If you knew me as a teacher, you’ll probably remember my firm belief that play is important for everyone, and we take it away from kids too soon. I reconnected with this idea in Orquevaux. In short, I tried to stifle all of the can’ts, shouldn’t, mustn’ts, and just played with words and image.
“Le Monstre” came from that freedom. Early on, author/illustrator Kathleen Jennings established “Take a Beast/Leave a Beast” and asked us to participate. Needless to say, I felt stymied. I don’t say that I can’t draw out of some sense of false modesty. Y’all, I can’t draw. Full stop. I knew I’d find some way to give back; I just wasn’t sure how yet.
Wandering around the chateau grounds, pondering what a beast might look like, sound like, feel like, but I kept falling into fairy tales, and that didn’t feel right. I needed something more beastly.
That night I woke up with the opening stanza in my head, and this felt appropriately monstrous. An abuser is perhaps the worst monster I could conjure up. Oddly, this monster is in poem form. I don’t write much poetry, not because I don’t love it. I do. But it’s just not my thing.
This monster needed to be an “everywoman” creature because I don’t know a woman who hasn’t had some experience with an abusive partner, whether herself or a friend, colleague, family member. (Now, I am not discounting men and them being abused. It happens, I know, and it’s equally wrong. I’m just discussing my process here.)
The rest of the poem simply fell out of my head.
Le Monstre
“Fair is foul and foul is fair”
(The Wyrd Sisters, Macbeth I.1.12)
“I’m sorry,” he pleaded, “My temper got out of hand.”
He covered my bruises with roses and kisses.
And I told him all was forgiven.
“It’s your fault,” he growled, “You made me so angry.”
He gave me money for new glasses to hide my eye-shame.
And I told friends that cramps made me miss our night out.
“Why do you make me do this?” he snarled and punched down and down.
He said nothing, but rattled the world with slammed doors.
I covered my mistake with Warm Light Beige-1.
($6.99 on sale at CVS in case you, too, burn dinner.)
Do not pity the monster.
Either one of us.
There’s an inherent ambiguity in the last line. I know what I meant when I wrote it–but it works equally well in other interpretations. And that makes me weirdly happy.
So I gave printed out the poem and gave it to Kathleen, but it haunted me. Thus a sort of group project was born. Thanks to Arden, I had a long roll of rice paper, and I asked my fellow artists to give me what anger looks like. After much cajoling, I got it. I then cut the poem apart and pasted it to the images.
In the end, we made a very angry group beast that now resides on my bookshelf until I can find a way to display the 4 foot long poem.
D.S.Dehel 