Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Poems Unsealed Marguerite Mabel Scott Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES POEMS UNSEALED By: MARGUERITE MABEL SCOTT A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2003 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Marguerite Mabel Scott defended on March 28, 2003. ______________________________ Joann Gardner Professor Directing Dissertation ______________________________ Nicholas Mazza Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Sheila Ortiz-Taylor Committee Member ______________________________ Maxine Montgomery Committee Member Approved: ________________________________________________________________________ David Johnson, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English for all our poems-to-be iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to acknowledge my family for supporting me on so many levels throughout the Ph.D. program, and particularly during this final writing process. You have given me more gifts than I can count—intellectually, financially, and emotionally. Thank you also to those who have helped me professionally—to my dissertation director, Joann Gardner, for caring about my work, for sharing her beautiful program with me, for her years of careful editing, and for insisting that I answer the tough questions about craft, value, and the place of poetry in our world. I would also like to acknowledge my committee members: Maxine Montgomery, and Nicholas Mazza for their interest, encouragement and advice, and Sheila Ortiz-Taylor for believing that this work has real value, and for refusing to let me quit over any of several stumbling blocks. Both personally and professionally, I must thank the friends and colleagues who have reviewed portions of this manuscript and/or listened patiently to my concerns, complaints, and frustrations about the process. Holly Methvin, Jennifer Hobgood, Amy Hodges, Linda Scott, Laura Newton, and Laurie McLeod—your counsel was as needed as water or air during these last months. Also, Thelma Cohen, thank you for seeing me through the formatting nightmare. Finally, I want to acknowledge the many participants—teachers, staff, students, and writers, who have shared their time and talents with me in Runaway with Words workshops. These writers and their stories, particularly at the PACE Center for Girls and the Jefferson County Women’s Prison, remain absolutely present in my life and memory. I value each session, each circle, each poem, and I thank you for trusting me with your words. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................... viii I. LETTERS ...................................................................................................................1 Interiors.......................................................................................................................2 Enveloping: An Introduction ......................................................................................3 II. LOVE........................................................................................................................16 I Think of My I Love Yous.......................................................................................17 Love Poems...............................................................................................................18 III. MIRRORS.................................................................................................................34 Oracle........................................................................................................................35 In the Mirror I See.....................................................................................................36 IV. BLUE ........................................................................................................................49 Blue Sky Day ............................................................................................................50 A Blue You, A Blue Me ...........................................................................................51 V. POEMS .....................................................................................................................62 Poetry Is For Lovers (its true)...................................................................................63 Workshopping: The Yellow Woods .........................................................................64 Activity: Animals......................................................................................................71 This is Not….............................................................................................................72 Activity: Color My Words........................................................................................73 Indigo ........................................................................................................................74 Activity: Family Portrait...........................................................................................75 Groundhog Day, 1998 ..............................................................................................76 Activity: Blind Contour Drawing .............................................................................77 Sketch Artist..............................................................................................................78 Activity: Dreams.......................................................................................................79 v The Monster Inside ...................................................................................................80 Activity: Life Metaphors...........................................................................................81 Lorelei Vase..............................................................................................................82 Activity: Picasso’s Pen .............................................................................................83 The Tune Up .............................................................................................................84 Activity: Poetry and Music .......................................................................................85 On and On.................................................................................................................86 Activity: Word Pass ..................................................................................................87 Walking Beat ............................................................................................................88 Activity: Sensory Memory........................................................................................89 Prison Candy.............................................................................................................90 Activity: Key Words.................................................................................................91 Activity: Letter People..............................................................................................93 Activity: Firsts ..........................................................................................................95 Activity: Picture Writing...........................................................................................97 Activity: Poems from Beyond ..................................................................................99 VI. SONG......................................................................................................................101 Three Note Love .....................................................................................................102 A Final Performance...............................................................................................104 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................117 vi ABSTRACT Poems Unsealed is a collection of six chapters mixing conventionally fixed genres, such as nonfiction essay, short story, and poem. The chapters are infused with letters, poems, memoirs, interviews, dialogues, artwork, and teaching activities. Such fusion attempts to show the creative avenues available for writers who expand their scope to include the community. Thematically, The Runaway with Words Program threads through all six chapters. This program sends professional and graduate student-writers into shelters, prisons, and alternative high schools to conduct poetry workshops. While creative expression holds therapeutic value for community participants in at-risk environments, the professional writer is also enriched by stepping out of his academic training, and by crossing boundaries of age, race, education and class. Poems Unsealed tracks my own creative experience as a writer and teacher. The essays grow out of the central idea that writing and expression is valuable for everyone, and that words, poems, letters, and stories have communal power. Tapping this power is a creative opening—an unwrapping, or unsealing of poems as precious as they are hidden. This text aims to be artistically pleasing as well as practical