Six Degrees

What a tangled, spangled web of poets and other people I know! Think for a minute (anymore than this will make you dizzy) about how many people you have met in your lifetime--friends, colleagues, relatives both close and distant, the pizza delivery person, the plumber, banker, auto mechanic, vet, etc. We each have a city's worth of people in our lives, even if we consider ourselves as mundane, run-of-the-mill folks, not celebrities like Susan Doyle or Michelle Obama. I am amazed. And pleased, because most of those I know are pleasant, helpful, interesting, and/or talented. My dog-groomer friend is a resource and a hard-working inspiration. My daughter is both imaginative and funny. Even my dog--especially my dog--adds to my connections in the world. One of my good friends I met because she admired my dog.

We all know the theory of six degrees of separation, right? I'd like to revise that to six degrees of connection. We cannot escape connections, nor should we want to do so. My connections to other poets create more poems. For instance, listening to Bill Roberts say that he writes five poems a week moved me to try it, and for some time now I have revised my process and make a good attempt at a poem every morning. Amazingly, it works once I tell myself to trust the language and the associative process that is poetry making. And then, there's Carolyn Jennings who leads journaling seminars, who encouraged me in one of her programs to step outside of my usual throat-clearing every morning and dig a little for something meaningful. My journal pages no longer bore me, but inform me, even inspire me to connect with the poems that lurk like mice in the corners of my mind. Or maybe they are hawks, eagles, something more substantial than rodents. I'd like to thinks so, because now that I acknowledge how many people might hear my work, I want to keep those connections, not put people off by giving them lukewarm, leftover verbiage, wilted as yesterday's salad. Nope, it's fresh greens for all my friends. And there are many. Good morning!

Getting Close to Publication Day

Yesterday the nice man in the big brown truck brought me the one and only copy of my new poetry book, The Great Hunger, the proof copy, proof for me that it's going to be here soon, proof that no matter how many times you read a manuscript, things slip by your eyes. I found three spelling errors and decided we need a different spine on the book. Poetry books are often thin and shelving a book with no visible title or author is a bad idea. We have enough trouble getting noticed without being invisible on our own shelf. But the good news is that I still like the work. After months of waiting, I had at least fleeting thoughts that when I saw the finished product, I'd be tired of it all or disconnected from those poems, some of them written many years ago and collected for this book. It's reassuring to me that they seem fresh. Since they are mostly about food, fresh is good.

Now I can plan a party, look forward to the AWP convention next spring, read these poems without shuffling papers. A book is a wonderful thing. I think. But publication also means it's time to offer the work to the world, to--gulp--reviewers, critics, axe murderers, and Ponzi scheme creeps. So much danger in the world for a thin book of poems. Okay, I'm squaring my shoulders, taking a few deep breaths, and putting my trust in the work. It's the best I had to offer when I submitted it, and it leaped that huge editorial hurdle. Pretty soon those little glitches will be fixed and the nice brown truck will drop a box of books at my front door. In the meantime, I have more writing to do. One book is never enough. 

Time Flies

Whether you're having fun, or moving, time gets away, just sneaks off and when you look around, it's weeks since the last blog entry. Not that I haven't thought about it, just haven't made the time to sit here and type. But I'm back. And what I want to write about today is the responsibility I feel to the opportunity to write. Knowing that people in other parts of the world don't have the freedom or the luxury to say what they mean is something we should all recognize and honor. Do our best with the chances we have. For me, that means not frittering away the time to arrange words on the page and say something! 

Yesterday I attended a writers' meeting in which a very accomplished poet talked about his own processes for writing and for publishing. We laughed a lot, learned a lot, and finally boiled his message down to "Write the d----d poem!" Bill Roberts writes a poem a day. Granted, as he says, he's retired from his previous responsible job and can take all the time he wants to write. But he wrote while he was fully employed, and still sets a good example for the rest of us. I tried to follow his advice this morning. I opened the mystery novel I'm reading, picked a random word and got to work. Amazingly, my morning pages yielded a poem that I like, lots. I miss the sort of throat clearing I often do first thing in the morning, but it felt very good to find words that will mean something to someone else. I know this won't happen every morning, but at the very least, I can try to use my hard-won skills creatively, honestly, not falling into the sloppy ego-centered stuff that often dribbles from my pen. Hereby resolved, to behave more like a writer and less like a wimp.

Too Much Manipulation

For years I have carried around in my mental file drawer two images that I want to connect, but every time I try to do that, they resist. One is the sight of a sliver of white quartz dangling from a spider thread in a tiny roadside cave near the Sorgue River in France. Seeing that little chip of stone dangling like bait, I have wondered how long it stayed there, how the spider who dropped that line felt when her projected web was complicated by this foreign object. Such a tiny thing to lodge in my head and never quite get free of. The other persistent and seemingly mundane image is that of a dark-clad figure walking an otherwise deserted city street late at night, so dressed as to hide even a hint of male or female or age (other than a healthy, if casual stride) through a drizzly rain, in no hurry. I was in a hurry to get home from second shift at the hospital where I worked. We were the only two people visible in that neighborhood, I hidden by my car, the other by clothing.

