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. 

Of Windows, Writing, and Eartha Kitt

Recently, I posted this on one of my social media accounts; 

Some pieces are harder than others to write. Years ago, I went to a Women’s Studies conference where I was captivated by a talk (not her keynote speech) given by Maya Angelou. I don’t remember the exact words she used, I was very tired after three days of workshops/sessions and then having to bury myself in curriculum development (for the upcoming term) every night. I sat in the back of this informal break-out session and listened to her, and, as always, found her inspiring, articulate, stunning. I was feeling distanced from my fellow conference-goers, who were all (it seemed to me at the time), at the “angry stage” of feminist development, and days of exposure to that had wearied me. I sat and gratefully listened to Ms. Angelou, but not really listening, just sinking, at the back of the room, into the first safe space I’d felt in days. Then she said something - this many years later, I don’t remember exactly what - and my head came up. I grabbed a pad of paper from my big conference bag and started to scribble. That “scribbling” went on for years.

What had hit me then, somehow stirred by Ms. Angelou’s words about something entirely different, was that women needed to reclaim silence, which had been for some time equated in our minds with being silenced. I tried many times over the next few years, mostly in essays, to capture the heart and essence of what I wanted to say about that. Three of those essay attempts were *pretty* good - one actually exciting an editor friend of mine enough that she argued with me to let her publish it, but, to me, it was Not. Yet. Right. Finally, much later, in an afternoon after tea with a dear friend, just sitting by my window watching her walk home, I picked up pen and paper and created the first draft of a poem. That, also, went through several drafts until one day I looked at it and exhaled. YES. That poem, “Looking Out the Upstairs Window” will be coming out in the Willowdown Books (UK) anthology The Poetic Bond X on November 9th.

I'd thought of this talk when I received an email from the editor (with proofs) at the same time I was sitting at my desk, struggling with another piece.  I've been trying to write a piece about Eartha Kitt, wanting, in that piece, to highlight your courage in being outspoken, focusing (for those who don't know), on the incident

where she spoke out to both LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson during a luncheon at the White House. I wanted (want) it to highlight courage, speaking truth to power, and to celebrate her for that. Even though I'd only been trying for a few days, neither first draft essays nor poems were capturing the sense I wanted. (That I want).

    I've been writing (and publishing) for a long time. It's exhilarating when you sit down with a pen and an idea, the words flow on the paper, and it's perfect, it breathes on its own, it has the right words. I think anyone who's ever had that happen would agree, and would also agree how rare that is. I will also admit that sometimes, coming back to those instantly perfect pieces months, or even years, later, I am a bit stunned to find they need work. I also have to note that, as exhilarating as those these-are-perfect-words moments are, it is even more so to work for them over draft after draft, working and working to find that - thing, the thing that makes it not just the right words, but the right heart. 

    That means not just working word by word, line by line (though it does mean that), it also means stepping back from each finished draft, and listening to it - what does it say? How does it feel? If the whole of it - the

words, the flow, the sense, and the content, don't absolutely SHINE with the feeling that you were aiming for, I have only one thing to say - START AGAIN.

    I say this as I continue to struggle, continue to try to find the right form, continue to try to even identify that thing that I'm looking for, not only in the Eartha Kitt piece, but in others I've been working on. Some of those are finished, edited, polished -- but NOT YET RIGHT. There does exist a problem with taking this approach - there are writers, and I know a few, who will never send out anything as they work it and re-work it and re-work it. How do you know one problem from the other?  If you're thinking it needs more work because you're not sure where it might have a market, or that there are those who would be upset by the content, that's the latter problem. If first readers tell you it's ready, if it's been workshopped and everyone approves, if you've done multiple edits for words, line by line, flow, and form and feel those things are perfected, but it still doesn't feel right, START AGAIN. 

    How to do this - how to find the form, the words, the heart - that is something that changes and can be elusive, as I'm re-discovering (for about the zillionth time) with this current piece. There are things you can do to help bring it about, to push yourself in that direction, and I plan to explore those more, here, in my next post.

NOTE:  Just another note that, though I was absent from these pages for close to a year, it is not because I wasn't thinking of it - the full reasons I stayed off this page (though I was/am writing like a madwoman) will be the subject of another post.     

 

Imprints in the Sand

    Tonight, when I sat down at my writing desk (my schedule currently is a LOT of nocturnal writing) I thought it was time I got back to my writing blog, and posted something actually about writing. Lately, I’ve been focused on a great many pieces I’m either editing or drafting, and writing has been going extraordinarily well, for a very long time, which, for a blog like this, is not necessarily a good thing.  Without personal (recent) experience of the stumbling blocks, what could I possibly write about that other writers would relate to? 

For help, I started browsing through a file I keep of drafts that I have started, either for the blog or for articles or essays. In doing that, I ran across several draft blog posts from my previous blog “Judy in

A student gathering at Eluwa Special School

Namibia” - an online journal I kept while I taught at Eluwa Special School (a school for the deaf and blind) in Ongwadiva, Namibia.  One particular draft stood out to me tonight; my little internal voice whispering that it was relevant, I should explore. I’d like to quote it in full here:

This morning, I walked down to my classroom to print out some student evaluation forms for tomorrow (yes, I know it’s Sunday).  Both as I was walking there and as I was walking back, I took detours around the school grounds. It is a “home weekend” and many of the children have been picked up to go spend the weekend with their parents on their homesteads or in nearby villages, but many have not. Regardless, the campus is quieter than usual on a weekend. I walk around the buildings and courtyards, and, looking down, I see my own footprints in the soft sand everywhere I go – my little sandal with the “Ecco” imprint in the middle – surrounded (everywhere I go) by the footprints of the children (often bare feet) and the prints of other teachers. I see my own prints headed this way and that all over the school.

