You are asking to see one of my high school poems, but do you really understand what you’re asking? HIGH SCHOOL POETRY. Did you not read Mary’s comment about how awful high school poetry is? “Emotion, writ large (and poorly),” she says, and OH HOW RIGHT SHE IS. My primary emotion in high school was imagining myself in deep, conflicted, star-crossed love with boys I stared at in study hall and never talked to.
Plus, to select a poem to post, I would have to go through that folder (I’m sorry to say that “& Such” means “& Stream-of-Consciousness Essays”), and probably read more than one poem during the selection process. I did TRY, okay? I went through it a little, looking for a poem that would be humorously humiliating without being genuinely embarrassing. But GEEZ, Former Self!
There was a poem written so that the first letter of each line spelled out the name of one of the cute boys I liked to stare at; there are two stanzas, one for his first name and one for his last name. Another poem claims that love and sadness are very different emotions, then ends “…or are they?”—ellipses, italics, and all.
There is what I believe is intended to be some sort of ballad, describing the love between a young girl and a soldier who, in a stunning surprise twist, dies in the war. There is a reference to “the neverending ballet with the stars,” and a little notation that perhaps “with” should be “of.” (I don’t think the trouble here was prepositional.) Later on, I wonder in a margin if “like a cloud in the sky” would be better as “like a shadow in the night.” (Answer: no.)
I speak hand-claspingly of “love on a summer’s day,” not that I had any idea what that would be like. I explain in one poem that “when our eyes / meet / it is magic.” (Free tip for high school poets: It is not REAL POETRY if the line breaks make sense.) I point out earnestly that activities such as “dancing with children” and “picking flowers” and “looking at the stars” should be pursued, whereas MONEY on the other hand is unimportant. (Number of times I danced with children in high school: zero. Number of times I earned money babysitting them: seven bersnillion.)
There is the confession that I have “a heart that beats.” Good thing I saved these poems, so I’d remember what I was like! I had a beating heart, I’d almost forgotten! Also, evidently I thought that a woman in love (such as myself) would run to her boyfriend (such as the boy I stared at in English class) “like a zephyr.” Hi, English vocab list! Did I realize that zephyrs do not typically trip over their own pant legs?
I invited one lucky young man to “come fly with me.” I’m not sure what I had in mind, but I can tell you it was NOT what the young man would have thought I meant. (I believe I may have been thinking of the scene where Lois Lane flies with Superman.) There are references to “broken dreams” and “forgetting to dream.” There are “tears running down the windowpane,” and, oddly, “a palavar of sorrow.” A…what?
Some of them are written in PINK INK. I mean—GAH!
Let’s talk instead about the baby names in that post, and what I think of them a dozen years later. To review: the girl names were Fenchurch, Sophie, Molly, Quinn, Madeleine, Philippa, Ivy, Jill, Grey, Noel, Maizie, and Leaf; and the boy names were Jack, Joe, Sam, Luke, Milo/Miles, Leo, and Ross.
I don’t actively dislike any of the names. I still like Ivy and Jill and Madeleine for girls. I still like Milo/Miles, Leo, and Joe for boys, and in fact all three of them were strong contenders when I was pregnant with Henry.
I still like most of the other names, too, but now some of them are starting to sound out of date. Jack and Sam, which seemed so fresh ‘n’ sassy in 1995, are more usual now. And I wouldn’t use Grey or Leaf or Fenchurch, because that didn’t turn out to be our naming style. Maizie now makes me think of Maisy the mouse. (Also: grain.) I still like Sophie, but now would probably go for Sofia instead. Philippa is too hard to spell–I can’t remember if it’s two Ls and one P or one L and two Ps or…? It’s like Eliot/Elliot/Elliott/Eliott.
Reminds me much of when I found the box of notes I wrote to Hub during high school. Barf! Blech! Hurl! “Hold me until the stars fall from the sky…..” Gag me.
I wrote in a lot of glitter pen, but green was my sig color.
Thanks for sharing. I think we have all been there.
Oh man, this brought back some memories. Your poems…not so different from mine.
Oh high school, how I do not miss thee AT ALL. I kept some of m journals from then to remind myself when my kids are that age how SERIOUS everything seems to them and to try to not make too much fun of them. Re-reading them, all I can say is what a truly nauseating person I must have been. Gack.
And I had to laugh at the last line of your post. We have a newly-born son who we named Elliott (family name) and the poor kid is going to be repeating “Elliott – double L double T” for the rest of his life. But, he’s born to a “Sarah with an H” and a “Jon with no H”, so at least he has some sympathy there.
