Poem of the day How Sarah Wins the Essay Contest by Diane Lockward A significant prize is at stake, but the topic’s complex: Chaos and Order and How They Relate to Creativity. She’s only 12 and knows nothing of chaos, though her father has left with the woman her grandmother calls that whore and her mother can’t get out of bed for days at a time. She has not created anything yet, barely feels the little seeds inside, the occasional blip blip of something like an elevator rising and dropping, does not know the coming chaos of sweating, cramps, and blood, the schedule off kilter, the skittishness of desire. All she knows is what she’s been told—be logical, orderly, systematic, begin at the beginning, an Introduction with Attention Grabber, maybe a dictionary definition: Chaos: a condition in which chance is supreme; inherent unpredictability; a state of utter confusion, Order: an arrangement in sequence; a proper, orderly, functioning condition; a state of peace, and next the Body, each part bolstered with details, like flesh added to bones. But what to say? that once the house was full and then it wasn’t? that something inside the house had broken? that sometimes the house was so quiet she couldn’t hear anything except the low hum of breathing? and after she’s done with the Body, a Conclusion that pulls the parts together, extracts meaning, and ends with a Clincher, something derived from the soft shuffle of her mother’s feet.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 12:41:16 +0000
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