FIVE STRATEGIES FOR WRITING IN TOUGH TIMES

“May you live in interesting times.” Some people, in referencing this statement, call it a blessing, a wish for a dynamic life. Most, however, regard it as a curse. Certainly, times lately have been interesting. Whether you are political or apolitical, it’s hard to avoid the mood of the world when the stuff of your work is the emotions of human beings, and you have been surrounded by a culture faced with unprecedented challenges - incredible inflation, a pandemic of a virus that refuses to go away, the war in Ukraine, the continued rise of radicalism right and left, the erosion of trust in our government, a Supreme Court that does the opposite of what Justices indicated in their hearings and that, for the first time in history, removes a right from the american people. Emotions run high all around us. There are people who are afraid, people who are angry and feel emboldened to take out their anger on others, people who are jubilant, people who feel betrayed, people who feel targeted, but very few people who feel unaffected by some (if not all) of this. 

 It is a turbulent time. Some would say that turbulent times are the friend of the writer, of any artist. It was once said that “all responsible art is social criticism,” and there is certainly much to criticize these days, regardless of what “side” you are on. By some measures, perhaps, the ideal situation to energize the writer. But for the writer who is already trying to set aside problems and stresses from work, family issues, relationship issues, and the daily distractions of “things that need done” this environment could easily function as yet another unwelcome stress between yourself and your page. 

 So, what to do. In decades of teaching scores of students of creative writing, and nonfiction writing over the years, I’ve found five things each of us needs to deal with to get past such times. I’m not talking, here, about “writer’s block” - there is plenty of help out there for that, including some previous posts on this blog. I’m talking about dealing with the external realities that get between you and the page, both in hard, realistic terms, and in your head. What I have to tell you is that there are two things to do, dealing with the inner and outer distractions, and these two things break out into five strategies. The two things: a) be brave, and b) keep seeking. 

Taking them in reverse order of importance, let’s start with: 

 FIVE: BE BRAVE #3: Tell all the voices (inner and outer) to shut the hell up. Every writer has heard

of the “inner critic,” and certainly we’ve all dealt with the real-world critic in one form or another. In times like these, when there is so much negativity, controversy, disagreement, and contention in the world, it can feel like we’re surrounded by negativity, and God forbid we say or write anything that brings criticism down on us. Get over it. If you’re saying what you believe, somebody is going to disagree - just say it, and move on. If your inner critic warns you that maybe you shouldn’t write that, maybe you’re wrong…..well, that voice is right. It’s entirely possible you’re wrong. It’s entirely possible that you wrote it badly. Every writer writes bad stuff just as often (maybe more often) than they write good stuff. If you want to keep striving for your best, you have GOT TO be willing to be bad along the way, and get over it. 

 FOUR: KEEP SEEKING # 2 - Find your Writing Space - The right space - both the inner and outer - is incredibly important to the writer. Being in the right environment, and the right mindset, can make or break a writing day. The best way to discover the best outer space - the place where you actually write - is through experimentation, but, once you know where that is, make it your own, claim it, and set guards if you need to - writing space is sacred space. And it could be anything, and it might just change over time. I know people
who’ve written whole books in a corner booth at a McDonalds because that was where they could relax and focus on what they were writing. The inner space is just as important - how you are “in your head” when you sit down to write. This, also, is best discovered through experimentation. Ursula LeGuin once said that she likes to do dishes while she gets in her writer’s head, Dickens liked to walk the streets of London until he was (literally) lost. Some meditate, some do exercise or dance or paint or go for a drive (this last would be me). Whatever puts you in that state of mind where your mind is open and you feel words bubbling up - do that - EVERY TIME. 

 THREE: BE BRAVE #2: Claim your Writing Time Make your writing time not only a habit, but a priority. Set an alarm, keep a log, whatever it is that helps YOU to take YOUR WORK seriously. There are a million distractions from writing, and sometimes it feels easy to use them. I can’t write, I have to do the laundry, clean the cat box, run to the store, put the kids to bed, bake bread, call my mom, settle a friend's argument, file those photos from Christmas, figure out my taxes, etc, etc., etc….. We get VERY creative about ways to avoid writing - be aware of that, and turn it into creative ways to GET TO your writing time instead. 

