Sarah Lawes - "September of 1989"

There were many aspects of the poem that were inspired not only by the poem “I Go Back to May 1937” but also by many lectures in the class.  The poem “I Go Back to May 1937” is what gave me the initial idea of writing about my parents and their divorce, but the themes within my poem were inspired mainly by three lectures.

The first lecture, which was about divorce and dating after divorce, was what began my thought process on the poem.  It is much harder for divorcees to get back into the dating world because of different types of baggage such as: children, exes, and trust and emotional issues.  Because I have watched my mother try to get back into the dating scene since my parent’s divorce, I could relate to this lecture.  Once I began thinking about my mother in this new dating scene, it led me to think about her divorce and how I felt about it.  I never really knew how I felt about it, but other lectures gave me more insight into love, which helped he have more understanding.

When I had to think about how I felt about my parent’s divorce when writing the poem, I constantly went back to the question that Garren Small asked: Does love conquer all?  Therefore, the poem plays off of my answer to that question.  In the poem, I essentially say to answer that question that love does not necessarily prevail all the time, which is why people should enjoy it while they can. 

Another lecture that had a major influence on my poem is Lucy Brown’s lecture.  In her lecture, she discussed love at first sight and the early stage of intense romantic love.  During this stage, and individual may experience intrusive thinking about the person they desire, special meanings of the persona and overlooking their faults, intense energy making it hard to sleep, loss of appetite, mood swings, craving to be around the person, and rearranging their daily plans to be around the other person more frequently.  Through imagery, I showed how my parents became very consumed with each other.  In the early stage, parts of the brain are activated, which makes it as a natural euphoria.  I used the imagery of stars to show this fantasy that does take over people’s minds when they first meet someone they are attracted to.  Another aspect of Brown’s lecture that strongly influenced the poem is the study that Brown performed, which showed what two factors kept couples together.  The couples that stayed together suppressed negative judgment and the concept of self.  I tried to show this in my poem when I wrote about “his broken bottles and empty apologies and her harsh words.”  It is clear that my father did not put my mother first, and my mother constantly criticized my father.  This gave me the most insight from all the lectures because their relationship really could not succeed because these were the biggest issues in their relationship.

Finally, the last aspect of the class that inspired my poem was when Garren Small read the poem “One Day”.  The poem is essentially a son reflecting on his parents and understanding all they have done for him.  That poem touches upon forgiving your parents because they could not live up to expectations, which gave me insight on how to end the poem.  Also, the poem helped me have understanding that my parents are only human just like me, which not only gave me insight personally, but also heavily inspired the poem.