Telling a story in a poem: the work of Sandra Cisneros
“I waited—
by the river for your pickup
truck to find me. Footprints
scattered in the yellow sand.”
-from “I Am on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For” by Sandra Cisneros
I read the first lines of this poem and was just pulled in. Cisneros is a master story teller, in her poetry and her fiction. She takes you with the speaker of the poem, gets you lost in the story, builds empathy for the speaker, and leaves you always imagining more.
As the title suggests, the speaker of the poem is letting the reader know that she is on the way to bury the man she had an extramarital affair with. But the poem doesn’t give us too many details other than the woman is married, has kids… She loved him deeply.
And what about the man? Why is the speaker taking care of the funeral and not his family? We actually get very little of him in this story, other than the impact he has on her “My life—deed I have/ done to artistic extreme—I /drag you with me…”
We only see slices of their relationship: the meetings in secret places, how neither allowed her marriage to end (there is no mention of his family life), the pain of her loss…
Is this poem confessional? Is it based on someone Cisneros knows, something she heard? The imagery is so real and specific you end up wondering, you want to know more about these characters… But, it’s a poem, so you’re left expanding the images out to build a story with your own imagination.
And that is what I love about Cisneros’ work; she uses that theatre technique of entering a scene late, and leaving early. Many of the poems in this book do this: paint a small part of a story, and then leave. In this one, she hooks us with the title “I Am on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For” and sets us on the journey. By the end, the speaker is leaving at dawn, riding north while thinking of him.
I think this is an overlooked part of successful poetry. I’ve been in workshops and attended readings, and it’s not often that I’m taken away by a story in a poem. And as a teacher of poetry, it is not something my students naturally write—we forget that poems can and do tell stories. Of course, the books on my shelf are full of poets and poems that just do that; I’m just saying in writing workshops/classes, the idea of telling a story doesn’t come up often enough.
Telling a slice of a larger story in a poem is a great way to “show, don’t tell”. And the idea of not giving the whole story gives the reader’s mind permission to write their own beginning or end to it and that is what made this one resonate so much with me.
I discovered this poem in Adam State University’s library. I had gone back to finish off a bachelor’s while I was in my thirties. I picked a degree in English (big money maker, let me tell you). I had always written poetry, and was writing more at this time. But, I wasn’t really working on my craft.
Then, I grabbed “Loose Woman” off a shelf in the library; I don’t actually remember how I found the book, or what I was looking for when I discovered it. I only remember that there was an old couch upstairs, the sun was coming through the window, I flipped open to a random page, and it was this poem. I checked out the book, read it from cover to cover, and went to the bookstore and ordered my own copy.
And after that, decided to really start working on my craft of poetry. Yes, this book had that much impact on me.
“Loose Woman” speaks about Mexican-American culture, about love, being a woman; it’s romantic, beautiful, painful, sometimes lonely… There are so many great pieces in this book.
If you want more information on Sandra Cisneros, check out her biography on her website and head to your local bookstore and grab a copy of “Loose Woman”.