 TWO: KEEP SEEKING #1: Know your goal This essentially means….COMMIT. Take some time, sit down, and figure out what in the name of all that’s holy you WANT from your writing. Is it just for you, for personal expression? (Fine - dig in, and don’t be discouraged if it never gets published, just take joy in the act of expression). Do you want wide publication and respect for your work? (Fine, then get serious - research the market and WORK to what the market is asking for - don’t expect the market to bend to you - work TOWARDS it - and that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative in doing so - look for the PART of the market that fits how your creativity is expressed and FOCUS there). Do you want to feel that your writing is your art - your work in the arts? (Fine - then get serious- art means both digging deep personally and understanding how it will speak to others, what it will offer them. It’s WORK.) 

 ONE: Be Brave #1: Go After The Thing That Scares The Shit Out of You You know what that is - whether it’s claiming your political voice or pursuing the writing form that scares you (script writing? poetry? science fiction? historical fiction?) .. only you know what is the thing, the part of this crazy work that makes your heart beat wildly fast and makes you want to scream and run - and THAT is the work you should do - no matter what your goal identified above in #2 is - looking right into your own personal abyss is the way to get there. Taking on the part of your purpose that terrorizes you brings ENERGY to your writing, makes you care that you’re getting it right - and if you care, so will your readers. If you don’t, neither will they. So, that is why THIS is the number one strategy - DO IT, FACE IT DOWN, LOOK AT IT STRAIGHT ON AND SAY “Bring It ON,” and you will produce the kind of writing that you’ve always hoped you could do.

On Meeting The Sacred

 

Sometimes, in the process of “being a writer,” we can get lost. This can happen in many ways, some of them beneficial, some not. I think a lot of us ‘got lost during the pandemic, and for some, that was beneficial, for some it was agony, and for a few of us, it seems, a little of both. Many stories, most of them likely apocryphal, have been told about famous/historical writers - things they are said to have said, things they are said to have done, things reputed to have been their practice, whether evidence exists for that or not. (Writing teachers, it seems, love to tell stories. Go figure). It is said that Dickens used to like to go out in London and intentionally get lost in its maze of streets, finding inspiration in being detached from the security of home. Shakespeare is said to have written King Lear in quarantine, but no one can prove that, but it is known that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in quarantine, and, though he wasn’t a writer, Isaac Newton did write his paper on the discovery of gravity while also in quarantine. 

   I wrote a few poems. As it turns out, that was a good thing for me, at least at first - several of the poems I sent out to publications were picked up and published. So often was I getting accepted that it became a bit of an intoxicant for me, and I began putting more and more time into getting things marketed to publications, paying attention to deadlines, researching what kind of poems each publication seemed to prefer that, when I would sit down to write a poem, what sometimes was tapping at my mental window was that market, and not so much the poem, the thought, the THING that makes a poem worthy.

 

So, recently, I stopped. I realized that the poem I’d been wanting to write, that had been through (as sometimes happens) a few false starts, needed me much more than the market did, but I felt unsure how to get back to it, how to really get back to it. So I stopped submitting - I put away all the records of submissions, all the notes on markets, all the ways I track what is and is not submitted, and was sure to get them out of my sight when I was sitting at my desk.

And, the first few times I sat down after this …. well - I just sat there - maybe some scribbling, maybe some trying writing prompts and reading others’ work (strategies which have helped me in the past) to get going and then……more just sitting there. I got through days with projects around the house (always plenty of those) and in the garden, and let myself just feel relief  at not having to sweat the submissions and the market and just be here, at home, in my life. 

Finally, I began writing poems again, poems that I can look at and know that they are the kind I would have produced back when my graduate advisors Nicky and Mark would prod me about doing what Nicky called  “the real work.”  They could and did expect me to be able to demonstrate mastery of all the basics and beyond. They tested me and pushed me about the craft - checking my understanding of rhythm and meter and scansion and line breaks and rhyme patterns, but much more time was spent on Nicky’s “real work” - the art of poetry (yes, yes, it’s another art vs craft post - that’s because IT IS IMPORTANT) - the inner work of the poet, of ANY artist that compels them to push deeply into what they hope to create.

