“Let’s burn that poem and bury it in the woods,” Seb suggested over the phone one day. Maybe a few weeks before, I’d been staying with her at her family’s place at the Jersey shore while composing the accompanying score, sitting on the edge of the lagoon’s bulkhead in their back yard. Instead, with the company of another friend, Deborah, I burned my haunted rocking chair covered in decoupaged poetry in the woods where I’d often walked off heartache. It was helpful.
Unsure if Seb’s response to spectre was coming from wanting to protect me or from embarrassment for me, my exposed vulnerability. Or maybe she just hated to see me wounded, a victim. Likely all the above. I had the sense she felt nauseated, as I first had, with the piece – and as I had during the devastating event that prompted it.
I was invited to read with a few other poets in Jacob and Charlotte’s back yard in West Philadelphia. Unsure why I was determined to present only this piece but I felt I’d no choice. I didn’t expect it to happen when I stood to perform with my freshly minted score, the slight loss of control over my limbs. Holding the pages near a floor lamp they had set up for the readers, my hands shook terribly and my knees visibly trembled. With weird fear, wobbly voice, and a dry mouth, I persisted. Then it was over and I felt released. I imagine it made people uncomfortable and I was regretful about that. And about bringing drama to a reading in my community. P.S. It wouldn’t be my last time for drama at readings.
Newsflash: it’s not unusual for poets to be drama. Don’t roll your eyes; it’s maybe beneficial. Like I used to say, “poets feel shit so that others don’t have to,” or something to that effect, presuming that good poets can somehow inject humanity back into humans. But it’s clearly true, evident in the self-proclaimed and self-important title, POET, that we choose to wrestle with a rich life of emotion – and the drama of living with an ego. My therapist would say that the use for greater depth and breadth of emotion is to plumb truths of human experience and turn them into art. I think that’s how she put it. I’m probably embellishing. Or making excuses.
Besides, most people who aren’t total psychos have roller-coaster, run-of-the-mill, terrifying and exhilarating human experiences that elicit endless eye-rolls if we pull ourselves out of the muck of the moment long enough to be annoyed with the audacity of it.
As for poets, I know a few who are repelled by poems that contain even a hint of emotion. The horror. Some try with their own work to make it machine-like, avoiding divulging feelings beyond their own amusement (which is admittedly an excellent argument for constructing anything). As if the self is a faux pas in poetry – and so in life. Some say, as if to boast, that they remove the self from their work, which is a bizarre idea, because it is they who execute the mission, either by their hand or mouth, edit, and present the outcome. Maybe I’m missing something in academic translation but an artist’s work doesn’t appear out of thin air without investment or a sense of attribution. Even if it is “found” in the anthropologic wilds – an object in situ, in a photo of graffiti or architecture, poetry made by erasure/redaction or decoupage, an image made of collage, or what-the-heck-ever. In those cases, I’ve wondered, does the artist’s gracious attention and/or appropriation, aka fiddling, bestow the Other’s voice with a new splendor while the poet’s own voice is selflessly withheld? Is there merit because the poet/Dadaist acts as a grand impresario or just mere presenter humbling themselves sufficiently as if they’re passing the mic without saying “I’m passing the mic”? Like the enshrinement of a kami for a torii, they’ll attach themselves to beauty via a gate or frame, a stand-in, as their voice, their self, despite themselves. Attempting to replace one’s embarrassing soul with one’s ghastly ego in creative work is perhaps a more accurate description of this conceit.
Duchamp used a pseudonym for the urinal when he signed R. Mutt and cutely entitled it Fountain. Get the witty flip-a-roo as the artful gesture becoming a work of art? The belier here is the fact that everyone in his circle knew it as his work on exhibit. Which brings me to Odysseus’ ego. And to, not the Anthropocene, but maybe the Aetas Ego. Joking, I’m not going to talk about Odysseus more than this allusion, which is, as an aside, an out-of-the-blue jab at Nolan’s cinematic take sans the great faux pas of sans Odysseus’ ego error shouting his own name to poor Polyphemus, thus inciting the wrath of Poseidon when he otherwise had a clean getaway. Really, I’ll stop with Homer’s critical poetic admonishment. For now. But it is our Age of Ego within which ghouls are intent on extracting souls from every person, stone, and poem. Likewise, the act of removing one’s humanity from their product – an intentional dissociative act, a sociopathy that requires effort.
Like Duchamp, some make their creative endeavor a conceptual joke, for wit, or to celebrate existential absurdity. That’s all fine and obviously I do it myself as sass is in my nature. It’s the owning up to one’s own voice, one’s human experience, that’s righteous. Not false humility or tres cool posture as a means to negate the personal so to fit in with a patriarchal pod of intellectuals, or similarly, to align with Proud Boy scum (note the collective noun) – such dunces missing entire modes of intelligence and aggressively shunning the spectrum of human emotion that exists beyond a one-toned albeit varied-decibel, sour temperament. Alas, art, like more and more aspects of our society, is trending inhuman, trans-human, post-human. Which is to say, available-for-possession; cored, hollowed, zombified, colonized, disembodied, disordered, silenced, automated, commodified, parasitized, diminished – a corpse of, an echo of, an illusion of, meaning.
