Senior Writing Portfolio Fall 2005 / Josh Wild
Millikin University

Josh Wild

Josh Wild

Josh Wild was born on February 4, 1984. He grew up in Paxton, Illinois. He is currently completing degrees in English-Writing and English-Literature at Millikin University in Decatur, IL. After that, he'll probably disappear into some crowd somewhere. You see, he's quite devious.

Poetics

I write because it helps to put me in control of my life. We are constantly forced to listen to other parts of society--whether it be our neighbors, our universities, television--tell us who we are, and define for us our positions in that society. My aunt tells me some story about myself when I was three years old, and suddenly I feel like she has a stronger grip on my identity than I do. Writing is a reverenced art form; it is a form of communication that speaks very loudly, and it empowers us to affirm ourselves. Only when we feel that we control our identities are we able to act, and not simply react to the world.

And this is another reason why I write: to act, and in acting, to effect a positive change in the world. Alexander Pope once said that an honest man in his age couldn't help but write satire, and I feel the same way. I come from a small town. Like many small towns, it is a xenophobic closed system. I grew up with its politics, and so I often use my writing as an opportunity to protest against what I believe to be its hypocrisies. Of course, at the same time I celebrate my home for what it has given me. Praising the good is often just as effective as chastising the bad.

I also write because it places me in a position to learn. As a poet, I feel a compulsion to read other poets, and also to have a wide bank of knowledge from which to draw material. As a writer of fiction, I find it necessary to know intimately any environment or situation in which I'm going to place my characters. As anyone who has ever written a haiku knows, writing often makes us incredibly conscious of the world around us, down to the most minute details. It does not allow us to skim across the surface of our lives. It forces us to live slowly, deeply, and with greater purpose and deliberation. It gives our lives back to us, and it makes us live them better.

Introduction to "Cumbria"

I know the exact night that I wrote my poem "Cumbria:" November 2, 2004. I was studying abroad in London and I wrote the poem in my journal over the course of a few hours. "Cumbria" is another name for the Lake District in Northern England. The rest of the London group and I had spent three days there in mid-October, and the beauty of the place had knocked me over. It's largely an imitation of some of the work of the Romantic poets, specifically "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth. It's exactly a quarter of the size of his poem, and it's the only extended piece of blank verse I've ever written. As its full title indicates, it is only a fragment, and accordingly it spends the majority of its time setting up London as a contrast to the Lake District. To be fair, London is one of my favorite cities, and the "drunken Frenchman" was actually drunk in Montpellier, France. "Cumbria" was published in the Fall 2005 issue of Collage.

• • •

Cumbria: A Fragment

Ah Cumbria! I entered you like Christ

At midnight: starved, my head a swirling mess

Of nerves from drowning in a concrete sea

Of grayish days among the maddened crowd.

For too long I had lived without a mouth,

Struck dumb from seeing how the clouds descend

From London's sky and fog the eyes and minds

Of all the hostile strangers that I pass,

The drunken Frenchman pissing in the streets,

Who loosely quotes Rimbaud between his moan,

"O cover me in blood and sand," he screams;

Or all the thousand thousand sad-eyed girls

Who sit across from me and strangle tears,

Too proud or shy to share emotion with

The endless midnight of the Underground.

The building bend to suffocate our souls,

We choke and cough on excess sex and noise,

And every frenzied footstep that we take

Inside this place is dropped with such compulsion

That we seem like soldiers in parade,

Or guttered leaves that swiftly sail, then sink.

And yet the mere suggestion of a leaf

Abolishes these phantom forms from me,

Restores me to my purpose.

Cumbria,

When first I came to you my heart was sad.

I had no food; I had no love; I came

With pockets full of pennies, dust, and hands.

But from the moment that I first emerged

From out the coach and set my eyes upon

The upper stretch of Windermere, I could feel

A stirring deep inside my centered self.

As present as the pencil in my hand,

I see the gentle waters lapping soft

Against the shore, the outstretched wings of gulls

Suspended just above the depths below,

And, all around, the holy silence, trespassed

Solely by the man-made boats, who creaked

And groaned, complaining with a deep alarm

Of Man's inadequacy here among

This stasis and its placid majesty.

• • •

©2005 Randy Brooks—all rights return to the authors upon publication.