PotW #115
12.11.25 | "Calimity (High Hopes and Deep Disappointment)"
Endnotes
There’s a lot going on—in this poem, in our world, in each day with more to do despite all I did the day before. Instead of sharing my writing with you, I’ve been getting lost in books and chapters and characters and news and poems and essays and feedback and voice. It’s easier to ponder questions like “Why are we foreigners?” instead of answering the always looming “So what are you going to do once you’re done with grad school?”
I’ll save you from reading about the rest of my personal calamities since I’m sure you already have your own to attend to. Let’s talk poetry instead.
This week’s poem is one I revised this morning for a final portfolio in a graduate writing workshop. “Calimity” is a portmanteau of the state I’ve spent most of my life in and the chaotic feelings I carry at the intersections of adulting, cultural collisions, increasing political violence, and my nomadic tendencies. Like my own identity, I can’t think of California without considering all that is mixed within it. In trying to answer Prageeta Sharma’s question—Where is the self here in Southern California—I wanted to represent as many of these layers as I could: social history, topology, cultural memory, linguistics, and poetics.
Is this all too much? Of course it is—self is not as simple as a set of words. Where has your self been lately?
The first version of this poem, which I wrote after hearing Prageeta Sharma read her poem “What is Sovereignty for the Hindu Today?” back in October, looked like this:
I like how “clean” this version is, but ease of reading doesn’t quite match my goal of representing the teetering balance of California past and present. The original version tries to offer multiple ways of reading: you can read left to right, or you can read “down the coast” of the lefthand line and then down the “straightforward” column on the right. When I shared this version with peers, not everyone was able to discern the shape of the Southern California coastline; when I revealed the map I originally used to set up the spacing, they encouraged me to keep the map and move the text around to not just represent the coast but the mountains and the waters, too.
The revised version, with ghostly Google Maps as backdrop, is not perfect. It is fun and crazy and confusing—all words that fit right into the SoCal vibe—but I am still wanting to do more with it. Maybe I’ll write other poems in the same shape; maybe I’ll figure out a better way to work with the ocean, since it is more than just blank space.
But my final portfolio is due in a hour, so I should probably get back to that. I wrote like 100 pages (seriously) in the past eleven weeks, so hopefully you’ll hear from me again soon. Thinking of you, and hope you’re doing well.
Calimitously,
Ricky