New Jersey 11, or My First Pantoum

Since learning about them, I have admired pantoums and their authors a whole lot. First of all, the name - pantoum - sounds simultaneously myseterious and serious and whimsical, like an incantation or an onomatopoeia. Pantoum, pantoum. It sounds like jumping on a trampoline, or leaping and landing heavily.

Secondly, a good pantoum is incredibly difficult to write. Wikipedia explains the form:

The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.

It is a woven form, deeply connected and reliant on both the intuition and intelligence of the author to produce. Writing this nearly drove me crazy. I have produced exactly one poem, and it is at least partially terrible. For an example of a good pantoum, check out Donald Justice's 'Pantoum of the Great Depression'. Then come back here and check out my quite awful, but first-ever complete:

Pantoum for Hana, Who Taught Holocaust

I imagine we share nightmares
about train tracks and gray fields,
shouts from faces we cannot see.
When do you wake up?

Your stories of train tracks and gray fields
left my bones shaking.
I wished I could wake up.
I cupped my ears for protection.

You built us a history of bones, shaking
our memories like rattles to get our attention.
I cupped my ears for protection.
Sometimes, it was too much.

We responded to the memories like rattles. They got our attention.
after class, we sometimes spoke in whispers.
sometimes, it was too much
to hear another voice.

After class, we sometimes spoke in whispers
as though we’d been collective witness to a nightmare.
Needing to hear another voice,
we begged one another for distraction.

After witnessing your nightmares,
we didn’t feel like children.
We begged one another for distraction,
not wanting to face adulthood.

Of course we didn’t feel like children,
and that was your intent.
Who ever wants to face adulthood?
Your task was to prepare us.

But was it your intent
that I be left with nightmares?
Was your task was to prepare me
for dreams of shouts from faces I cannot see?

Further note: I have been trying to write a poem about this woman for over a year now. I have tried to write a poem of reverence, of absolute love and caring for this teacher who taught me for six years how to read Hebrew aloud and make it sound like prayer, and who gave me reoccurring nightmares that began while I was taking her seventh-grade Holocaust class. This poem is neither reverent nor particularly loving. It's angry. I never knew I harbored this anger at her. It took one of the world's most frustrating forms to unlock that which was keeping me from writing that beautiful, loving, reverent poem to her. Perhaps now I will find what I need to write that poem. But I'm glad this is finally out.