A comment regarding my poems:
I do think they suffer (suffer is too strong a word) from the fact that the writer seems to need to write them more than the reader to read them. In most successful poems, the equation is reversed. I think you'll write better poems about the experience in a few years.
This comment comes from someone whose writing
and opinions I respect a greal deal. I wish I could
reverse the equation, but wishing won't make that happen.
I'm disappointed that the work comes off as needing
to be written, but I think he's right.
And, I'm a little confused. Don't most writers feel
that what they write needs to be written?
I don't feel discouraged by his words, but I wonder if anything
will ever come of anything I write. Some of us are meant to
be readers of poetry and to just love the experience of it.
We don't all have to write it, but at one point in time, I thought
I may have something close to the ability to write not just a decent
poem, but perhaps even a publishable one.
I've had only 2 published--one online and one in a print journal.
Not to bash online poetry, but I still aspire for print pubs.
Alas, I may never see my name in Poetry or the New Yorker!
Which makes me think of the book Running With Scissors.
The author's mother was certain she was going to be the next
Anne Sexton, so she actually gave legal guardianship of her son
to her psychiatrist so she could focus on her poetry, or so says
Augusten Burroughs in the book, but VF printed an article
recently stating that the family he talks
about in the book questions the liberties he took
in his memoir.
***************************************
For now, I can only content myself with writing things
I need to write, and, as my friend says, maybe in a few
years I'll write better poems. Not just about the experience
of losing my dad, but I hope about all experiences I feel compelled
to write about.
This from Jane Kenyon:
Not Writing
A wasp rises to its papery
nest under the eaves
where it daubs
at the gray shape,
but seems unable
to enter its own house.
5 comments:
preachers get the calling too, you know. there are things in this life that we cannot avoid, and writers, i think, feel that need most acutely.
i mean, painting is great, but i don't usually think of painter needing to do a particular work; they seem to concentrate more on the entire body of paintings. not so, van gogh, though, come to think of it, so maybe i've chosen a poor comparison.
i'll stand by this though: without writing, i don't think i could live very long.
bless you, and bless your work, and don't despair. i haven't appeared in a print journal in over ten years now. and i gave up long ago on the new yorker, although alice quinn and i did correspond for a while, and she used to chastise me for not sending a return envelope. jim
You made me smile, jim...no way a simple thanks can convey what it means to me to read your kind words.
I shall try not to despair--been in a state of that for too long now.
Bless you and your work. I smiled when I read billy collins turns a new leaf and plan b just a few minutes ago, so that's twice in a matter of 10 minutes or so that your words have infused my spirit with some kindness elixir.
Good stuff, kindness elixir.
:)
Gee, I'd be disappointed as a reader to read a poem or short story or novel that felt anything less than absolutely needing to be written. What an empty experience to read words written merely because the writer could toss them out with little thought or committment to them.
I'd love to know who made this assessment of your work. You know I've been singing your praises for years and comparing your calm, clear, unwavering expression to Jane's. I don't hand out praise easily, Maggie. I don't know if my opinion counts, but I find that I need to read them BECAUSE I feel that they needed to be written.
I haven't commented on the poems you've posted below but I was going to say that I envied how easily the poem about the mother and son flowed. Your poems, like Jane's are always so intimately connected to the real world, to real life and that's why I'm drawn to them. I never feel like your poetry is pretending or faking or lying to me.
As for dead dad poems, well, I've written hundreds by now. It was the only way to work through all the various, strange stages of grief. I wailed like a widow in those poems and shook my fist and told the dead man to fuck off and looked at myself in the mirror and asked the hardest question: Why in the hell didn't I ever bother to tell that man how much I loved him?
James assured me once that someday I'll write my "daddy" poem, my you do not do, my black boot achoo poem and get him out of my system once and for all--but it hasn't happened yet. I like that 5 years later, he still rises to the surface like an image developing in a darkroom, unexpected and vivid.
Maggie, I don't know what you want from your writing. Hell, I don't know what I want from mine. But please know that it matters. Your writing matters. And it needs to be written, and that's why I read it.
Laurel,
Many times, you have been that impetus that keeps me writing. When you mention Jane and how my work makes you think of her, I am flattered beyond words because I so admire her work, her style, and those intimate connections you mentioned that you find in her work. You, jz, and jim have been so much help and have given so much encouragement as I struggle along.
I think the person who wrote me those words didn't mean for them to sound harsh, but they did. I also know that he prefers more playful verse, more intellectual, less intimate poems. I don't think my voice, or style, or form or whatever we shall call what I do with my work is something that draws him in. Like you, I feel we do write what needs to be written, and we do it for ourselves and in doing so, we may just also be speaking to someone else--the reader who feels pulled in and is grateful we chose to share what we've written.
I'm glad you liked the one about mother and son. Wes was reading his book while I was trying to digest the atrocities of war (as if anyone could). I haven't read The Moon Is Down but think I shall now. Wes liked it a great deal.
Your dad poems come from that painful place that those of us who have loved and lost know well. For you, and to some degree, for me, they have been what has helped us cope with such a loss. Though I've mostly journaled about losing Dad, a few poems have come from that loss and I sense there will be more to come. Right now, I feel so washed out. Just this overwhelming fatigue like I haven't slept in years, and with that fatigue comes brain fog and word retrieval problems and the inability many days to say or write anything intelligible, but write I must.
It will be a year this April, and though grief really does not know a timeframe, I know I am still within that first year in which all these other firsts keep happening. I don't know how to explain this, but it's like he dies all over again each time there's a holiday without him or when other events take place--the birth of his first great-grandchild in June and he wasn't here to see the little feller, the birth of my 49 year old brother's first child just last week, my birthday, his birthday, Thanksgiving, Veteran's Day--and just day-to-day events that take place and I know I have to let him die all over again because he'll never be here for any of those things again. All of this is just difficult to process.
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I kept comments from the Melic days from those whose opinions I valued. You, jz, Teresa White, jim, and sometimes that old curmudgeon Bill Trudo. Ha! I used to think he was a much older man, but he's only 35. And he's really not irascible at all, but his terse comments at times made him appear that way to me. All kidding aside, he is an astute reader and he was very helpful. He could, in very few words, offer suggestions that could dramatically improve a piece.
I'm not really sure what I want from my work. But I am pleased--no, pleased isn't quite right--ummm, I would even say joyful, yes, joyful, when my words reach someone else and they tell me they are glad I write them. Thank you for telling me so, and thank you for taking the time, as you have through all these years, to provide me feedback and encouragement.
I'll keep plugging away at it and maybe some day I'll find it good enough to send somewhere. I would like to see it in print. Give it to the kids, Mom, the siblings, friends, nieces, and grandkids to come--you know, nothing selfish at all in wanting to see it in print.
:)
laurel and maggie, amen to all you said, both of you. neither of you need ever fear on one level: you will always be writers who matter, because writing matters to you.
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