High Horrors
In place of low, horrors are seldom seen
As one’s own strife, discording life and plight,
Veils a fickle mind.
Color becomes opaque with harbored hate
Imposing vague intent, vaulting reason –
Bearing none in mind.
–
The spores residing in High keep status
Of actuality’s gloomed pursuit
To conserve the mind.
Efforts that drown in shallow bleach ripple
For mere moments, just to assume new forms,
To control the mind.
–
Sedated eyes leave no true certainty
And take ignorant pity on mildew –
Breaking a sound mind.
Nemesis to the dark is vivid flames.
Ruin be not of want, but needed blight
To cleanse a lost mind.
Author’s Note/Reflection:
High Horrors is about eugenics, its ruling terror, and what Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic suggests as a ‘solution’ to this deeply systemic issue. Firstly, eugenics is an incredibly problematic ‘ideology’, with the National Human Genome Research Institute describing it as, “an inaccurate theory linked to historical and present-day forms of discrimination, racism, ableism and colonialism. [Eugenics] has persisted in policies and beliefs around the world. . .”
For constructing this poem, I found myself referring to some of the poetry our class had analyzed throughout the semester. This leads me to Sylvia Plath’s poem Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats.
The piece itself is fairly mellow and a fine read. What truly drew me to this, however, was Plath’s ability to blur the lines between free and blank verse poetry. Ella Mason, in all rights, is written as free verse but has vague metric footing (mostly iambic), dipping its toe into the more structured blank verse. Realizing that I could not possibly emulate perfect ambiguity, as is the very nature of ambiguous formulas, I decided to create a blank verse principle of my very own – with heavy inspiration from Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats. Plath’s poem loosely follows iambic pentameter but is constantly interrupted by a ghazal style line preceding the topic word of the given verse – in this case, the word is “cats.” This occurs every tercet with average footing varying from 4-7 iambs for the first two lines and the tertiary line consisting of 1 anapest and 2-3 iambs.
I took these observations and streamlined them to create what I’ve dubbed, the “Cat Lady” form. A blank verse that has no stanza limit, 6 lines per stanza in iambic pentameter – where every third line ends with the topic word or phrase. Those breaking lines being shorter with just 1 anapest and 1 iamb compared to the former lines consisting of 5 iambs each. I will provide further information on blank verse, free verse, meter, and iambic pentameter below, as this is a post less about poetic form and more about the horrors of White supremacy.
Formula: Stanza = 2(1st line [5 Iambs], 2nd line [5 Iambs], 3rd line [1 Anapest + 1 Iamb])
Now to dissect and discuss my poem, High Horrors, stanza by stanza:
“In place of low, horrors are seldom seen
As one’s own strife, discording life and plight,
Veils a fickle mind.
Color becomes opaque with harbored hate
Imposing vague intent, vaulting reason –
Bearing none in mind.”
The overarching theme of this poem is the “mind.” Specifically, how the brain can misconstrue or be organically exposed to damning rhetoric, especially while being subjugated by the system, “place of low.” The setting is High Place and follows the narrative of Mexican Gothic. The mind, so far, is “fickle,” hearing Howard’s eugenicist propaganda, feeling uncomfortable by it but ultimately passing it as ‘normal’. The racing mind has bigger issues to worry about (or is at least convinced of such), like the very same ‘normality’ that is colonizing and pressuring the subjugated. The second tercet harks at how blinding indoctrination of racist and eugenicist ideas can be, but also how equivocal the idiom is.
“The spores residing in High keep status
Of actuality’s gloomed pursuit
To conserve the mind.
Efforts that drown in shallow bleach ripple
For mere moments, just to assume new forms,
To control the mind.”
Really hitting on the head to how the “Gloom” is actively trying to spread a false, toxic narrative to its prospectors and conspirators. The glaring issue is the nature of mushrooms and how spores invade without consideration of consent – reminiscent of Howard and typical toxic patriarchs. The active pursuit of oppression is to “conserve the mind” from conflicting evidence, behaving like a sedative, a mushroom. The “bleach” reforms after singular efforts of being dismantled. Symbolizing the massed power White supremacy has over nations and how extraordinary actions fall flat in a sea of whiteness. Eventually, the mind will feel helpless as their admirable movements accomplish no meaningful result, succumbing the mind to the regulating evils.
“Sedated eyes leave no true certainty
And take ignorant pity on mildew –
Breaking a sound mind.
Nemesis to the dark is vivid flames.
Ruin be not of want, but needed blight
To cleanse a lost mind.”
Our character has been capitulated by the spores, breaking their mind. Looking to heal and seeing no other choice, Noemí and Francis burn down High Place, the entire sea, as to start anew with a more empathetic foundation. The idea of this poem, and what I believe to be the message of Mexican Gothic, is that all colonized societies live within the confines of white nationalism, it is ingrained and systematic, making it awfully hard to insight real change without upheaving the whole system.
Works Cited:
“Eugenics and Scientific Racism.” National Human Genome Research Institute, 1 Dec. 2021, https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism.
Plath, Sylvia. “July 1957.” Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=27376.
“The UVIC Writer’s Guide; Meter.” The UVIC Writer’s Guide, The Department of English, University of Victoria, 23 Sept. 1995, http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTMeter.html.
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