Here's the thing: I want to be a poet. I want to write and write and let the ink store up in my veins.
I decided when I was thirteen, that I would find a way to eventually establish myself as a poet and survive in whatever manner was necessary for such a dream.
I have been to conferences and workshops, I have taken so many classes, when I was at Shoreline c.c. I was president of the Poetry club (wordsmithies). I've had five poems published in various literary journals. I made $200. It is not a lucrative passion, it is not even particularly admired. I realize that Poetry is not a career.
I believe in compassion and patience, I know that my talents and ambitions will make me a good elementary school teacher.
But I breathe it. And one must, to write anything, to say anything: observation journals, pen and paper journals. Every day, carefully marked with times and locations, because everything means everything and it can always be written down. There are forever avenues to express the way groups collectively quiet when moving from rain to bus, how lights push against cement, or the smell behind buildings of laundry or toast.
What it is though- I discourage easily. Kim Addonizio leads her phrases tantalizingly through subtle erotic images; CK Williams fills his poems with quiet, airy jests; Sylvia Plath makes her acute pain, drawn, and easy to swallow; Roethke is grand; Adrienne Rich teeters between tragic and consuming... how does a young poet, of marginal talent not let the ink dry up? I want to write that I am sad but it had already been discovered one thousand times. I want to write about the air that presses against my body when I'm in love, but it too has been invented.
I am struggling now, with school and a practical career path, to let myself imagine. I can't stop the words, it is silly, I know. But they are important and I cannot just seal them up under my flesh and pretend they don't ache to come out. But they feel dull and then I feel dull, and writing poems becomes an embarrassing absolute in my life. It was easier before when I let myself loftily aspire. There is no either/or, I know that in my head, but the unsteadiness makes me forget.
It is always like this.
2 comments:
My Oldest Memory! I knew it was a Bowerbirds song. Anyways, like I said before, you certainly write very poetically. While it may not be a viable career, that doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to work hard at it, enjoy it, pursue it and publish it.
thank you. sometimes simple encourgment makes quite a difference.
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