The Day I met Mari

When I was growing up my family moved often. My Mom is an artist and so she could paint anywhere and we spent the summers traveling all over the country to art shows and galleries where my mom would sell her work and we would make it through the rest of the year on the summer's income. Sometimes we lived on prayers and pocket change, other times we had it all. It's the life of an artist it seems. But home was not a necessary place for our livelihood the way it is for many who commute to nearby jobs. Our commute was all over the country in an old motorhome with my sisters and usually a cat or a dog. We would stop at museums all over the U.S. I loved the Art Museums best and my mother and I would spend hours wandering through them drinking in the work of the great artists. Art is not just something I enjoy - it is my heritage, it is my family, it is how we got by and the reason for so many unique experiences in my life - Art is what I love and an intricate part of who I am. My Grandfather was an artist, I love and miss him dearly and my Aunt Suzi M Mather, as well all my sisters and a string of others throughout my family and history. I love the smell of paint and sitting in my Mom or Grandfather's studio just quietly watching worlds unfold on the canvas have been some of my favorite childhood memories. It will never cease to be a miracle to me the way our imagination can take solid form in a painting or a sculpture, a dance or a song, a book and of course one of my favorite art forms - a poem.

Now as I have mentioned in the past I have strict religious parents and this is true also. Another reason we moved often and easily is because my Father's commute was all over the country and world as well. My Dad is a Military Man and a Missionary Preacher. My Dad's Air Force Career and interest in the missions is how I was able to live in Korea among other places as a small child and I love that experience. I do not agree with my parents fundamental religious views but I also cannot complain too much about the way that I was raised as Art, culture, travel and exploration were a part my daily life. I recently created a Pinterest board just for kicks displaying pictures of many of the places I have been and was amazed at what an incredible life I have lived thus far.
https://www.pinterest.com/charityjanisse/places-i-have-been/
The arts and travel is everything to me and exploring various cultures and art forms fascinates me to no end and has since I was a small child :). Despite my various disagreements with my parents I will always, always be thankful for this.

Anyway my point of writing this particular blog is to explain not only my attraction to all the various art forms but to talk about the day I fell madly in love with poetry. My parents moved so often I went to 4 different high schools and one of them was called Mariemont. It had been built in the late sixties or early seventies and was an experimental school where there were no walls or halls; there were all these big circular rooms where back in the day kids had sat on bean bags in circles instead of rows of desks. The arts were a strong focus, so the art classroom was giant with all sorts of creative options (I loved it there), the theater for drama was the center of the school, the band was excellent and the library, oh my god the library... It was this big beautiful library with books like I had never seen in any other school. Someone with a passion for the arts had seriously stocked that library with rare and unusual poetry books, art books, travel books like you would never find in a traditional school library. Now by the time I had gone to that school much had changed - there were partition walls for various classrooms in what had once been open circles and there were lines of desks within them. Apparently it had been decided at some point in the 80's that kids actually learned better that way. I don't know as I have never experienced the previous option, I believe we all have different ways of learning though. But the one thing that had been left relatively untouched was that brilliant library.

I often poke fun at myself for being shy and somewhat socially awkward but the thing is, it is true, I am. I have always preferred my own company or the company of one very close friend to a large group. I read people’s emotions quite easily and in large groups there are so many mixed feelings and messages, it tires me. So naturally as I don't care for groups and all of my family's various moves made it challenging for me to get too close to any one friend for very long I spent most of my high school career skipping lunch and hanging out by myself in the library. 
And this is when we come to my first true meeting with some of the most powerful poetry I have ever read in my life. In that amazing library, in that wonderfully artsy school was a little poetry book called "I Am a Black Woman" by Mari Evans

The book was small with no flat binding, almost like a pamphlet, if I had not been so antisocial and lonely I would never have spent enough time in the library to discover it at all. I was reading some of my favorite poets - Frost, Keats, Lord Byron and then I pulled out an old Shakespeare book from the shelf and there fell that little poetry book by Mari, right into my hands and I began to read it. I remember just sort of sitting down right there on the floor in the aisle of books as I could not take my eyes off of the words. I think I was even late to my next class. I was about 15 years old, I had been writing poems since I was 9 or 10 but I had always thought there were rules to follow, like I needed stanzas, phrases, lines, perfect rhymes and here I was reading this woman’s poetry that flowed like music through my mind and there wasn't any particular order to it at all. I read the whole book but I did not check it out and I did not purchase a copy for myself. I never wanted to accidentally copy another poet's style, not even at that young age, so I never wanted to get to know one poet very well, not even my favorite. There is a style of poetry that flows freely from me and it is my own and I never wanted that style to be affected by rules or influenced by my desire to be like any single artist. 

But reading that woman's poetry changed my life. I realized I could ignore the rules, I could write about pain and distasteful subjects, I could write about love even if I did not understand it, even if I had been hurt by it, perhaps especially then. 

I have realized over the years when I have looked for more work by Mari Evans that sometimes it is hard to find and any one I have ever mentioned her poetry to has not known who I was talking about. This may just be the case among people I know but anyway this is the poetry that awoke my writer's spirit and taught me exactly what I wanted to do with my life and that is why I want to share it with you. Writing is my passion and my purpose and if some day in the future a tiny poem book of mine could fall off a shelf into the hands of a lonely young girl and give her life meaning and purpose, then I have served mine.

Blessings, Charity

Where Have You Gone


Where have you gone
with your confident 
walk with 
your crooked smile


why did you leave 
me 
when you took your 
laughter 
and departed 
are you aware that 
with you 
went the sun 
all light 
and what few stars 
there were?


where have you gone 
with your confident 
walk your 
crooked smile the 
rent money 
in one pocket and 
my heart 
in another . . . 


Written by Mari Evans


If There Be Sorrow 

If there be sorrow

let it be

for things undone . . .

undreamed

     unrealized

          unattained

to these add one;

Love withheld . . . 

. . . restrained


Written by Mari Evans