Chapter+Seven+-++There's+Truth+and+Then+There's+Life

Writing My Life
Ever since I was a child, I have been a writer. A scribbler. A poet. An essayist. A story teller. It's not simply that I enjoy putting words down on the page; the words do not give me a choice. Always there is a story, a poem, an idea that nudges at my fingers to be set free from my mind. Regardless of the type of writing I do, I mostly write from experience. Look at my essays and you will find scenes from when I lived in Japan. Peruse my poetry - there are reactions to being a mother, to living in the Midwest, to examining the behavior of my one-eyed cat. Browse through my scrapbook albums - here, too, are memories transformed into stories through use of visual images, colorful paper, and detailed embellishments. My life story is not bound in a hardcover book. It is fragmented into these various forms of telling, and each of these forms takes on a different purpose.

===Poetry - Moments Recaptured:===  "Is that what **really** happened?"  This is the question my friends and family often ask after reading one of my poems. The answer I usually give sounds something like, //"//Well, you have to remember that while the poem is based on an actual event, idea, or emotion, it is not a photograph. A poem does not portray an actual truth, but my interpretation of the truth." This is when the friend or family member usually loses interest and the poem is tucked away.

I am not sure why most people tend to view poems as autobiographical, consequently holding the poet accountable for validity in his/her verse. I would argue that my poems are based, to some extent, on personal experience. However, poetry, by definition, is not a self-narrative form. Rather, poetry is " a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning...Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses" (Poetry, [|Wikipedia]</SPAN>). //The Norton Introduction to Literature// makes a similar claim about this genre. Addressing beginning readers of poetry, the anthology's writers instruct, "If you're a reader of poetry, you already know: poetry reading is not just an intellectual and bookish activity; it is about feeling" (Booth et. al. 594). Poetry, then, is an evocative form; it utilizes sound and rhythm, imagery and juxtaposition to invite readers into making muliple meanings. Nowhere, in either of these definitions or in my own experience as a reader and writer of poetry, is this genre defined as being autobiographical. Instead, poetry is a means for writers to capture specific moments. Better still - poetry allows writers to capture the feeling of a moment. Through language, line, and meter, a poet can recreate memories, share these memories with readers, and invite readers to make their own meanings. In //Crafting a Life//, Donald Murray describes this process in saying, "the poet should try to reproduce the moment which caused the poet to have feelings. If a poet recreates the moment, the reader will have his or her own reaction. In the moment recaptured, readers will be transported to their own life, experiencing their own thoughts and emotions" (110-111).

One poem of mine that illustrates Murray's description of "the moment recaptured" is called Kaminari</SPAN>. In this simple, lyric poem, I portray a narrator who is caught in a storm with one of her students. Teacher and student do not speak the same language, but they stand together in the pouring rain and watch lightning streak the sky. Such a poem does not depict any one particular memory from my life. It does, however, depict a feeling I often had in Japan - this feeling of sharing physical space and lived experiences with people who did not share my language.</SPAN>

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 </SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN> ===Conversations in Essay</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN>:</SPAN>=== In //Crafting a Life//, Donald Murray introduces "an aesthetic pyramid of literature" often taught to children and university students. This pyramid places "poetry at the peak, fiction and drama below, nonfiction at the bottom" (Murray 55). As a result of being indoctrined in this theory, Murray admits, "I bought it. I wrote nonfiction, essays and articles, and aspired to write poetry and fiction. I undervalued the essays I wrote, thinking they were not literature" (55). Similar to Murray, I grew up viewing nonfiction purely as an academic genre. It was the format for essay-questions, homework assignments and final exams. Nonfiction was suitable for research papers and book reports. Nonfiction was not fun, not entertaining, and not something I aspired to create. Not until I was a Master's level student studying creative writing did my attitudes toward nonfiction change. In a creative nonfiction writing workshop, I discovered that the personal essay is a form of writing that IS fun, IS entertaining, and IS something I wanted to do. Donald Murray explains that as writers in this genre, "We do not talk at each other but //with// each other. The pesonal essay allows us to think with the reader, allowing our ideas to unfold" (69). I liked this concept - that writing could be a communicative act. That my words were directed to an actual person (the reader) rather than to the void of the unknown. I also liked the expansiveness of essay writing. Trained as a poet, I was accustomed to writing in short lines. Every thought, emotion, and image was condensed to its most basic form. In an essay, however, I had plenty of room to move. I could write long, labrythine sentences. I could use repetition and ample descriptions. I could explore a topic for pages and pages, touching on several thoughts and emotions within a single piece. As Murray concurs, "Writing an essay is an intimate art that can include the entire range of human conversation. Essays can argue, mourn, describe, analyze, make fun, propose, persude, record, entertain, irritate, inspire, discourage, confide, share, explain, document, criticize, celebrate. In the esasy, the writer sits on a bench beside the reader and comments on the life they share" (56).

They Are Wrapping My Body in Silk</SPAN> is an essay I wrote that follows this description - a conversation between reader and writer. This is an excerpt from that essay in which the narrator - me - offers her feelings about living as an outsider in Japan. While this essay does recount a specific memory, it also serves to show readers a more general feeling I had in Japan. The essay invites readers to consider when they have felt like an awkward outsider as well.

Truth, Story, and Memory-Making:</SPAN>
<SPAN style="COLOR: #5c0ca1"> </SPAN><SPAN style="COLOR: #b979d7"><SPAN style="COLOR: #323de2"><SPAN style="COLOR: #7a62f3">I love to tell stories. My stories, though, may not look like typical ones. They are not printed on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper. They often do not even include any text. My stories are my scrapbooks, the telling of my life through visualization of memories. Donald Murray claims, "Story allows us to bring order to experience, to find pattern in events, to discover meaning in confusion - and story allows us to share the order, pattern, meaning. Through story we remember, understand, instruct, entertain, celebrate. The range of all human experience and the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual response to experience is held within story" (77). My scrapbooks are part self-narration and part self-creation. That is, while the photographs in the books may depict actual people, places, and events, the way in which they are displayed may create stories which are true or fictive. Most stories are both. For example, I often create scrapbook pages which detail activities and behaviors of my children. Because children are naturally inquisitive and imaginative, their scrapbook pages use whimsical paper and embellishments to capture these traits. Further, mundane events (i.e. going to the store, planting flowers in the yard, getting a hair cut, etc.) become opportunities to celebrate, stories to compose. As a result, our family memories are often shaped into visual stories appropriate to the scrapbook genre. For example, when my children sneak into the kitchen and devour two chocolate Santa candies, I make this simple act into a full-blown mystery story in this scrapbook moment.</SPAN> </SPAN> </SPAN> ===<SPAN style="COLOR: #a456dc">A Conclusion...of Sorts. </SPAN>Perhaps no self-narrative is ever entirely true.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We create our memories, our identities, and our lives through the ways we choose to tell our stories.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>===