a world that encourages empirical modes of knowing and understanding, the artist’s job is to encourage the type of reflection that leads to less named, less understood, and less sought after truths. But these truths are equally important. They are marginalized in favor of concrete fact, but they are equally important.

So this is what I want my writing to be doing. I don’t know if it is quite there yet, but I am working on it. I want it to be there, and I am dedicated to helping it get there. Vincent Van Gogh, an artist that explored the Self-Other connection and was passionate about it, wrote a lot of letters that have helped me think about the importance of art to the individual and the importance of art to society. I am going to quote him here, because I think this quote gets to the heart of the matter—it gets to the heart of what an artist truly is, what a writer is constantly trying to do, and what I am trying to do. Van Gogh is writing to his brother Theo about a falling out he (Vincent) had with his mentor, Mauve. He says,

“Mauve takes it amiss that I said, ‘I am an artist,’ which I won’t take back, because it’s self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the very opposite of saying, ‘I know all about it, I’ve already found it.’ As far as I am concerned, the words means, ‘I am looking, I am hunting for it, I am deeply involved.’”

I am a poet. Poetry gives voice to the unnamable, gives words to the inexpressible. This means I am looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. I am looking, I am hunting for it, I am deeply involved.

writing sample

This is the closest I have ever come to being openly political in a poem. For whatever reason, I haven’t written any blatantly ‘political poems,’ though by virtue of my poems being written by me, I am expressing my worldview in each of them, which could be seen as slightly political. At any rate, I wanted to write a poem about weapons. This poem was written in the immediate aftermath of the three school shootings that occurred within weeks of each other during September/October of 2006, and it can be seen as partly a response to those shootings, and partly a response to the never-ending Iraq war dealings, and partly a response to the way human beings treat each other in general. I wanted to write a poem about weapons, and funnily enough, this poem, born out of that desire, started in my head with the image of a little boy standing in front of a chain-link fence in the cold, staring at some elk.

Armory

I took my nephew to see the red deer.
They lay in the grass, only visible
were tips of ears, an occasional nose,
and antlers like bone veins rising out of the field.
He was not scared, but asked why furred
trees grew right out of their heads?
Did they lose their leaves because it was fall?
In the cold his sentences were briefly visible;
shivering clouds extending into space,
nearly touching the sleeve of my coat.
They use them to fight, I said,
and maybe to scratch an itch,
and in the spring, they fall off.
I wanted to warn him, but did not know how.
Our weapons are different, heavier—
never a burden we can lay down easily.
His hand—so tiny, so grey in the near dark,
reached through the fence links and fluttered,
startled into sudden birdlike nervousness
by the great branches that rose to meet his touch.