Oh my….every day you make my day.
I wasn’t a high school poet (THANK GOD), but some of the notes that I have kept from that time kill me. My only excuse is that I live in Seattle and I was TOTALLY into the grunge thing.
Obviously, Sophie is my pick!
But Fenchurch? Wha??
Thank you for being brave and posting those excerpts. They really just made my day. :)
At this point, I think I would like to pine over anybody, even if unrequited. Also, I need not mention that I filled up an entire NOTEBOOK of Every. Single. Word. ever spoken to me by my crush.
Yes, an entire spiral notebook.
Every. Single. Word.
See, I *have* been OCD for a loooong time.
I heart this post.
In a moment of extreme embarrassment I burned all of my old diaries because I could not get over how LAME I used to be. You sound like you might have been cooler than me :-)
I like Ivy.
Ooooh, I love it! Okay, I’ll find an old love letter and post it if you post a full poem. So what if only three people will see mine and several “bersnillion” will see yours! It’s the thought that counts.
I double dog dare you!
From Here to There
OH I LOVE YOU. i (thank god) did not fancy myself a poet in highschool, but i did fancy myself an ANGST RIDDEN, MISUNDERSTOOD WOMAN, ALAS ALACK. meanwhile, i was a ridiculously well-adjusted, straight-A student with fantastic supportive parents.
I think all teenage girls must write the same poetry.
Another memory came back to me today while listening to REM in the car. “Everybody Hurts” came on and I had a vision of me using that song as my answering machine message (on my own phone line of course) with no voice – just the lyrics and a beep.
Oh, to be that dramatic again.
I don’t even want to look at PICTURES from high school, let alone read my writing! You’re a brave girl, Swistle!
Good job Maisy! Have a great day!
Great, now I am going to be reciting Maisy books in my head all day long.
Fenchurch? How the heck would you even pronounce it?!?!
nikki
I agree with whom ever said I do not even want to look at the photos from HS let alone the stuff I wrote. I have done both and it breaks my little heart to think of all that angst ;)
I think of Maisie Starr – she sang some popular song back in the late 90s/early 2000s?
I still like some of those names though!
I agree with whom ever said I do not even want to look at the photos from HS let alone the stuff I wrote. I have done both and it breaks my little heart to think of all that angst ;)
I think of Maisie Starr – she sang some popular song back in the late 90s/early 2000s?
I still like some of those names though!
I agree with whom ever said I do not even want to look at the photos from HS let alone the stuff I wrote. I have done both and it breaks my little heart to think of all that angst ;)
I think of Maisie Starr – she sang some popular song back in the late 90s/early 2000s?
I still like some of those names though!
I feel seriously loved. Because you were willing to slog through that folder **& such** just for us!!!! To find something to post!!!!
I’m going with it’s the thought that counts, and seriously – you had me at the first poem with the lines spelling out the crush’s first name. CLASSIC.
My favorite was “tears running down the windowpane”. Reminds me of one of those I-saw-the-Virgin-Mary-in-the-windowpane stories.
Thinking back to the names I liked 15 years ago makes me worried for what I will think of my kid’s name in the future.
Come on! You have to post a high school poem. YOU HAVE TO.
You’ve already got others promising to do the same, and I wholeheartedly add my name to that list.
DO IT.
Come on! You have to post a high school poem. YOU HAVE TO.
You’ve already got others promising to do the same, and I wholeheartedly add my name to that list.
DO IT.
Come on! You have to post a high school poem. YOU HAVE TO.
You’ve already got others promising to do the same, and I wholeheartedly add my name to that list.
DO IT.
oh i do so remember those angst-ridden days (long long long ago).
i always tell my girlfriend that i wouldn’t go back to junior high or high school years for all the money in the world.
Hey, I think my folder of poetry might have gotten mixed up with yours there. This was just enough of a TASTE of it to… make me not want to read any more high school poetry. No offense, of course. Mine’s much, much worse. I remember a ballad, as well.
Now that I think of it, I had at least two teachers who were ENCOURAGING our inner poets in high school. I can think of assignments that required writing a ballad, a haiku, a 6-stanza whatever, ILLUSTRATING THEM (kill me), and creating a neat little Packet. This was high school, mind you, not elementary! WTH?!
I hope those packets are dead and buried and not lurking around my mother’s house somewhere.
