On April 9, poets Terri Muuss and Matt Pasca incorporated heavy topics in their poems, including sexual assault and personal backgrounds.
The poets were chosen by the Coordinator of Creative Writing and Literature in Person Dr. Deirdre Fagan to celebrate National Poetry Month. A total of 22 attendees were at the event online as the event took place over Zoom. Muuss and Pasca use poems from their collections to demonstrate where inspiration stems from and that people don’t need to keep their difficult experiences in their heads.
Muuss took the floor first by reading “Alternate Names for Rape Survivors,” a poem from her second collection, “Godspine.” She is a sexual abuse survivor, and her other poems, “Affidavit” and “I Am the Type to Talk With my Hands,” are related to sexual assault, and she uses them to help her overcome the topic and share her story.
“Hard topics are necessary so that they become less hard topics and more like why should I be ashamed of something that happens to me?” Muuss said. “Why should I feel guilty or bad about something that I had nothing to do with that I was not to blame for? In fact, let me shine a light on this so that other people don’t feel so alone.”
Furthermore, Muuss stated that not talking about the difficult topic is what can make things harder. She added that talking about them is more necessary than brave, and it’s more like breathing.
“Telling the truth about abuse is what keeps it from being painful,” Muuss said.
Some of the poems shared by her husband, Pasca, were observing past family experiences, small talk and his personal background. He wrote a poem about how he grew up on Long Island, something he doesn’t say with pride. He also wrote a poem called “Throwing at the Sky” after watching a time when their [his and Muss’s] kids get something stuck in a tree. He also shared a poem about people struggling to talk about small things.
With his work appearing in over 50 publications, Pasca stated that getting a poem right can help him take a step forward as a person, which is what he’s learned from writing poems.
“When I get a poem right or when I feel good about a poem, I’ve managed to make something real that I’ve been working towards for a long time emotionally and intellectually,” Pasca said. “In a way every time I finish a poem that manages to articulate something I’ve always struggled to articulate; I feel I’ve taken another step towards building the house of myself that was only a blueprint to that point.”
To complete a poem, Pasca also mentioned the Notes app on his phone. On the app, Pasca would put down anything he saw from the outside world that inspired him to write a poem.
Students who attended the event were part of Dr. Fagan’s poetry classes. English education senior Brianna Bentley was able to state a couple of her favorite poems from the event.
“I would say Terri’s ‘Alternate Names for Rape Survivors’ and Matt’s poem about not being able to make small talk are my favorite,” Bentley said. “Terri’s because of how real and powerful it is and Matt’s for how much I can relate to it.”
More information about Literature in Person is on the Department of English, Literature and World Languages ferris.edu website.
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