Contrasts and Opposites

Thanksgiving and Black Friday – these are two consecutive days that go hand-in-hand. Lately, it seems as if these two days are being treated as twin days, much like the large double doors at the front of a smart shop with great sales, am I right? These two days usher in the holiday shopping season and for me, this is where I draw the line at Christmas music around my house. My girls are huge Christmas music fans and if not kept in rein, might sing carols into July. I think Christmas needs to just cool its heels and allow Halloween and Thanksgiving their proper due, too, that’s all. So we don’t really do the Christmas cheer thing until after Thanksgiving.

Funnily enough, that’s when everyone else seems to start their holiday freak-out, too. So Black Friday has turned into a race to open, a race to sales, a race for the highest profit. It has become a race for the best thing, a competition to BE THE FIRST, THE BEST, THE WINNER, and this is true for consumers as well as the corporations feeding the frenzy with their earlier-and-earlier openings.

This Black Friday creep into Thanksgiving has put me in a sour mood. It has changed the traditions of Thanksgiving from it being a day to bask in our blessings to a day we race through our conversations and our meals, we skip the pie and coffee and find ourselves freezing our asses off outside a mall, plotting the self-indulgent takeover by way of ruthless consumerism while the “crazy” people sit inside watching the football game surrounded by the warmth of family and friends.

This has created such a contrast in meanings. Those twin days ushering in the holiday season have turned into the worst type of fraternal twin: the good and the evil. Why is it that one day can be about giving so much thanks, and the very next day be about the complete opposite? It feels as if we are all running a similar track of “bi-polarity,” as I call it. We switch gears as quickly as we flip a light switch.

In life, this makes me sad. In writing, I find it a pleasant challenge. How does one present contrast in a poem?

It can be done obviously, with opposite words. It can be structured like this example, a limerick my grandfather likes to recite:

I went to the show, tomorrow
Took a front seat, in the back.
I fell from the basement to the balcony,
And I broke the front of my back.

Even though the poem didn’t make much sense, it is still a good poem. It still had good rhythm and is still memorable. I love this about poetry – you can use any words, mash them together, carve them into something, and voila! You have something. I don’t think there’s really such a thing as a “bad” poem unless it isn’t cared about, and I think that as long as someone goes through the trouble to think it up and write it down, there’s some degree of care put into it.

That limerick is one example, and it isn’t subtle about the opposite words. In other contrast poems, the words themselves may not be the contrasting element of the piece. It may be in the title, which beckons the reader through a door where they find the other side isn’t what they expected. My fair ginger lover pointed out a great example of that to me today – a song with sad lyrics, written to a happy tune. “Any David Bowie song, really,” he said. Another example I came up with is a song that was popular a few years back, “Into the Ocean” by Blue October. A catchy melody, one that sticks to the short-term memory in that way that makes you hum the chorus for the rest of the day, but listen to the words. The guy is talking about committing (or attempting to commit) suicide. That’s not really something I would expect to want to turn up in the car on my way to work. Such a buzzkill, but open for other interpretations because of the tune. If you don’t listen to the words, it’s a really happy song. If you keep to the melody, or the “beat” of the poem, without absorbing the words too much, it can work this way with poetry as well. The contrast comes between what the reader expects the poem will be about, and what the poem is actually about.

A great example of this is a poem called “Flowers” by Dennis Roy Craig. He talks of not knowing the names of the flowers because of his upbringing; he grew up in a desolate concrete jungle where flowers did not grow. The vision we are given in the poem is a sad, dirty industrial one devoid of color and joy. When the speaker finally encounters flowers, the joy they bring him is so great he does not need to give it a name.

FLOWERSWritten by Dennis Roy Craig
I have never learnt the names of flowers.
From beginning, my world has been a place
Of pot-holed streets where thick, sluggish gutters race
In slow time, away from garbage heaps and sewers
Past blanched old houses around which cowers
Stagnant earth. There, scarce green thing grew to chase
The dull-grey squalor of sick dust; no trace
Of plant save few sparse weeds; just these, no flowers.
One day, they cleared a space and made a park
There in the city’s slums; and suddenly
Came stark glory like lighting in the dark,
While perfume and bright petals thundered slowly.
I learnt no names, but hue, shape and scent mark
My mind, even now, with symbols holy.

This poem is how I have viewed this kickoff-to-holiday-season weekend, in a way. First, a wonderful day of family, friends, humility and maybe a little bit of gluttony, with a day of selfish greed and utter consumerism, this gimmegimme mine-mine-mine attitude hot on its heels. Black Friday has become such a rude tradition that it has eroded the celebration and even the meaning of Thanksgiving.

This year, I had to work for a few hours, and it wasn’t bad. I was able to come home and chill out with my husband and my son, and we stayed inside and watched crap on the television and ate frozen food out of cardboard boxes for our harvest feast. It was a wonderful day. It gave me time to consider all that I am thankful for, and this year, I have one more thing to be thankful for: the opportunity to share my words with others. For that, thank you fine readers who check out my blog every Saturday evening.

And as always, I am thankful for poetry. For words, for the music behind them, and for the feelings and memories they evoke. I am thankful for poets who came before me, and thankful for the chance to become one of them.

Have a fantastic week, and remember to take a moment each day and remember what you’re thankful for!

xoxo :)