Oh the cringe factor in some of my old writings! Fortunately I didn’t save most of the worst stuff. I had a tendency to write song lyrics, thinking I was a female Barry Manilow or something.
Nikki- It’s “fen” (rhymes with pen) and then “church” (as in steeple/people) emphasis on the fen. FENchurch. Probably would be called Fen or Fenny. …I don’t think we would seriously have used it, but Paul was pretty disappointed when I said no to it.
Whimsy- First name AND last name! Two verses! It’s handy, because it’s the only way I know now who I was so passionately in love with.
Pickles & Dimes- I think those scraps add up to a full poem, especially because I selected the worst parts. A full poem would add only the boring parts.
El-e-e- The folder is, in fact, in the trash now. I’d thought I’d want to read the poems later—but it turns out, no. Twenty years has added nothing to their quality.
hehe. OK, no poems. Good call! I remember feeling that same way when I was painfully slodging through my old high school diary a couple weeks ago. Ouch. And I used a pink pen too.
Bummer that none of those names ended up being ones you used, but interesting that you still like some of them.
Your poetry sounds much like my high school diaries. I gag when I read the constant break up/make up/break up/new boy cycle. I definitely need to get myself a ‘burn when I die’ box to put those diaries in. I just can’t seem to get rid of them yet myself.
Does it make me a self-obessessed freak that I not only re-read my high school poetry and journals, but I don’t cringe at all of it? Some of it is cringe-y, but I was writing for the ages and I didn’t take myself too seriously.
I’ll have to find something suitable and post it. Because I just can’t help myself.
I think I was you in a former life.
hey! My son’s name is Gray!
Isn’t that funny
::awkward chuckle::
::glances around nervously::
Isn’t it great you didn’t name your daughter that? Because it’s my SON’s name … heh heh … I’m lame. You have proven it, through your high school hijinx, 20 years later! It’s like Back to the Future, but Better!
my first ever comment on the swistle blog! i am laughing too hard to hit the shift key for capital letters. why are you so hilarious? this post is too much. (take into consideration here that i am both having a glass of wine and pumping breastmilk and blogging…all at the same time!}
i just had my first baby one month ago today. i picked the name isabella grace. we call her both isabella and ella. give me your honest opinion on it. i can take it!
Sara- I like it! We seriously considered the name Isabelle for Elizabeth (and also for Henry before we found out he was a boy).
Moo- Oh, well, OBVIOUSLY Gray is the boy version! And Grey is the girl version. There! *brushes hands* It’s like Aaron and Erin.
Oh Swistle. I too have the same notebook, including a 3 page double sided letter to a boy I dated (I use the term loosely) for a week, yammering on about everything emotional and pathetic and how I wasn’t “ready” and things were SO intense but its not the right time, with lots of great emotional metaphors etc, which I made him read in front of me to break up with him. Yack. What he must have thought. Also in there many many pages lamenting my tortured solitude, which I would then give to my friends to show them how cool and angsty I was, thereby cancelling out any possibility of what I wrote being even a little bit true. Ahh…the joys. I am definitely not counting the days until Stella is 13.
I feel so smug reading your current preferences from your high school name list, because you are the Queen of Baby Names and our taste matches almost exactly.
Also, I started writing melodramatic poetry when I was eight, and the humiliation just never gets old. I even posted some of them on that old website I posted on my blog awhile ago. So ANYONE who stumbles across that site could read it. Talk about humiliating.
Are you still looking way down here for comments? It’s the day after vacation, the house is a mess, my husband is drooping with a cold, and I’m one big ball of irritation. Your high school poetry was a ray of sunshine (or should that be “a cloud of silver”?)
I didn’t write poetry. I wrote novellas about a much-admired, spunky girl whose name was, um, a lot like mine only of course I wasn’t writing about ME. Because I didn’t have any boyfriends and my heroine sure did.
I very much respect your baby-name abilities, but FENCHURCH?
— SJ
SJ- OH YES. Indeed I am still reading! I get an email when there’s a new comment, so I read EVERY ONE. About Fenchurch–I know. And what can I say? I was pre-children, and thought I wanted a “unique” name. These are the things we do that keep us humble later on in life.
hahaha! My name is Maisie, my parents got it from an old John Candy Movie, “Uncle Buck”. my full name is Maisie Starr…. lol, yes like the band. but the band doesn’t spell Maisie the same way i do.
Maisie- I am VIRTUALLY CERTAIN I got it from Uncle Buck, too!