Matthew 5:4 Gets Me Confused
By Sophia Haines
On Tuesday afternoons I like to skip stones
with the holy rollers, down by
the pond where the constellations
sleep when they’re taking some time off.
Sophomore Sofia Haines’ words echo from the thick yellow pages of Leo Turpan and Gabriel Fine’s recently released publication Cellar Door. Although her words only occupy three small leaves of paper, they control them. Characterized by intense juxtaposition between beauty, nostalgia, hope, and mourning, Haines’ poetry evokes a painfully genuine response from her readers as she questions the nature of remembrance, loss, and the process of self-understanding.
Coming to Colorado College from a high school for the arts, Haines spent a majority of her adolescence in creative writing and publishing classes, understanding the technicalities of writing and producing one’s own work. A potential Film and Media Studies major or English-Film, Haines is incredibly passionate about the writing that goes behind visual media and wants to pursue screenwriting and scriptwriting in the future. In comparison to the work load of what Haines calls her “rigorous high school [writing] department,” where she was expected to produce a certain amount of work each year, her pursuit of writing poetry has been less regular and condensed since coming to CC. When she does write, her meticulous observations of the world and intense spectrum of feeling evoke more emotion in one isolated poem than an extensive collection of writing.
None of her recent pieces fills a whole page. Haines’ unnerving affinity for minimalism takes “small ideas and [applies] them to a broader context,” weaving themes of mourning, Christian imagery, isolation, and self-introspection into her speakers’ voices and personal experiences.
Her first poem in Cellar Door, “Matthew 5:4 Gets Me Confused,” is a beautiful meditation on the power of comfort and the feeling of home, and although she “[does] not follow the teachings [of Christianity],” she utilizes the religion’s “rich imagery” as her connection to her Spanish ancestry to tap into the roots of her existence. She smiles at the mention of the Bible verse that titles her poem: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” This “beautiful sentiment” leads as a gateway into her themes of mourning, although she notes that “these aren’t sad poems, but rather of self-exploration.” Just because a piece is about mourning does not mean it is solely about death.
Just as a verse in one of the most influential texts in history can so seamlessly apply to “[stone-skipping] on Tuesday afternoons,” Haines’ current screenplay centered around the death of Abraham Lincoln is not about the assassination of the president of the U.S., but rather how it led to the demise of a man who “mentally deteriorated from the pressure of not having saved Lincoln.” Based on a true story, her screenplay “strips away [the historical significance of the murder] and [reveals] how [any major event] affects the lives of individual people.”
In addition to wanting to write a full screenplay in the near future, Haines plans to become more involved with on-campus publications, emphasizing the power of poetry on the CC campus. Especially in terms of highlighting individual experiences, she emphasizes the importance of female perspective in writing and editing. A piece of work does not just belong to the writer, but also to the person that “takes meaning from what [a writer is] saying,” and polishes the piece for publication. As one’s identity strongly shapes his/her experience as both a witness and citizen of the world, Haines notes how “women and men could potentially see […] the bones of someone’s writing differently.”
Haines writes in order to pose and attempt to answer questions about herself and “the female identity.” Adapting the voices of a man living alone following the death of his mother, and a more ambiguous, potentially young female speaker, Haines’ versatility is apparent in her emotional and sentimentally provocative language. Her presence on the pages circulating our community is not one to be missed.