Critics might call poetry that permits one’s self, or a voice that is earnest and honest, “confessional,” as if feeling something intensely enough to express it is something to be ashamed of. That compulsively writing it on the page, might embarrassingly absolve the poet of responding to their lived experience, like confessing sins to a shadow representative of the Omniscient One (irony here, obv.), with the penance, of the sin of being human, a public humiliation by a poo-pooing grinch or two. I guess it’s the guitar accompaniment that gives blues and rock music a pass for otherwise cringey lyrics delivered in whines, shrieks, and moans. Joking; we all know it’s the gender association. Confession: when the argument is against overly sentimental work I usually agree, especially if it is predictable or clichéd phrasing that is boring more than anything. But that’s not my point.
Point is, our sense of beauty has evolved with our ability to feel emotion and our ability to create beauty has developed with our ability to cultivate our soul, its embodiment. If we’re not to share our voice, our human attachment (emotional life), in creative communion, why would we create? I mean, besides for one’s insatiable and meta-emotional ego vying for attention. And if the ego has swollen larger than one’s capacity to endure and process the big feels, we should probably rather not add to the milieu of excessive raunch. Doesn’t art exist, after evolving with human experience, to connect and enhance humanity? Do creatives have a chance, if not the occasional obligation, to illustrate how to manage, preferably while imparting a sense of beauty, being fully human, how to possess our unique human vitality? If there’s no voice, no soul there, no there there (Stein’s haunted Oakland house), and certainly no beauty or truth to impart, we should maybe just STFU. It’s not like a mere poetry product is gonna provide us a livelihood. When a poet is overcome with being, and needs to share it with others with the art of feeling, poetry should be a divine, or damned, spectacle. At scale, in an appropriate font, of course.
And so, this piece, spectre. I hope the text reveals enough of its narrative. While still processing a wretched trauma, one sunny morning I kind of awoke, with the words and rhythm in my mouth, so I reached for my phone and whimpered the whole of it into the recorder app while half in a dream state. in somnis veritas, am I right?
Bundled in my earlier statement about the reason to write poetry, includes the process of personal evolution, which requires, any good therapist will tell you, confronting our emotions for resolution. And sometimes that happens in full public view. Whether we prefer to be seen in a certain light or not. As a tough kid, I very rarely cried, maybe once a year, maybe less, I don’t know. I was cool. It was agreed. Friends and strangers told me, my classmates wrote it on the backs of their school pics they gave me, my older siblings bragged about it to their friends. In public I was salty and deadpan with good reflexes and a steady hand. I had bona fide persona pride. After I had my kid, while basically still a kid myself, the floodgates slammed open. I thought, for many years, that I’d never stop crying once I started. Like in the delivery room, when my son didn’t turn after many hours of labor, and everyone and their in-laws had to check my dilation status, I was a bloody shitting spectacle on all fours. Then came the postpartum depression. I had to exit my college classrooms whenever I started sobbing. So much for being cool. And so much for school.
Like other humans, my vulnerabilities are sometimes in full view, whether or not I want it. It can be horrifying, trauma upon existing trauma. Especially when people are truly victims of abuse and need to find their way through the tangle, to find an empowerment on the other side of it. For me it’s often helpful to work such things all out while creating stuff. While I intend to be tasteful and tactful, I also want to be real, to own but also share an experience, to resonate, to connect, and to improve. If I’m lucky, the effort will also land with someone who could use it where they are or it might be appreciated by a person whose judgment I respect.
It sometimes seems a fine line between allowing one’s vulnerability to show and having the vulnerability-of-vulnerability present a target for victim-blaming, or to appear as self-pitying, pathetic, or milking attention. I knew the risk, and did it anyway, and am doing it again, sort of. This time, it’s not because I need to heal wounds while creating something, or to tell my story. Fortunately, I’ve grown a bit from past embarrassments and the rawness of terrible vulnerabilities and feel stronger from exposures. An emotional immune response, one might say. So what, we’re all victims at some point, and we have agency to transform with power. I’d much rather take that risk than let my ego sabotage the richness of living by ejecting my soul from its home. Besides, I’m past menopause, for heaven’s sake, and care less than ever about others’ perceptions. Now I stand by spectre as a creative work and feel like sharing it – presenting in print as poetry follow-through, a completion (though I might set it to film, too, at some point).
I also stand by it as Halloween-time poetry, poems I often think are kind of cool. It’s always been my favorite time of year, with various spooks and sugars. It’s a cool(ing) season when we set ablaze haunted poetry and undergo some serious molting. It’s a fun time to scream at nuisance ghouls and dispel spectres with a web-clearing hand gesture of vague or panicked disgust. It’s also a good time to sip helpful witchy brew from that favorite teacup.
Hassen Saker is a North American experimental poet, documentary filmmaker, & interdisciplinary/transmedia creator working with texts, audio, photography, film, new media, performance, & RW actions. Her published collections of poetry include Salem (belladonna* books, 2005); Crabapples (Furniture Press, 2004); Sky Journal (Dusie Press, 2014); Consolation Snacks (Furniture Press, 2017); & spectre (above/ground press, 2026).
Her poetry films include Waiting (2007); BRUT (2011), a la Muerte de la Muerte (2012); Surge (2012); poiètes + kinesis + grapho (2013); terra lingua: three aspects (2013); Sky Journal (2014); Solastalgia, a poem by Deborah Poe (2017); Beasts: Rivers (2023); & spectre (2026).
Saker’s multimedia & art/poetry film installations have been featured online, on radio, & in art spaces/galleries. Her transmedia project, Nighttime Physicks, was published as a NFT collection on OpenSea in 2022.
She currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her partner, Lauren. More at hassensaker.com
