SAMHI C.
Features Editor
skc5908@psu.edu

Any semester that we have students who have completed their Creative Writing theses and who are about to graduate, the department hosts a Sweet & Sorrow Reading. It’s a chance for those students to read a portion of their fiction or poetry and give us some insight into inspirations and the techniques they have developed in their time here. 

Last Thursday, November 30, at 6 P.M. at Metzgar, was one such reading. 

Carolyn Hogg, a Creative Writing major with a focus on fiction, read an abridged version of her story “The Oasis,” while Kaila Heltel, who studies poetry, read various poetry pieces from her thesis work. 

For context, Hogg’s “Oasis” is, according to Professor Aimee Pogson’s introduction, a story in which “cacti come to life. They bend and twist when no one is watching, and perhaps, at certain key moments when someone is”. 

While this is true, Hogg’s story revolves around a woman’s history with her grandfather and the person she has become after him. Presented in a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, with the backdrop of the desert, the story offers insight into the lessons the main character, Beetle, has learned from her now-deceased grandfather and the connection they shared as a result of Beetle’s parents having abandoned them. 

Hogg’s narrative also pulls at the heartstrings, emphasizing the significance of Beetle losing her grandfather to cancer begotten from his smoking habit. 

It is a story that is bound to make you teary-eyed or take a deep sigh and revel in the preciousness of life. 

While I admire the structuring and the storytelling, what resonates most with me about Hogg’s evocative prose is her artful echoing of the line, “She began to laugh, and as soon as the laughter bloomed out of her chest like the desert blooms in the spring, she began to cry like monsoons cry, and once she began to cry, she could not stop” from the first scene at the very end: “That time, they both laughed. They laughed and coughed, and laughed so hard that they began to cry, and once they began to cry, they could not stop.” 

The parallelism adds a layer of intrigue that calls attention to the vulnerability and volatility of human emotion while also deepening Beetle’s connection with her grandfather. 

When asked about the origins of her story, Hogg tells us: “I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Arizona and I’m mystified by the desert, a landscape we often think of as barren but is remarkably abundant with life. This fascination with desert life, combined with the memories of my late storytelling grandpa, helped inspire ‘The Oasis.’”

Heltzel’s work, meanwhile, came from a very different starting point. According to George Looney, “Kaila managed to go from seeing poetry as something to avoid as long as possible to writing a thesis made up of some very good poems.” I definitely understand that sentiment… Poetry is, at times or even most times, an acquired taste and requires a certain kind of teacher with a certain kind of mindset to make you appreciate it. 

It will not require much effort to appreciate Heltzel’s work, however. 

Each of her poems from the reading strikes a chord with you in the best possible way, getting you thinking about something you have never thought about or have constantly thought about but never consciously acknowledged. Her poems range from describing late-night drives and the thoughts that drive one’s mind during late-night drives to poems that turn the concept of poems into characters from the inspiration of Larry Levis’s “The Poem You Asked For” from his first book “Wrecking Crew.” Heltzel is also a fan of ancient statues and old paintings and ekphrastic poetry based on said ancient statues and old paintings. 

But my personal favorite is a poem she read called “Instead of Darkness,” the last piece she read on Thursday night. Heltzels says: “I actually wrote a really rough draft of this poem back in middle school, and I always had a soft spot for it. At some point, I ended up reworking it into this.”

The poem’s opening line is “I think I’d rather be a skeleton, | like the unlucky roadkill.” If the bright lights in the ceiling of Metzgar juxtaposing the darkness outside were not keeping me awake, that line definitely jolted me up. Curious and confused, as I kept listening, I marveled at how Kaila turns untimely death into a celebration of life as she describes how “The earth might embrace me | warmly, roots and flowers tangled up | between my ribs” or “if I’m lucky, fireflies will dance | within my empty skull.” What should have been these odd images that make one’s skin crawl instead were transformed into a beautiful collection of images that depict not decay but sustenance and beauty. 

And then, my favorite lines, the ending: “Instead of darkness, | they’ll show me stars, illuminating | a once haunted place. I’ll see a world | of gentle light, where no one is left |alone in the weight of their skin.”

As much as I appreciate the rest of her work and as much as I know there will be many more intriguing poems to come, I think this one will stick with me. In ten years, I will say “Instead of Darkness” is my favorite Heltzel poem. 

With that, on behalf of Behrend’s Creative Writing department, I thank Hogg and Heltzel– Carolyn and Kaila for their contributions to our legacy and wish them the best of luck after graduation.