THIS IS the concluding part of the exegesis for the now famous Peter Solis Nery onion poem.
I constantly get great feedback doing these biographies of poems, so I’ll just finish this series right now by discussing the idea of the title, and some general poetry writing tips.
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The first title I entertained for my onion poem was “Chopping Poems with Onions.”
It also crossed my mind to call it “Killing Poems with Onions.”
The idea, of course, was born of my disgust and frustration at the teaching of poetry in schools where we are asked to look for hidden meanings; chop the poem line by line; and in the end, kill the wonderful experience of poetry.
Obviously, this has started and created the aversion of students and readers towards poetry.
And I blame bad literature teachers, and terrible poets, as to why most sane people, who have money to buy poetry books, stay away from poetry and literature in general.
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In the end, I decided to return to my first impulse: “Chopping Poems with Onions.”
What does it mean?
Does it mean cutting up poems using onions like knives?
Does it mean cutting up poems that contain onions, or the word ‘onion/s’?
What does it matter?
I think the title is interesting.
It lurches the reader forward.
The disoriented reader, if s/he is truly interested, will just have to read the poem to find out the meaning for him/herself.
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And what if s/he doesn’t understand the title at the end of the poem?
It doesn’t matter.
It’s not our problem.
The title has served its purpose of luring the reader, and keeping his/her attention, at least for the duration of the poem.
Worst case scenario, the unpegged title will become memorable, and keep haunting the reader.
All the better for the poem!
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Now, for the poetry writing tips.
If it’s still unclear, let see what happened:
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1. I investigated reality.
I looked at the world around me. I examined an onion. Went to my kitchen. Touched it, gazed at it, smelled it, even cut it in halves and sliced it thin. I even took a picture for my Facebook post. Investigating is researching. Thus, it can be substituted by reading, inquiring, interviewing, Google search, et cetera. But my original injunction is this: Closely encounter the thing you want to write about. Know it inside and out, above and beyond.
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2. I wrote down something important.
In poetry, something important also means something new, something interesting, something that demands attention. Onions and reading a poem—I say, that’s pretty important. Because it’s pretty new. We have poems of onions and love, onion and repulsion, onion and crying. But when was the last time you’ve read a poem about love and how we kill poetry in scholastic investigations?
Many wannabe poets waste time writing unimportant things. And mostly unimportant because they aren’t new ideas. Thus, the wannabes remain forever wannabes.
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3. I took time to polish, revise, and edit.
If it’s art, it must be worth doing, worth working on, worth spending/wasting our precious time in the process of creation. For this piece, I focused on the sounds of words, the rhymes and alliterations, the shapes of words and their meanings. I looked at dictionaries and thesauruses to make sure I was using the best word I could find. I also took time to rearrange words, phrases, and sentences until they are in their best position. I used tentative words, but ultimately deleted them, replaced them, added to them until I got what I wanted to say. Editing also meant for me to make sure that at the dictionary level, my poem makes sense, and is understandable. But the greatness of the poem, because this is a lyric poem, is the emotion it evokes. My poem is not melodramatic, but many readers identify with it, many “feel” the emotional truth of us killing poetry when we try to chop up poems line by line. For the very imaginative readers, they even see how this poem relates to how they try to understand people who they think are wearing many masks. So, what happens if the masks are the essence of the individual? Can we love someone who wears thick makeup all the time?
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Finally, here again is the full text of my onion poem. Enjoy!
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CHOPPING POEMS WITH ONIONS
by Peter Solis Nery
One lazy, rainy September afternoon
I examined a bored bulb of onion, its
Roots white, withered, and hopeless, its
Outer skin dry, flaky, almost purple, not
As dark as the fleshy inner skin next to it. (5)
And I remembered how in school, we
Examine poetry, dissect it hopelessly
Like an onion: peeling it layer after layer
Looking for hidden meaning, trying to
Solve some supposed mystery. I groaned (10)
With the onion. Then, I smiled, shook my
Head, cut the bulb in halves, and sliced each
Mystery thinly. I inhaled the stinging smell
The layers no longer a puzzle, the pungent
Smell, pure essence. My tears began to form (15)
And I cried for all the little helpless poems
We so mercilessly chopped to death./PN
