NaPoWriMo Day 3: Poem As Essay

Did a friend forward you this email? Join our mailing list!

Table of Contents

• Freewrite

• Poem: “Essay on Touch” by Natasha Sajé

• Prompt

Freewrite

With this freewrite, as well as all freewrites, do not put any pressure on yourself to be good. You are simply getting thoughts on the page. You can write in poetry or in prose, but feel free to write poorly, sloppily, redundantly, and with cliches. Now is the time for ideas—we will eventually sculpt those ideas into art.

Pick a topic of obsession for you. Something you have strong opinions on. For 8-10 minutes, write down everything you think about and associate with that topic. It can be abstract or concrete. 

Poem: “Essay on Touch” by Natasha Sajé

Not unlike the trapped wolf that chews
its leg free, a doctor at the South Pole
operates on her own breast

instructed via satellite.
Any EMT can tell you that
placing a hand on the face

of shock victims calms their wild hearts.
Once when a child kept kicking
my airplane seat I put an illegal

hand on his ankle and made a lethal
threat. I’m not usually so powerful.
I can’t keep coyotes from killing

my cats nor deep from my tulips. What
kind of deterrent is human hair?
A nearly blind student told me

her mother shook her so hard, her
retinas detached–and said this
as if she were mentioning her brand

of shampoo. Nurses know it’s friction—
not just soap—that kills microbes, and it takes
a full minute to do it right. That’s

singing “happy birthday” twice,
or one-eighth of “MacArthur Park.”
When my father was dying I could

only stroke his arms and wait, and wish
I’d done more of that before.
Drug deals and shootings take place

in sunny daylight while I’m baking
Cassata Siciliana with green tea almond icing
that I’ve rolled out to the thickness

of a dime. I’d gladly offer it
to hungry animals—
or you, reader, if only you’ll stay

and place your open mouth on mine.

This poem is nothing short of a surprise, in the sense that the title does not prepare me at all for the poem’s beauty and violence.

I’m drawn to the idea of a poem as a kind of essay. Poems, indeed, make arguments, though poets can use different tools than the typical essayist uses. There is no “thesis statement” here, nor is the speaker telling us what to think, really—but there is an artful juxtaposition of incongruous images, as well as some rather clever line breaks, to convey what Sajé is trying to tell us.

A lot of this poem’s images find something both healing and violent in touch. Self-operations, EMTs touching shock victims, an angry mother, coyotes, and dying fathers: admittedly, this poem doesn’t have much joy in it. However, there is an urgent question: how can touch both heal and hurt? And why, sometimes, does it do neither?

And then we’re presented with a sudden turn in imagery: the speaker baking (in the midst of random acts of violence) and offering cake to us, the reader, if only you’ll “stay // and place your open mouth on” hers.

That final line draws my attention towards the amount of trust we put into one another—trust that we will touch each other gently, when intimacy and violence often occupy the same touch more often than we'd like to admit.

What kind of an essay is this? One in which the speaker knows how human touch can inflict pain and heal it; in which she wants to heal, not hurt; to be healed and not be hurt—and knowing how vulnerable it is to ask for the healing kind of touch.

The "argument" of this poem comes from how these intense images are arranged and put in conversation with one another. As the poem progresses, a tapestry of touch begins to emerge: healing and violence, sometimes occupying the same stanza, line, or even the same image.

An essay intends to persuade the reader of something. Poems are so often persuading the reader to view the world in a new or surprising lens, or to make the reader aware of something they weren't aware of before. I come away from this poem more mindful of our capacity to heal and hurt one another, often in unconscious or unexpected ways. I also come away feeling like, although touch is so often a futile form of engaging in the world, we can also radically transform the people we touch through touch—but only if we open ourselves to the risk of touching.

Prompt

Write a poem that is also an essay, after Natasha Sajé.

It’s easiest to do this with a topic of obsession, so feel free to pull from your freewrite. However, essays are “attempts” at answering questions, so if you find yourself pulled to a question you have no answer for, perhaps that question will form the basis of your poetic essay.