I’d lost that focus in my intoxication with the market. A couple of things helped me out - the first was Wendell Berry’s “How To Be a Poet” - I now read it daily, and every few days, pull a phrase or two from it and post it just in front of my writing - this week, it’s “Depend upon Affection. Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” (I love that “affection” is the first thing he thinks we should depend on in writing a poem, followed by reading, skill, knowledge, inspiration). The other thing that helped me was a line of advice from a Hopi elder, White Eagle: “Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.”

This one knocked me (to borrow a phrase from my wonderful sister Kathleen) right on my plentiful Irish arse. What could be more essential, more critical to doing our best with whatever art we’ve chosen, than being sure to ‘meet the sacred’ – and it was absolutely clear to me that, as earnest and supportive as the staff of many literary journals are, there is little sacred about the act of marketing.

I am quite sure I will send more things to market, but I am also quite sure that I will, now that I am seeing my work published pretty regularly, work equally hard to keep myself focused on what matters - the heart of the work I’m attempting. It’s good to know how to market your work, it’s good to know how to meet all of the expectations of craft. It’s more important - most important- that whatever in you that is sacred be reflected in your work. Be sure to attend to that.

TODAY I WAS THINKING OF STILLNESS

Some years back, I posted the blog entry below, on the nature of the very crowded, very fluid life I've lived, and those I've been blessed to have live it with me.

I've been gone from this blog for some time - like many, the pandemic had me changing my way of doing things, and, a few months in, my daughter, her husband, and their three children moved into my small house with me. The plan had been to stay for a couple of weeks while they found a new place, but here it is, two years later, and they are still here.  Life happened (and, well, y'know, a pandemic....).   

Today I was thinking about the notion of stillness vs. chaos and how it impacts me as a writer, and I thought I should come here and write about that, and, after so long, when I opened my blog, it was this post that came up.  I'll have a little more to say after I post it for a re-read:

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Stillness and the Open Door:  Living Alone Vs. Living With Others for a Writer

A few days ago,  a picture of my late husband came up in my “memories” on Facebook.  I re-posted it, as I had been thinking about him a lot in recent days.  I was surprised then, when two people who had known us and lived in our house back then posted lovely memories of him and of living with our family, and I also received private messages from two others about memories the picture had evoked for them of those times at our house.  I’ve often talked about our “crowded house” from the days before he became ill.   Over the years of our marriage, many people - some colleagues from work, some friends from volunteer or interest activities, some family members - came to live in our big communal home when they were without other places to stay for one reason or another.  Some just needing a place to stay for the few months between college and grad school, some between jobs or between moving, some in hopes of joining our family, some fallen on hard times, some just because they needed, for a time, to share expenses, and some taking shelter from stalkers or abusive partners.  Some stayed mere days and I don’t remember most of them;  many stayed for weeks or months, or, in some cases, even years.  

Each and every time, they brought different energy, different contributions, different problems into our home, but all of them live in my memory.  I think now of Tim, Lester, Gina, Sarah, Gilbert, Paul, Mary, John, Donna, Christopher, Denise, Ed, Wilson (and family), Ruth, J.T., Eric, Scott, and my oft-in, oft-out sister Jean Marie - I think of all of them with affection, and remember the laughter around the dining room table, the shouting up two flights of stairs, the veritable mountains of cloth on the laundry room floor, and the constant music and motion of such a household.

Since my husband’s passing, I have also lived with others from time to time - some family members moving back with partners and/or children, some friends on hard times, some just because.  In those years, I’ve lived with Berg, Shawn, Jinny, Madison, Rose, Amy, Denni, Kayla, Emily, Hannah, Daymon and Iris. Not to mention, while in Africa, Paige and Digna.  

I have also lived alone.  The first four years after my husband’s death, and from time to time in between, and all of the last year, I have been alone in my home.  This brings an entirely different energy, and, any time I live with a roommate or have others living with me, I feel more appreciation of those alone times, and struggle with the adjustment.   I have been fortunate that (almost) all of the room-mates, house-mates, co-habitants that I’ve lived with over the years have been congenial, fun,

respectful of boundaries, and have left me with pleasant memories.  But even the most pleasant of co-habitants cannot give back the comfortable solitude, the daily stillness that living alone brings.  The sense of deep inner quiet that the outer world cannot reach.

I do miss that.  Every time.  

