Hi, and thanks for reading! Today is Monday, so we’re going to talk about poetry.
If you want to go directly to the poetry exercise, and skip all this “recipe blog” backstory, scroll to the next subhead.
One month ago, my friend Chloe got married. That means today is her one-month-wedding-a-versary, which means it will probably live in my head forever. A lot of dates stick to my brain like this. April 24 is my best-friend-a-versary, because it’s when I met Chloe and Gabe. August 21 will forever be The Day I Moved to New York and Also, There Was a Solar Eclipse. December 9? Formation of the Pudding Pact1.
Of course, there are also days that stick in my head for negative reasons. Grief reasons. Days of friendships ending on a crest of interior fanfare and failures received in the mail. Those stick in my brain, and so do the days after them, the saddiversaries to follow, all sort of accordion-ing in on each other until they become something different.
My brain operates like a one-line-a-day journal, and sometimes the entries fold and combine in strange, unexpected ways. There’s varying significance. Sometimes I remember the tiniest things – like, over the weekend, power went out at my parents’ house for almost a full day, and today I remembered July 17 is the anniversary of a power outage I lived through in Phoenix. It was a day that my neighbors and I all hung out in the hallway of our apartment building, trying to stay cool, until eventually we became too tired to wait for electricity and went into one apartment to group-nap.
Today we’ll be holding our memories up to the light, reflecting on the slow, slow, slow passage of time, or thinking about how the years have left us reelin’ reeling. Ahem. See also: Nancy Reddy’s Facebook Memories prompt. A different approach to the same concept. I really enjoy Nancy’s newsletter, which is dedicated to writing more and being more open to risk/failure/strangness.
Exercise: Time in a Bottle
Think of a date that is significant to you. If you have trouble coming up with something, try your birthday, or your favorite holiday. Or your least-favorite holiday!
On a sheet of paper, write down the year you associate most significant instance of that date. For example, if you’re my parents, you got married on Leap Day. February 29 is always significant, but the wedding year is probably the most significant instance of that date.
Write down as many vivid memories of that important date as you can. Maybe your wedding was a blur and all you remember is the food you never had time to eat! Maybe you remember every second, but the first dance really stands out in your mind. In any case, write it down.
Now: what were you doing one year after that significant date? Write it down. Maybe you celebrated a milestone with an anniversary trip. Maybe you had to attend a socially-distanced funeral. Maybe you had strep throat and stayed inside all day. Whatever it was, write it down.
What about one year before the important date? We’re going reverse-crystal-ball mode and trying to see what you were doing one unassuming year before your life changed. It’s fine to guess, based on your job/lifestyle/routine at the time. Rely on a calendar or googling “what day of the week was XX 20XX” if you need to!
Now, go back to the future. Try to go as far forward and as far back as you can from your significant date, writing the details you remember. For some it may seem totally insignificant (ate a hot dog with cheese in the middle!!!) and for others it will be a big deal (got into a fistfight during prom). Many entries may seem incongruous with one another. Many may seem identical.
Okay, hard part! In a poem, use all these memories to reconstruct and reconfigure a single day. It may be all your birthdays or all your Christmases in one. Depending on how many memories you’ve “collected,” you may find it’s easiest to do a chronology, from morning to evening. You can also expect to give some memories significantly more weight than others – especially the day of The Big Event that makes this date a sticking point in your consciousness. That’s totally fine.
Title your poem with the month/date, no year.
I no longer know what this college in-joke means but I DO remember it is vitally important!