This is Day 8 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), and I must admit, I wish I had more to give you. I’m still trying to find the sweet spot, the balance for accomplishing all of my other academic and cognitive tasks. Last night, I was reading late into the early morning about Ginni Thomas, wrote an oblique poem about it, then woke up today to write a long essay about cults. So that’s where my writerly energy went today, with little left over for NaPoWriMo. This project, today, is getting the short shrift.
Some of us, too, may give ourselves the short shrift in life. I personally grew up extremely shy, reticent, reserved. Very bookish. I was one of those kids who didn’t like to go outside to play. In college, when the professor would put it to the class if we could meet in the open air, I always voted people down. (I was terrible in that respect.) Anyway, this also translated into not really feeling that I had a voice about my own abilities. Partially, I had been socialized to be modest and extremely courteous, and I am happy to report that remains mostly true. But this held me back from “selling” my competency, especially in job interviews and the like.
So today, we’re here to get comfortable with the brag.
I take our prompt from pages 234-235 of The Poet’s Companion, by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. They begin with a poem from Sharon Olds.
The Language of the Brag
I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the center of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.
I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.
I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around
my belly big with cowardice and safety,
stool charcoal from the iron pills,
huge breasts leaking colostrum,
legs swelling, hands swelling,
face swelling and reddening, hair
falling out, inner sex
stabbed and stabbed again with pain like a knife.
I have lain down.
I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and shit and water and
slowly alone in the center of a circle I have
passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.
I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,
I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others.
Write a brag poem. Brainstorm a list of things you’re good at, moments in your life when you achieved perfection, or something close to it. We sometimes tend to be afraid of bringing attention to ourselves and our accomplishments. What have you done that you’re proud of? Why should others envy you? Choose one item from your list and expand on it, or use the whole list! Apply large words to yourself: courageous, glorious, excellence, power, brilliance. Write as if you are applying for a job as the perfect human being, or be more specific—the perfect friend, mother, child, wife, son, sister, lover, gardener, bus driver, cook, tax consultant, political activist, doctor, warden, president, thief, anything you were, are, or want to be. Boast!
And if you’re reserved like me, take heart in knowing that this is just a writing exercise and you can go back to being in the tortoise shell tomorrow.
➡ IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
Need more inspiration? Check out Walt Whitman’s timeless, famous piece “Song of Myself”.