Poetry Emotion

For national contest winner, poem broadens vision of world

August 26, 2008

First-year student Merit O'Hare won a Borders Open-Door Poetry Contest last spring.

The words of American poet Billy Collins serve as a spiritual mirror for Merit O’Hare.

A first-year student from McCandless, Pa., O'Hare keeps a quote from Collins, the former poet laureate of the United States, on the wall above her desk at home: “I don’t think people read poetry because they’re interested in the poet. I think they read poetry because they’re interested in themselves.”

But it is O’Hare’s poetry that is making others, including another former poet laureate of the United States, Mark Strand, take notice.

In April, O’Hare won the national teen category of the Borders Open-Door Poetry Contest with a work called “Jainism.”

Strand, an instructor at Columbia University, described “Jainism” on the Borders Web site as a “terribly beautiful poem” featuring “very sophisticated imagery.”

Before her senior year at North Allegheny Senior High School, O’Hare had little interest in poetry. “The poetry I knew was either corny Hallmark verse or filled with so many thees and thous that I didn't understand how it could be relevant today,” O’Hare said.

O’Hare always enjoyed reading and writing. When she’d go to her hometown library as a child, she could barely carry all the books—mostly short fiction—she regularly checked out. A high-school assignment changed O’Hare’s perception of writing and poetry.

Multiple meanings

O’Hare wrote “Jainism” in January, her final assignment in a creative-writing class she had taken to improve her fiction writing. For the contest, “Jainism” made it through a panel of educators, editors and authors before it went to Strand, who selected it as the winning entry.

“Jainism,” which depicts a series of transformations, left an indelible mark on Strand, who described the line:  “... feathers which still remember the cadence of flight after the scarlet song of August ... ” as “beautiful” and “something I hadn’t experienced in a long time reading a poem.”

“Jainism” opened O’Hare’s eyes to the impact of poetry to her life.

“Now I read every poetry book I can,” she said, adding that her favorite poets include Pablo Neruda, W.H. Auden and Rita Dove, the Pulitzer Prize-winning two-term poet laureate of the United States and 2006 recipient of The Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Visiting Scholars and Writers Program award at Dickinson College.

Broadened perspective

O’Hare hasn’t selected a major at Dickinson, but she is certain poetry will play a key role in her life on campus and beyond.

“Poetry stresses connections—taking something and making it familiar, or relatable, or relevant—and the liberal-arts education offered at Dickinson remains the best way to uncover all of the hidden strings connecting the Revolutions of 1848 to DNA helicase to Don Quixote,” O’Hare said. “I’m interested in both biology and English, but I like to think of them as complements, not opposites. Both explain the world, though in different ways. I don’t know which subject I’ll choose, if either one. My English teachers have been such great influences, and so supportive, that I’d love to emulate them. On the other hand, it would be wonderful to help people with a career in medicine.”

O’Hare, a runner who first saw the Dickinson campus in 2004 during a high school cross country invitational at Carlisle High School, said she plans to join the Red Devils cross country team this fall. Running, she said, will remain a part of her increasingly packed schedule.

“Running has always been cathartic for me, and it has also allowed me to meet some truly amazing people,” she said. “It has become such an integral part of my schedule that I can’t imagine life without it.”

O’Hare said that while she expects her biggest challenge will be time management, “a long run alone is sometimes my only time to think about writing.”

Somehow, O’Hare said, she will weave running, writing, studies, athletics, a social life, poetry and “who knows what else” into her academic year.

“So far I’ve managed to balance everything successfully,” she said. “I’m confident that, with work, I can continue to do so.”