Why Did I Embark?

The Reasons for the Subject

A lot of events started putting themselves together in my mind once I realized that I wanted to write about my grandmother's life. This hyperpoetry project is not fact, but some of the details are based in fact. I have always had a desire to fictionalize events in my life, and poetry has been the perfect medium for my nostalgia.

Since well before Mother's Day of 1998, I have been working on a scrapbook for my grandmother (who will be 90 in January of 1999). The family knew she would be moving into an assisted living home sometime over the summer of '98, so I got all of her photos from the 1920s through the 1980s (when she stopped taking photos), and I decided I would compile them for her.

Lucky for me, my grandmother was a copious note-taker and list-maker. She wrote paragraphs on the back of each photo (even though sometimes the info was wrong because she would write descriptions years later when she couldn't remember as well). I had almost finished her scrapbook when she moved in July.

One of the reasons I started writing these poems about my grandmother was that, besides my history teacher's comment about white kids remembering lynchings, I had been in Scotland when she was moved into the assisted living home. I didn't realized how much it bothered me that I couldn't be there to help her out, especially since I was good at moving (being a post-secondary student makes one a good mover).

Moreover, I couldn't be there to make sure I picked the possessions she couldn't take with her for myself. I wasn't trying to be selfish (although there was some dispute with my aunt), I just really wanted the little things that others didn't want to remember my grandmother by. I knew what furniture I was getting: Duncan Phife (sp?) dining room table with three swing legs, her beloved secretary desk ("because you're the writer," she said). She thought that there were only five of these secretaries in existence, but the family knows that there are hundreds. I've seen several in antique stores here in Virginia. But she thinks it's unique, so I play that role for her. I also got her seven-foot, horse hair sleeper sofa (had to hire movers for that one!).

But it was the small things that I wanted and knew that I wouldn't get because I was in Scotland. Her few books, her ledgers, her old checkbooks, her favorite green pen, anything she wrote on or with. There were other items I wanted from her house, but others got them. Luckily, my mother did save the things important to me. But it wasn't the same because I hadn't been there to help with the move.

The last time my grandmother moved, my grandfather (my mother's step-father, grandma's 3rd husband) was still alive, but I was only seven and didn't remember much about it. Some of my favorite things got sold then, too. The tricycle I was too big for, the miniature pool table, the beer can dolls. Not to mention all the mahogany furniture they sold for dollars. I was too young to tell them any better and grandpa was sick.

So this time, I wanted to make sure it was done right. Still, some things were sold, like grandma's best & favorite rose velour wing-back chair with claw feet--her neighbor got that piece for $50. She bought it for $250 in 1960, so you can imagine...

When I got back in town after her move, my mom presented me with a huge box of grandma's photos that I'd never seen before. Most of them were from the 30s and 40s, the two decades that had been mostly missing when I did her first scrapbook. I started to look through these photos mid-semester, and realized that I could incorporate them as graphics into my hyperpoetry project.

I didn't have the parts of the scrapbook that I had already completed, but I did have these photos, and they were more from the time period that I wanted. Plus, there were more older pictures of her family (especially her father and brothers), which I desperately wanted to add to the poem, The Lynching. In the end, I had three poems working hypertextually with each other, a subtext including the photographs and captions of them, and this metatext to explain what it all was for.