"Officemate" by Bryce Ellicott, from the anthology Life in Me Like Grass on Fire

As promised, here is Bryce Ellicott's poem from the Maryland Writers' Association's latest publication.



Officemate

She was brown and sari-woven. Her chair
and mine rubbed backs and spoke in whispers.
The day came she pranced, ring flashing
in the halls. They moved to Norway faster
than you can drain a filing cabinet, inhale
a roomful of cake and goodbyes, and forget
to leave a forwarding address. Forlorn
in the way of office furniture left behind,
my chair is wounded to the very wheels.
It refuses even a squeak against the silence
once filled with vinyl-stroked confessions.

Bryce Ellicott
Life in Me Like Grass on Fire, p. 21
Used with permission of the author


We have a simple image of a woman, "brown and sari-woven," but all of the very sensual action between the speaker and her is portrayed through their chairs. They "rubbed backs and spoke in whispers"--already past tense, setting us up for something to break up this closeness. After the "sari-woven" subject departs, leaving no "forwarding address" and no chance of more communication with the speaker, we have common office imagery standing in for the inner life of the speaker: inhaled cake and goodbyes, a drained filing cabinet, forlorn furniture, a chair "wounded to the very wheels."

It's sad! This sad, sad chair! The poor chair is so devastated that it will not even squeak, where once it happily whispered. The brilliance of this metaphor is it allows the reader a depth of empathy for the speaker that I'm not sure we'd have if we actually saw the speaker. We get the lonely chair, the silence, the emptiness, and the wound. A metaphor shouldn't be just interesting or arresting imagery; it should facilitate an emotional connection between the reader and the experience of the poem. This does it for me.

I have a few other thoughts but I thought I'd throw them out as questions and see what you think. Why Norway, for example? What is the significance of the woman being "sari-woven?" What does this poem tell us about the experience of loss?

BTW--Check out Bryce Ellicott's fascinating blog about writing, sci-fi, astronomy, and other kinds of coolness

Maryland Writers Conference and a Great New Anthology

Hello poetry lovers!

I just returned from the Maryland Writers' Conference in Baltimore. I don't live in Maryland, but my sister was attending and pitching a fiction manuscript to a publisher there, so I agreed to go and lend moral support. Three great things happened: 1) the publisher is interested in my sister's book and wants to read more. (Yay!) 2) I attended a few excellent lectures/panels, including a wonderful discussion of autobiographical poetry by the poet Sue Ellen Thompson 3) I was introduced to a fabulous new anthology of poetry published and just released by the Maryland Writers' Association: Life in Me Like Grass on Fire.

This is called a collection of "love poems," and that is true, but love is considered broadly and deeply by the poets, and sometimes in ways we might not expect--consider the section "Love as We Age." I love a good anthology, and I enjoy the results of a good editor's discerning choices.

In my next post, I'll include and discuss one of the poems in this book, and in a future post I'll interview the author Bryce Ellicott. Check out some great discussion on writing on Bryce's excellent blog, One Writer's Mind, and not just because it currently features an interview with me!