I grew up in a similar household - six sisters, two Cuban foster-sisters, and a string of foundlings my mother would take in from time to time - a loud, raucous, chaotic Irish Catholic household.  In those days, I would simply leave - go out for long walks, find a park bench or perch on top of a hill just outside of town, and simply sit - alone, quiet, undisturbed.  It was in those times that words began to come to me, and I began to write. Then, even back at my desk in the noisy house, I could disappear into the stillness between myself and the page.   Living alone is conducive to a strong relationship with your page, to the kind of concentration and focus that helps to structure a story and weave a plot together, that allows you to know a character and sink into their thoughts.  

Living alone has seemed to me, from time to time, to be the ideal situation for a writer.  And for me.  And yet, I keep gladly opening the door to others to live with me.  I have, over the years, received many messages from people grateful for the times that open door was the thing they needed.  Every time someone (or several someones) stepped through, I struggled with the loss of that stillness, sometimes for days or weeks, sometimes for the whole time they were there.  But in my mind, I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.

Do I, in the early mornings, wish for days of the solitude, the stillness, the inner and outer quiet?  Certainly.  But mostly what I feel, as a person and as a writer, is a sense of gratitude for all of those with whom I’ve shared time and space, meals and laughter.  Gratitude for the company, the compassion, the lessons learned in cooking, building, logic, and life;  gratitude for the experience of difference, the lessons in the wide variety of humor, the discoveries of passions I might otherwise not have known.  Gratitude for all the things I learned and observed:  a young man’s pain over a troubled childhood; the struggles of a budding artist; the joys of a love found under our roof; the poems read out loud to each other; time spent with two friends knee-deep in laundry, sorting it out and laughing; the spontaneous dances in the living room; the boys and men, girls and women, children and couples who shared with us, laughed with us, cooked with us, and grew with us.  A closed door would never have generated those memories.  I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.  

There is an old joke which has recently resurfaced as a social media meme:  “I’m a writer.  Fair warning:  anything you say or do I may use in my stories.”  While few of my characters feel directly based on this multitude of people I’ve known and lived with, every living breathing character who lives and loves and struggles on my pages -all of them- in some way or other,  walked through my open door, whether they are literally based on people who have lived with me, or just grew from the broadened knowledge of human-ness that came from so much life under my roof.

I will always find solitude, will always find my way back to the long days filled with comfortable deep stillness of mind, body, and home, and within that stillness, there will always be my open door.

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2022 Update: Having an entire loud, active, creative, busy, messy young family living with me has

been both joyful and occasionally frustrating. I miss all the space and open floors I had to myself, the quiet in my garden, the long still days, BUT, when they go, I will miss the joyful daily laughter of my twelve-year-old granddaughter, the quiet focus of my daughter as she does her work, the snarky humor and fellowship of my son-in-law. And I can no longer say that such situations are a detriment to writing - in the 23+ months they've lived here, I've published more than thirty pieces, won two contests, and found more serenity at my writing desk than I've known in years.

Opening my door to others, it seems, opens something in me, as well, and I am grateful for every moment, hour, day, week, month and year of such company I've lived in my life.

Of Powerful Women and Gentle Men

         I built a fence two summers ago, and it still stands in my backyard, solid, clean and clear in the winter sun. I had never built one by myself before, though I had been a “crew member” helping others build them. But the old ragged, half-rotten fence that had stood in that section of back yard since I bought my house blew down in a Spring storm, and I had family (with DOGS!) coming to stay with me for the summer - a full fence was required. 

        So, I calculated, watched YouTube videos, and made a shopping list, then stood in my back yard looking at the task before me. First, was knocking down the old fence. I went about this with some joy - hammering off old boards, knocking out the rails, and pulling (with considerable effort) the rotted-out posts from the ground. Later, I would go through all that detritus and save usable sections of wood that would, in time, to go other projects, but, at the moment, my task was erecting the new fence as quickly as possible.              The first task was digging the post holes. The previous holes had, it seemed, been placed randomly, but I wanted my posts even widths apart - and also wanted to avoid digging out any concrete from the old posts - so I measured and marked the spots for new posts, picked up the brand-new post-hole digger I’d

purchased, and set to. My first unpleasant lesson was why those old post holes had been random - the ground here is littered with rock and very very very hard clay, with only a few soft spots, and none of the equally measured spots were in any way soft. The first post-hole took me days. I was saved when one afternoon my son-in-law and family were visiting and he helped me dig the rest of the holes. It was the only help I got in the construction of the fence, and was greatly appreciated. 