Yesterday, as Digna and I headed out down the unfamiliar sand paths (Note: we had been invited to spend the weekend with another World Teach teacher at her school outside of a village a few hours away) back to the highway, I always knew we were on the right path by the sight of my own footprints coming in.  There has been no wind in several days, and the prints last.

I can’t help but wonder, today, how long after I leave those prints will be here.  Ashley had

A homestead in the desert we visited that weekend

been worried about us getting lost going back to the highway in the confusing array of sand paths through the brush, but I just followed my own prints.  I realize that, at home, on the concrete walkways of my school, I leave no imprint when I pass, and wonder if that contributes to the occasional sense of having lost my way on my own campus. 

Another teacher here texts me that he can’t really, at the moment, bear the thought of going home to “business as usual” at his school in California, and I understand.  I miss everyone at home so much, but I already know the many things I will miss here – the constant greetings from everyone, the sense of welcome in the cultural traditions, and the clear sense of having left an imprint, a mark, an impression.   

 

Here’s what struck me:  “I realize that, at home, on the concrete walkways of my school, I leave no imprint when I pass, and wonder if that contributes to the occasional sense of having lost my way on my own campus.”  

 

I think every person - and certainly every writer - wonders at some point about the imprint they’re leaving - what is memorable and what is like a conversation in the hallway at work or school - dealt with in the moment, and then forgotten? We wonder if we've lost our way, and no one has noticed we're missing.

Here’s the odd thing - I never got lost in Namibia - in the twisting narrow openings between huts and

Heading out from the highway into the brush (Digna 
on the left)

shacks, in the chaotically arranged streets of the larger cities, in the unmarked pathways in the desert, I headed out, time after time, and got where I was going, and felt, each moment along the way, that I was where I belonged for that journey.

I’m sure that confidence, that centeredness, came from the people there. Fresh from their revolution and separation from South Africa, fresh from a successful battle against apartheid, they owned where they were, every step of their daily lives, and owned it with pride. Few of them owned land or much in the way of possessions, but they owned their country, they owned their lives, and the sensation was contagious. It shone from them, infused the air around them. It’s an impossible sensation to fully communicate in words. 

For a writer, the road to owning where you stand, what you write, is a difficult one. No revolution will help you, it has to be a revolution of one. Don’t lay down concrete paths designed for the masses - kick

"my girls" from one of my classes at Eluwa - they
certainly left an imprint on my life, especially 
Selma, bottom row center. I hope I left a good
imprint on theirs. 

pathways in the soft sand, and beckon others to follow your footsteps, your imprint. Find a place in the world of writing that, when you speak with your own voice, it is the voice of the owner. 

Your goal should always be to leave an imprint - from writing to brighten a single life, or writing to shed light, or writing to set a fire - you’ll know the right path when you find it.  It will feel like home, like you can see the imprints of your own feet, hear the sound of your voice, know that you fully own where you stand. Leave an imprint.

 

 

Re-Surfacing Out of a Love for Words

I love words.  I love their simultaneous clarity and their inherent potential for confusion (especially in English). There is, at one and the same time, a beauty to a word's simple, direct meaning, and a potential for darkness in their possible connotations.  Nothing gives me so much joy as to see words that bring understanding, that sweep away confusion, and that brush away the fog.  And nothing - not a damn thing - makes me as mad as words intentionally used to muddle meaning, to manipulate, and to mislead. Sometimes, similar muddled meaning and misdirection can be unintentional - unskilled speakers, or people who believe their profession requires more language rather than clearer language. I don't blame them.  I do find them frustrating, and I know many others do as well. 

So, for that reason, there's a new thing I want to start doing here with a series of posts I'm calling "The (Un)-Ravel." One skill I know for certain that I have is an ability to take complex or ambiguous (or intentionally disingenuous) words and make the meaning behind them understandable. What often happens in the process is that what I am making clear are errors (unintentional or intentional) in thinking. 

On social media, I've often posted such things - analysis of someone's communication or statements to try to suss out what is the message behind them, or the problems buried in them.  I posted an analysis of a decision written by Justice Alito, an analysis posted of an argument supporting gun rights posted by a family member, and several others - all received with enthusiasm by people who found them to be helpful in clarifying their own thinking about the issues. 

I love doing this - not to rile anyone up, not to take anyone down, but to try to make clarity and (please God, I'm begging for this) clear thinking more of a priority in the way we receive and process information. Note

that I did not say "critical thinking." I used the term "clear thinking" instead for two reasons.  A) the term 'critical thinking' is embroiled in and therefore has its meaning muddled by a great deal of dissension and debate about its validity in education, making the term so weighed down with connotations it loses its usefulness; and B) 'critical thinking' comes nowhere near being accurately descriptive of what those who use it mean by it.  "Clear thinking" is, to my mind, much more descriptive of my goal.

Note that the majority of posts I put here will still be about what they have always been - the various reflections, incidents, and skills a writer uses to find her way in her work. The "(Un)-Ravel" posts will always be titled with that identification, and will likely be much less frequent, as un-raveling what someone is saying and/or arguing takes quite a bit of time when their original language is unclear. 

For each (Un)-Ravel, I will take some public writing or speech or article, and give it that kind of shake-down, taking out and disposing of the dirt and mud that only obscures meaning to see what we have left. First up will be (coming SOON) an un-raveling of the words of US Attorney General William Barr in two

places - his written opening statement for the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, and an interview he did with NPR, in both settings where he appears to deny the existence of systemic racism, and makes broad statements about the causes of crime, the causes of police brutality, and the appropriate role of law enforcement. That un-raveling is currently in progress and should be coming soon.