"10 Confessions" by MT Vallarta
Analyzing Why This Poem Works on The Poetry Saloncast
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Why This Poem Works: Reading “10 Confessions” by MT Vallarta
Intro : What the Academic Essay Cannot Say
Before I founded The Poetry Salon, I was an English teacher. I spent most of my days explaining to students how to write a 5 paragraph essay. As both a student and a teacher, I like the 5 paragraph essay. It’s tight, organized, contained. It helps you pick a thesis, a point, a belief and then lay out your arguments for that belief. However, there are some things the 5PE cannot voice.
When I discussed their book, What You Refuse to Remember with them on The Poetry Saloncast, MT Vallarta explained that they wrote their poems in between bouts of working on their academic writing for their Ph.D. program. The essay has its limits, Vallarta said. There are other ways to evoke feelings and other vehicles that can be more appropriate for communicating than the narrative or expository. Poetry, Vallarta pointed out, can give voice to some things that academic writing cannot express.
This poem, unlike the 5PE gives glimmers of scenes from the speaker’s life and the life of their family. It does not say what the central drama is outright, but hints at it, and it does not come to an easy to digest thesis, but rather contains a strong sense of conflict that does not get fully resolved. Here’s the poem.
Poem
Ten Confessions
I remember how easy it was in Los Angeles. How my cardigan always smelled like sun. How I dreamed of being a girl who walks into her grave. How the sidewalk glittered, but ten seconds later, I would step on dog poop or gum. My mother would not let me enter the car.
In our second apartment, I watched a man tie two ropes around two trees. They met in the middle and he fastened a tarp between them. Ten minutes later, his son was in a hammock.
I have lived in three counties: Los Angeles, Alameda, and Riverside. Each one has a problematic relationship with rain. Riverside left my cheeks the most pockmarked. Los Angeles was the hardest to leave.
I once got my little sister to eat a violet. I told her they were the flowers of purple cabbages. I used to imagine I was Laura Ingalls Wilder, not knowing we were little brown monkeys squabbling in the jungle.
My mother taught me how to sob. Like my bones were breaking.
Everyone comments on how well I am healing but I associate well with too fast and I associate fast with ending so I sob alone on Sunday nights and call my best friend and tell him how I wish we were all just books—just paper and spine—so I watch scary movies alone and laugh and laugh as Kiernan Shipka croaks “hail Satan” before being shot.
I clean my toilet, sink, and shower on separate days. I learned how to drive on one-way streets. I have never been in a car accident. I am both my parents’ favorite child.
My mother calls me every evening. To make sure I haven’t killed myself.
At K-mart, I remember buying discount CDs with my mother. We danced to a scratchy “Night Fever.”
I draw plans about jumping into a frozen river. I burn them later.
Discussion: Writing Around the Unsayable Thing
This poem comes from the MT Vallarta’s book What You Refuse to Remember, published by Small Harbour Editions. As the title suggests, and as Vallarta told me in our interview, the book is about what the speaker does not want to remember or discuss. The title of this poem is 10 Confessions, and yet a person who gives the poem a cursory read may walk away asking, what are they confessing?
The poem directs the reader’s attention to imagery that might seem mundane. The speaker has a sweater that smells like sun, they watch a neighbor create a hammock out of a tarp, they get their sister to eat a violet. But there are three lines inside these little vignets that point to something darker going on for the speaker.
They say in the beginning “I dreamed of being a girl who walks into a grave.” Later they say their mother calls them every evening to make sure they haven’t killed themself. The last line is “I draw plans about jumping into a frozen river. I burn them later.”
The speaker does not say directly what makes them have such ideation, nor do they say what makes their mother worry about them and call them every evening. This is part of what remains unspoken. This is what they write around. It is left to the reader to decide what might be at the root of this ideation. At the same time, maybe the fact that the speaker never pin-points it is part of the experience of the poem. It’s clear that the speaker does not want to discuss the issue directly. Maybe the reason is not something that can be boiled down to a thesis statment, and hence why it demands expression in poetry.
An essay asks you to say things more directly, to explain your point, to reveal your sources and to bring the receipts. If what you want to express is also something you want to hide, it’s impossible to do this in an essay. It makes poetry a much more appropriate vehicle, which is why MT Vallarta may have needed to write this poem, and the full book in poetic form while writing about the more “sayable” things in their academic work.
The Prompt
What is something you might feel a need to confess?
What are some vivid pieces of imagery from your life that seem mundane, but perhaps have meaning for you? Don’t overthink this imagery, just jot down what memories you have. The more specific and vivid the better.
Try writing a list of confessions. Try to direct the reader’s attention to the seemingly mundane pieces of imagery first. Take the hints at the more important confession and slip them in between the pieces of the mundane.