        Next, was setting in the posts. I had all the levels necessary to keep the posts both plum and straight, and the posts were set in a day with quick-drying cement. From there, I went about setting in the rails in each section, then began the process of putting up the pickets, keeping them aligned with the dips and hollows in the ground under the fence, so the fence line remained clean. Last, the entire fence was painted white to match the other fences in my yard. 

         All of that took much longer than I’d anticipated, but was still done by the time my family arrived, and kept three dogs neatly contained and happy running about during the summer they were here. 

         There were many glitches and problems along the way (as anyone who has ever built anything can well imagine). Each time, every single time that one of these things occurred, one of two things happened. When I faced a problem with skill, with equipment, with lack of resources to acquire better tools, I would stand back, consider my work so far, and have a memory of either my father or my late husband, both skilled woodworkers, that carried me on. I’ll never have the skill or natural talent they did, but I got something else.          When I was three, I wanted a horse for Christmas. Santa might as well not come if he did not bring me a horse, and I (apparently) made this quite clear to my parents. My family was in no shape to purchase or worse yet house and care for a horse, but my father was not daunted - he went down to his workshop, gathered up appropriate pieces of wood, and built me a rocking horse. He did not have much in the way of power tools (they were very expensive then) so much of the work he did was with hand tools, but on Christmas morning I found a beautiful black-and-white rocking horse under the tree. I named him Dobbin. Dobbin survived my youthful abuses and destructive tendencies, then was passed to my older sister for her children to use, then to my children when they were born and old enough to rock (so to speak), and now, still surviving, Dobbin is in the use of my grandchildren. Made by hand with no money and no professional tools, my father had crafted a lasting family treasure. 

         My husband was similar - as a young couple, we could no more afford expensive tools than my parents had been, but he built for me a lovely coffee table and desk, which I still have and which has turned a stunning golden over the years, and built bookshelves which our family continues to use to this day.

        Both of them, faced with lack of resources but with clear vision, found ways to use what was at hand to create something beautiful. I could do no less - when I looked at the next step in building a fence and

considered what I lacked, I could feel them there - my father’s clear blue eyes watching, my husband’s hand on my shoulder, in the way he always did when he wanted me to know he was at my back. 

         Other times, when it was my body that failed me, legs aching, arms so weary they felt like lead, I would find my grandmother and mother there. While my husband and father both died too young, with too much more to offer (My husband at 49, my father at 39), my mother and grandmother both lived far too long, into a time when their minds left them but their bodies had not yet given up. In spite of all that, what stays with me about both of them was their powerful unrelenting spirit. My grandmother had hip joints that were decaying and a back bent by years of hard work, but every time she needed something for her kitchen or her family, she went out her door and walked the entire distance across town to her favorite store, and walked back - she never stopped. 

         My mother, left with six children and a mountain of medical debt, did not give up even when the city threatened to take our home for back taxes. She found a family who needed a larger home, and traded homes with them for our house plus $8000, and paid the back taxes, and several years forward on the taxes for the new home. Both survived the loss of their husbands, the loss of children, the loss of everything they had, and kept going. In the backyard, tired and aching, looking at all the sections of fence still undone, I could do no less. 

         Not everyone has a family heritage like this of strength and gentleness, and I am more grateful than I can say for what it has given me. But we all do have someone who was an example for us of what we hoped to be. I told a couple of friends recently that I had reached an age where had become the woman I’d always hoped that I would be, and was so content with that. I used to believe that this woman - the one I’d hoped to be - was out of my reach, that I didn’t have it in me, but here I am, and I owe it to those powerful women, and those gentle men. 

         I’m not saying they were perfect - I could write an entire new essay about the failings of them all and how I’ve worked to overcome those things in myself (still working, actually), but that is not the point, here. The point is that to become what we want to be, it is helpful, possibly necessary, to honor the influences that can take us there. 

         The same thing applies to writing. I look to the powerful women and gentle men I’ve known in the arts as my inspiration, those who stayed true to the kind of writer or artist they hoped to be, no matter what the world (or other people) were telling them that they should be. Those women and men (mostly women!) are with me when I sit down to write, even though many of them are gone from this world, and the most influential I haven’t seen in years. They taught me, through their work, through teaching me, and through their very selves, that the important thing is not what the world around you thinks you should do with your writing (or your art), but is instead the particular unique fire that drives you to the page, and being sure, day after day, page after page, rejection after rejection (and acceptance after acceptance) that you never let anything or anyone put out that fire.

