The (not quite) new kid on the block

I, unlike some of my cohorts in the newsroom, majored, not in journalism with its pesky AP style and penchant for fact telling, but in creative writing. You might ask why a creative writing major was even allowed in a newsroom.

My rebuttal would be that while I find facts necessary to describe life, I prefer to focus upon the more interesting aspects of the subjects I cover, the "whys" and "hows" rather than the statistics.

Many of the authors I have spent the last years studying have made a life's work out of observing the people and world around them, pulling a subject apart and then rebuilding it from the inside out.

Poets are notorious for silly images like berets and dressing in black and smoking, but there is much more than the cliche vision when you burrow into the language of poetry.

In my opinion, Pablo Neruda said it with the most grace: "Love is short, forgetting is so long." It is thought that he wrote this line about human misery while remembering his lost love, but I like to think that it can be applied on a larger scale. If one looks through volumes of poetry there is the predominant observation that life will be painful in one way or another and it is up to the individual to deal with that grief to the best of their ability.

Joy Harjo, one of my favorite poets, is Native American and writes with all the hallmarks of good Native American poetry. She conjures images of nature and relates them to her personal life. "Two Horses" dissects the self-analysis brought on by difficult relationships; calling to mind sunrises over mountain peaks and relationships as being private universes. The dichotomy of her work comes from the battle between the person and finding a niche in the natural world.

It is this unique discussion of humanity that interests me. The movement between two people, as seen by a person looking for the give and take in nature. The mesmerizing moments of revelation that come most often from being scarred by someone who knows you best.

The overwhelming amount of substance that can be pulled from an old man sitting down for coffee on a Sunday morning is what draws my eye. As an impersonal observer, I am drawn to look at his hands for a clue to his life and see how he takes his coffee, to watch how his posture change as his cup empties.

The observable world and how it is best illustrated with the written word is what has led me to this very job. I grew up watching the sun rise while I changed water and seeing men's faces crumple as their farms were auctioned off one piece of equipment at a time. The balance between the pleasure of one and the discomfort of the other is where poets find their most treasured material and try to answer the question they puzzle over each day.

Pam Robel is the Columbia Basin Herald news assistant. She grew up in Moses Lake and has come home again after completing her creative writing degree at Washington State University.