I can't say exactly how many times I've tried to weave these two small, ghostly memories together in order to say something about the threads that bind me to other people and the fear I often feel that we have just too many people in the world. Yet, each life matters, so I surely don't recommend that we willfully discard any individual. The images won't meld; I've overworked them and need to just let them sink to the bottom of that ocean of memories. But . . . but . . . they do surface again and again. Maybe the poem or the story is not about the concept of over-population, but about the persistence of memory, even seemingly unimportant memories that do not carry any obvious emotional baggage. I don't know. But the words that carry those images still show on the pages of my journal. They are safe there, ready to call up I ever figure out just what they mean and why they won't go away.

Business Speak

Have you ever read an essay written by and for a business person? Yeah, yeah, define business person. I mean someone who works for a corporation with more than a couple of employees, the people who think millions of dollars are pocket change in the big scheme of things. Well, I have read this sort of writing and I cannot say I'm hooked. There are writers in that world who understand how a reader gains understanding--by a shared language, shared experience, mutual respect. Fortunately, my contacts in the business world are of this sort. However, even the good writers among them run along the edge of the cliff and can easily fall into the abyss of the abstract. It's much easier to speak in generalities and unarguable vagaries than to dig up the sensory-specific language that would allow one to determine the truth of a statement.

Lately, in addition to corporate prose, I have been reading history and criticism, equally dangerous mountains to climb. And I wonder if anything I read is as urgent as the information I get by opening the front door to check on the weather. If I see storm clouds building, I'll need a coat and the dog will get wet. No hidden messages there. Nor in the noisy ducks celebrating the return of water to their recently dry pond. Noting vague about their chatter. This concern with getting my information first hand--or as some would say, experientially--comes from the poet/storyteller state of mind. Everything in life is mundane, until I look closely and think that no other person is exactly like me, no other dog is exactly like the shaggy terrier dancing on his hind legs at the prospect of a walk. We need business, we need critics who can explain the larger issues of literature, but we also need mallards nattering just down the hill, and the smell of rain about to make them happy. 

Satisfaction Not Guaranteed

I never know what will happen when I sit down before dawn and take up my pen. Yes, I still begin a writing project with pen and paper. Usually, the room is quiet but for ambient bird noise or the upstairs tenant doing dishes. Occasionally, I turn on classical music. Mostly though, I hear a running commentary in my head, often a scared voice telling me that this idea is weak, it won't work, people will laugh or look at me with blank faces, not understanding what I want to tell them. Then a different voice says, "Oh, go ahead. Just try it. It's not like you have to share this piece if it doesn't turn out well. After all, you have plenty of paper and a box of pens. Go on, write something." If I'm starting a short story, I often begin by describing the scene from a distance, getting my bearings in the environment, looking at what might happen in such a place. This week the place was a rented room in a tenement, similar to the historic one I once visited in New York. I wondered who would live there, what kind of people they might be. I sort of had it in mind to write a love story. Not a very romantic setting for that. But people love and hate one another in all sorts of places.

Pretty soon I heard a line of dialog from the narrator, and that was what it took. I knew he was an interesting guy and could see how he fit into that room. And how he related to his lover. I think the story works, not that any of us ever quite knows what that means, but it has stayed with me for about 36 hours now, like the memory of a good film. I still see Daniel and Ana in that place and feel their estrangement. No it's not a feel good, Cinderella story, but it does seem authentic. And for me that's what matters, that I met a couple of people with realistic strengths and weaknesses, and a hint of the impossible. No one else has seen it yet, so my satisfaction might be a form of motherly pride in another newborn, however wrinkled and innocuous. But this story would not have survived if I had listened to that doubting voice and not to the one who says, "Hey, you've done this before. Trust the process. What if . . . ?" So, I'm watching the snow blow past the window, wondering if I'll meet any interesting characters today, whether they live in New York tenements from the late 1800's or a futuristic biosphere with Pierrot paint on their faces. Some of my best friends are invisible.

A New Mission

Yesterday I met with the new manager of my local independent bookstore, and came away excited. Something I have dreamed about for years is about to be realized: a writers' haven where we can engage in real conversation and events that interest us, a welcome oasis in the sea of commercialism. We plan to have, every other Sunday, a couple of hours devoted to things we like--talking, listening, learning about writing, reading, and the books we still love despite the techno revolution that both connects and separates us. I like the computer world, but I also like people I can shake hands with, look in the eyes, hear the timber of their voices, drink tea with, let conversation flow and dance, and relax in the company of my peers.

I used to think I wanted to own a writers' B&B, still do, sort of, but in addition to being a poet, I am a practical person who knows the value of her own meager funds and the energy required to run a business. So now my business is helping Nancy K. get this store-front refuge up and going. We'll concentrate on our community, try to meet and serve those who labor at their desks in our part of Colorado, whether the world confers success on them or not. This is not about stardom, but about the joys and sorrows, the tricks and traps of the writing life and sharing them with others who are there, have been there, want to go there--here. Yes, here. And for those of you who still believe--I walked into Nancy's store in search of a particular dictionary, such a writerly thing to do. Within five minutes, we were dreaming big and recognized a common approach and a commitment to "build community among writers, readers, and book lovers." Get your calendars ready. We are off and running!