On Ignoring Writing Advice

Writers get lots of advice. Go to workshops, read magazines and websites for writers, attend webinars, take a class….advice is the one thing you are sure to get plenty of - maybe more than you’d counted on. Since a recent experience, it struck me as ironic that one type of advice regularly given has to do with what is frequently called “the internal critic” and, for the most part, that advice consists in finding strategies to ignore it. Not entirely, of course - teachers, workshop leaders, etc are all careful to say you want to ignore that internal critic when it is preventing you from writing, but that there IS a time to invite that critic back - once you have a full draft and need to begin revision (and, sadly, many of us take the first part of that advice to heart and like to ignore the second part). Why is this advice now ironic to me? Because it asks you to ignore your own internal voice telling you that something is wrong and crush forward in spite of those warnings, while I believe that your internal voice can be your best friend in writing, certainly if your goal is to be a writer whose writing is real, authentic, and the kind of writing, the kind of words, that speak to a reader in a voice they can’t ignore. The notion that anyone involved in a creative process should ignore their internal voice is, to be, the absolute antithesis of good advice. Following such advice seems to me to be dangerously close to actually suppressing (perhaps totally destroying) personal creativity in order to move towards the type of creativity the community around the writer expects and approves. Let me be clear: there are some fine lines to be aware of here. If the internal messages are lack of confidence, self-criticism

of your own abilities, and messages that all your work sucks, then you do need a break from it - but simple doubt, simple uncertainty, a small voice telling you that something is wrong with the direction you’re taking could be trying to send you a very important message. It is easy, as a person in the world, to attribute more wisdom to your community than to yourself - and that could well be true. But, when it comes to what it is you need to create, how it should be, what form it should take, no voice is more important than your own. Recently, I took a break from writing, and, as it happens, from many other things. My reasons had nothing to do with pandemics

or politics-fatigue….or anything but a need for some time, some space. I’ve been writing daily for a very long time, but had been ending each writing session with a vague sense that something I was doing was not right. When I tried to narrow it down, I kept thinking of the days I spent with my graduate writing cohort, and how the frame of mind I was in after each of those produced some of the best writing I have ever done. I needed that frame of mind. Desperately. I spent years teaching writing, decades in writing groups, and have worked with teachers, other writers, editors, and students evaluating writing - all of that provided valuable tools for improving writing technicalls. I needed the frame of write that focused on what matters to learn to put all of that - every bit of it - aside, and welcome the frame of mind, the mental ability, to improving writing fundamentally - finding the spirit, the core, and light in my mind, that knows the important things that only I can say, and that will always, always move me there. For that, I needed space from the world. And thank God I listened to the voice urging me in that direction. To my voice. Listen to yours.

A Wild Silky Thing - Mary Oliver on Writing Poetry

Some time back, (read; before the pandemic) I went to my writing group with a request. I had been (and still am) a member of this group for years, and I felt there was something we’d been neglecting. Can we, I suggested, perhaps spend less time on the craft of writing, and more on the art of writing? Members were unclear about what I meant by the difference. What followed was a result of my failure to communicate what I meant by it to them (which seemed obvious to me) - I became, as I tried to communicate it, more and more frustrated, eventually taking a year-long break from the group to process and re-set. I never was fully able to communicate what I meant about this difference to my group, but tonight, after working for a few hours - I frequently work in the late hours of the night, often into the wee hours of the morning - I picked up one of my books on poetry-writing, this time A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver, one of my favorite contemporary poets. I had read it before, but this time, as I began reading again, a particular section spoke directly to my heart, and answered the question I’d been unable to answer for my group: what is the difference between art and craft? Though Ms. Oliver was not specifically talking in those terms, she might as well have been. Speaking of what poets do as they approach learning to write poetry as well as they can, she says:

