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what is there to something else let it trigger a memory, an
idea about love or the erotic, a fantasy.
Address the people/objects pictured. Ask questions of the
image. Allow the people or objects to speak; give them a voice.
Describe what might have gone on just before or just after the
scene depicted in the painting or photograph. (Remember
those old jump cuts in movies where the man and woman are
embracing or kissing, and the next scene shows them eating
breakfast the next morning? Fill in what happens or what you
want to have happen.)
7. Using "Groundfall Pear" as a model, write a four or five line
poem that is a metaphor for sex, desire, love.
8. Read "homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton in the "Voice
and Style" chapter and then write a sexy homage to a body
part.
9. Write a pornographic poem that is, one you think is porno-
graphic. Define it for yourself; we won't begin to attempt to
talk about the difference between "erotic" and "pornographic,"
except to say that the best definition we ever heard was this:
"Erotica is what I like. Pornography is what you like."
10. Read all of David Trinidad's "Eighteen to Twenty-One"
(printed in the anthology High Risk), and write your own sex-
ual history, or a part of it.
Writing the Erotic 55
11. Write a poem to a particular lover or would-be lover de-
signed to make him or her wild with passion. Describe exactly
what you're going to do, wear, say, and so on. Then send it to
that person. We dare you.
The Shadow
According to the psychologist Carl Jung, each of us has a daily, more
pleasant self with which we identify our ego and a hidden self
which we tend to reject and deny what is known as our shadow.
While the division into ego and shadow comes from Jung, it's an idea
that humankind has recognized for centuries and that we all imme-
diately understand: that the self is both dark and light, that the world
contains both good and evil.
Our personal shadow lies in the unconscious and is formed when
we are young, when we learn to identify with what our culture tells
us are acceptable behaviors, thoughts, emotions. Poet Robert Bly
calls the shadow "the long bag we drag behind us," explaining that as
we learn what others don't like or accept in us we start "bag-stuffing."
By the time we reach adulthood, Bly says, there is only a "thin slice"
of us left the rest is in that long bag.
The problem is that while the shadow is necessary to the formation
of who we are, we end up denying its existence, or at best fearing it.
And that denial causes problems, because the dark side of ourselves
contains not only what we consider negative traits but also our unde-
veloped talents and gifts. We all have powerful creative energies
locked inside; to deny them is to deny the possibility of wholeness.
On a larger scale, entire societies have their shadow, which they are
busy suppressing. When we refuse to acknowledge the shadow we not
The Shadow 57
only lose the chance to integrate it, but risk being dominated by it.
Coming to terms with both our personal shadow and the collective
one is one of the important ways the artist can function in relation to
his or her own art, and in relation to his or her culture. The artist can
try to show the culture issues it doesn't want to look at, can explore
those frightening areas of the psyche. The French novelist Colette
said, "Look hard at what pleases you and harder at what doesn't." Poets
can't afford to be "nice" if they're to explore the more troubling realms
of human experience.
Does this mean that poems shouldn't be beautiful? Of course not.
Light is important. Affirmation is important. Poetry isn't all about
wars and unhappy childhoods and failed love affairs and shouldn't
be. But we've encountered a number of people who have difficulty
with going deeper, who splash in the shallows and never dive down
into the scary, murky depths and their poetry reflects that. They
have trouble accessing that deeper self, so that when they write they
are constantly, consciously thinking: "Where am I going next? Is that
the right grammar? Does this make sense? Is this too weird? Who's
going to read this after I've written it?" Such thoughts can stop the
creative impulse dead in its tracks. And the writing that results is
likely to be tepid, perhaps pretty, but ultimately unsuccessful in con-
veying something meaningful about human experience.
How can you gain access to the shadow, and mine it for poetry? It's
important to get past the voices that tell you what you "should" write,
the voices that say you want people to like you, to think you are a
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