Scruffy Hospitality

Whenever a guest drops by unexpectedly, my eye goes to the pile of mail on the counter, the tumbleweeds of dog hair roaming freely across the kitchen floor from our little pack, the coat thrown carelessly on the chair by the door, the books draped over the arm of the couch with a cup of coffee possibly from the last ice age waiting to be taken to the dishwasher. It’s endless.

It’s hard to resist the temptation to tidy up when I write about my home, or to simply omit these messy details in poems I write about the places I love. By including those details, which reveal the home to be lived in/imperfect, a reader might find deeper resonances in the earnest expression of messy, imperfect moments on the page. As Mary Randolph Carter writes in her delightful book A Perfectly Kept House Is the Sign of a Misspent Life, “A cluttered house is a lived-in house. It is filled with signs of life: stacks of magazines; newspapers spread over a sofa; books piled next to the bed; [...] Clutter speaks to activity. A book started, a painting begun (sic.), children's books opened on the kitchen table, a teacup next to a piece of chocolate cake. Everything in its place may give a certain satisfaction, but a lived-in room exudes comfort and warmth. [...] Clutter is the poetry of our homes.”

To me, scruffy hospitality is an invitation for the reader to step beyond the doorway of the poem. It frees us from the unattainable ideal portrayed in design magazines and Instagram posts, where there is little evidence of human life. It’s a way of opening the boundaries of a place to bring the reader close, and to avoid the peril of expected language or abstractions that might push the reader outside of the center of the poem. Sometimes when writing about a place, especially one which means a lot to us or has a deep personal connection, it’s difficult to get past the emotions we feel are connected to it, to free ourselves to express complex/paradoxical feelings about the places we call home.

This goes beyond description. If I can include “scruffy” details, I might be able to write more honestly about the messy arguments with people I love, the complicated pasts I have with some, my own sometimes conflicting wants and needs as a human being. I might make discoveries, and find comfort in the lines I write because I more fully see myself in them.

Let’s take a look at a couple of poems that pull the reader past the doorstep, and into the beautifully imperfect images of shared experience.

Read

• “If I Should Come Upon Your House, Lonely in the West Texas Desert” by Natalie Diaz, from Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf, 2020)

Brokenness from the start! The title can be read two ways—the house as lonely, and the speaker as lonely. The speaker’s loneliness, her wild longing, is reflected in the particulars of landscape. Because of the specific plants, the nearness of hips “horned with loneliness,” the reader is not kept at arm’s distance. In the poem’s craft choices—its soundplay, form, pacing—we are reeled in. The domestic details as we get closer and closer to inside the house are imperfect/lived in. This is “not your new house,” Diaz writes. She’s invited by the beloved to hang her lariat in the hallway (is that where it belongs, this dusty, rough, outside tool?), and she enters the beloved’s personal space, piling books on the bedside table (This doesn’t sound Marie-Kondo-approved!), breaking chairs (a-la-Goldilocks!). Despite, or perhaps because of this mess-making, she is invited to come closer. She brings the reader with her. All this tenderness includes the reader in that tender place, one open to personal resonances in response to these intimate details. “Here love, sit here.”

Read

• “Respiration” by Jamaal May
• “Red Brocade” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Consider ways modern poets use “scruffy” details from the material world to deepen a sense of place and convey complex emotions. In each poem, what does the poet do to invite you further inside the shared imagination? What seems to be at the heart of each/the motive of the speaker? Where is the sense of urgency? Of intimacy? How does this relate to the details they included? Where do you see evidence that the craft reflects the tension, or is used to represent a complex emotion present in their poem rooted in place?

Activity and Prewrite

Part 1

Writing about a beloved place is fraught for many. Before you begin, spend a moment in this or some other meditative activity, readying the ground for what arrives. In my classes, I often begin by encouraging the group to find a more meditative headspace by drawing a spiral. Try to keep your lines as close together as possible. Switch to your nondominant hand after a few rounds if you like. (Some research shows that writing with your nondominant hand helps you connect more deeply to memory and creativity). Focus on your breath and the movement of your hand. Don’t worry about perfection!

Part 2

Next, think about small details that might convey a sense of imperfection into your own poems of place as a way to welcome the reader into the shared imagination. Imagine the center of your spiral is your home/heart’s home, a single place where you feel deeply rooted. This writing might be focused on a single building, or perhaps contained in a neighborhood, a town. Wander slowly through and out of that heart for a few moments. Along the spiral itself, jot some details that are geographically close to this place. Add a word or two pointing to the center, a memory that happened there that you consider a core memory/a memory you treasure. As you move outward, move further along in your timeline, too. Keep going back and forth between physical details and moments in your timeline, so that the outer edge of your spiral is the closest to the present day. After you’ve done that for a few minutes, look back over your spiral and look for places where you’ve just noted a geographic location or an abstract concept. Make a small list, gathering a few of that location’s concrete details. By now, you might have a largish spiral to draw from in your poem, like a cross section of a tree that shows evidence of events in its life—lightning strikes and woodpecker drills, droughts and floods.

Look back over your spiral. Are there places that contain a “messy” detail you haven’t yet brought to the page? Think of Jamaal May’s pottery shards, and Natalie Diaz’s pile of books on the bedside table. You might also include items in this space that represent comfort, not just messiness. What is something that is well-worn in this space?

Prompt

Write a poem inviting someone into an imperfect part of your home. Perhaps this is a trusted friend, or maybe you’ll open your space to unexpected guests. Perhaps you’re the host of this gathering, or maybe you are the guest in a scruffy home, maybe even breaking things and making a mess, as the speaker in Natalie Diaz’s poem does. Let yourself show vulnerability and welcome through the scruffy details you include. If you get stuck, write the words “I wish you couldn’t see …” or “Never mind the …” and see what your muse has to say about these surroundings. Allow the poem to move beyond the physical world, and into a sense of communion. Let yourself be surprised and delighted by what you find when you open this space to another, or when they open it to you.