“....a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.” Oh, my - if only I’d had those words back then! Ms. Oliver had said earlier that this ‘affair’ - this ‘something like the heart’ cannot be learned - we are born with it or without it, she says, though of this I am not sure. It is the practice of combining the “possible love affair” with the ‘learned skills’ that creates art. Those “learned skills of the conscious mind” are, to my way of thinking, the craft - the part that is learned and practiced and polished. Leonardo da Vinci once said “...where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art” - that “something like the heart” is the spirit that must be deep in a passionate affair with the learned skills for poetry to be written - for, in my opinion, any good writing to be written. We must, however, let it out, let it be in love with our skills to write poetry, to write (I believe) anything worthwhile. She says that this “spirit” da Vinci speaks of is “...that wild silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live…...it won’t involve itself with anything less than perfect seriousness….this is the first and most essential thing to understand. It comes before everything, even technique.” This is something I had experienced in graduate school studying creative writing - my advisor pushed everyone in our cohort to find that passion, find that fiery essential place within ourselves that had so many words, so much sound, and so much love to give to our writing that we could not acknowledge it or look at that part of ourselves without needing to bring it out in words. This work was the foundation of every critique she gave us, every student conference, every seminar discussion. Though we didn’t use Oliver’s words at the time, what we were all doing, day after day, was being lovers, engaging in a passionate affair between

something like our hearts - that wild silky part of ourselves - and our learned skills. We of course had classes and workshops on technique and form and reading lists to complete - but the real work, the essential work, was having, each of us, our own possible love affair.

ON POETRY, INSPIRATION, and WHAT IS AND IS NOT IMPORTANT

I’ve been working on some of my poems this morning, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude keeps pulling my attention from the page, so it is time to express that gratitude. Until recently, I had never submitted my poems for publication. But I recently did begin to submit them, and I have had more success getting them published than I ever expected, and that is really due to my taking to heart the support of a very few people from my past.

Sister Sal, upper right at the end (around the time we had the argument!)
(that's me, center in front of my mother)

First, my late sister Sally. With the very first poem I wrote (I was ten) she argued with me for quite a long time that I must have gotten it from some book - I couldn’t have written it. She was trying to give
me (rest her soul) a lesson against plagiarism, but instead gave me a different lesson - that there was
something worthwhile about what I’d written. Love you, Sal.

That lesson was reinforced when I was in graduate school. My main Masters’ advisor - the wonderful amazing Nicola Morris - was constantly reaffirming the poetry I sent her. She could be brutal with her feedback, but always, always it was underscored with careful thoughtful advice that was infused with her deep desire to see you succeed in getting where you were trying to go. I loved her then, and always will. I would wait with no small anxiety for the package each week containing her critiques, and

they would always send me back to my keyboard with excitement and energy to GET THERE. And, when she liked a poem as I had submitted it, her comments could send my spirit flying for days. My favorite was a comment scrawled in an upper corner of one poem that simply read:  “Lovely, lovely, lovely.”

So why didn’t I send poems in for publication until all these years later?  That is due to another, considerably less appreciated, person from my past, my fourth grade teacher, Sister Something-Or-Other (I think I’ve forgotten her name out of revenge). She would take student writings from our English class and call us up to her desk in front of the rest of the class for her to comment on them. I will never forget the day I had turned in an essay about the men and women of the working-class neighborhood where I lived then, and she called me up.

She looked at me, down at my paper in front of her, and then stared out the window at the back of the classroom as she said:  “You are a very good writer - it’s just too bad you don’t write about anything important.”

That comment never left me. If there is anything a writer wants, it’s for those who read the words we've written to feel that they are in at least a small way, important. Her words did not stop me, over the years, from submitting stories, essays, and, finally, a novel even after I'd received buckets full of rejections. But never poetry. I’d had three poems published, but submitted by teachers of mine, not by me. Why could I submit all these other writings and not my poetry?

Because, what it took me years to realize is that poetry, at least for me, is the heart of everything. Damn near everything I’ve ever written began with an idea expressed in a poem, and sometimes some

language from a poem made it into essays or stories or novels. Once, in a review of my novel “Somewhere Never Traveled” the person reviewing wrote “J. McKenzie must be part poet….”  Few comments I’ve ever received made me smile so broadly. 

Someone once said that poetry is the art of levitation - meant to uplift the reader, to take us somewhere that feels above the normal world, so that we can see clearly. I think most fiction writers feel that any writing should fit that - that we always aim to touch the most basic essence of humanity in the reader, and make it stronger.  That, dear sister I-Don’t-Remember - is IMPORTANT.