Early Daylight Saving Time and the Darkness Is Lifting

http://www.ymcaofgreatersyracuse.org/arts/programs.aspx?ac=141

As I have mentioned in my brief blogging in the past months, I have been coping with a rough road. Redefining my career twice in 5 years has taken its toll, particularly as I am, as in the sage words of my dear friend Cathy Gibbons, basking in my late 50s and fearful of the vulnerability I face in a multitude of ways, not just in aging. I loved my work with Partners for Arts Education and I have loved my work in schools, for the most part. But this last couple of years of cobbling things together, hinging so much of it on the hope that Our Difficult Sunlight would translate into miraculous opportunities to deepen that work, I am seeking focus and stability. I need to find ways to continue doing what I do well and to support myself while fostering my work and identity as a poet.

I love everything I am involved with, most particularly my work with the Downtown Writers Center and the Comstock Review. I have been scattered over much of 2012 and now I feel there is more solid ground, I am clarifying my focus and commitment to both. One is a job, one is a volunteer act of love. The job is part time so, satisfying as it is, it is only a portion of what I need to keep the wolves at bay. I am working on additional income that is reliable, satisfying, and close to home.

I love working in schools but I am weary of it, all the stress, the travel, the negotiation, the ways I have to always be ready to shift in the immediate, the walking into classrooms that are unprepared for my lessons, the compressing a carefully designed program into half the time the process of learning actually requires. I do like the teachers (mostly), the students (mostly), the ways I learn more about teaching, and I love sharing my passion. I also love the checks when they arrive. I just am exhausted by it all, after 13 years of pursuing it as a career. And I am tired of being a living "Where's Waldo" book for my family and friends. I see much of the sacrifice that this career has entailed as well as the gains.

The real issue is that I have known my identity most of my life, at least since 3rd grade. I am a poet. I am relentlessly committed to that truth, even in the quiet decade in which I did not write and my faith was seriously challenged. But the words came back, as I had prayed. In the 20 years since, I have published consistently, with a chapbook, two complete volumes, and the textbook all in print. I have another collection being considered by a publisher now (I asked if he wanted first rights of refusal but am hopeful). I am working on two other collections of poetry that I am really excited about, a food memoir that is languishing somewhere in files on my computer, and now I know I am ready to start the notes that will result in a book on the craft of this confounding, amazing art form that is the spine of my soul.

There was a moment in the quiet time of my 30s to early 40s when I knew that I was being delivered back to the channel that results in poetry. No one but me would be able to decipher the difference. It was a cellular memory of what translating experience into image and language feels like. But now, I am experiencing another deepening of that jolt in the work I am producing. There is a maturity of craft that has come through years of teaching others what I believe about poetry and expression. It helps that I teach people in so many circumstances with such a wide range of age and skill. I have to make it tangible for anyone.

But the poems are surprising me. That is a great thing. They are mirroring to me how much I have embraced the notion that we teach what we want to learn. I hear and see the influence of all the poets I have taught as examples echoed in the images that unfold before me as I strive for the best word and challenge every syllable to earn its right to be spared the slash of my revision pen. I see complexity without obscurity. I hear musicality that makes me wonder where it even came from. The poems are in control and I am a diligent listener as well as servant.

I am close to solving the income problem but I also have the pining to spend my days just reading and writing and pondering and doing all those things that make a poet's life. Instead, I am sneaking things in around the obligations, even this blog post, and somehow getting books written, the bills paid once again, and seeing family and friends more frequently. I even have a dog. I think the spring will bring more growth, stronger roots, and maybe cause for celebration.   

   

Today I Wear My Poet Hat

There is a lot of pressure when self-employed. The scramble for work, the constant follow-up, the volunteerism, the press to market and generate income, the bills and deadlines are enough to make for constant anxiety. Sometimes even panic.

My poetry is taking second chair to all the other needs at this time. I am getting a little itchy but other priorities are leaving four cycles of poems dormant in my binder. But I am one to take my time with a poem anyway. I described it today as "worrying a poem to the bone." I am not satisfied with the first draft; in fact, I am rarely satisfied with the tenth draft. I am one of those poets for whom the act of honing, revising, dallying with the image and language is a joy as well as a vital obligation.

As an editor for many years, I read hundreds of submissions annually. Now I am making the final decisions for a poetry journal. This is rather daunting. I know what it feels like to get the "not this time" letter in the mail so I have empathy for the human on the other side of the SASE.

As an artist educator and workshop facilitator, I witness how difficult it is for someone to translate one's own experience and emotion to the page, and then to take the step to place that work in front of a reader, much less to throw it into the arena of publishing and, thus, critical judgment.

There is so much space between the moment a person commits their humanness to the page and the competition for pages in a journal. Editors have to consider that there is a tender spot in each writer's heart that yielded the poem we are screening, critiquing, accepting, or sending back.

On the other hand, the poet has to remember how many people are out there, sitting at their computer or over their notepads, pen in hand, creating something significant to themselves. They have to reflect on how many poets are taking their five poems of the moment and placing them in the mail for consideration. The competition is keen. We can never underestimate the sheer numbers.

So often, I feel that poems we consider for publication are a few steps short of their own capacity. This is disconcerting. The push to publish sometimes blinds a poet. The delight in creating a poem may often veil our eyes from the opportunities to shift the poem from competent, or even good, to marvelous. So will the desire to see our names and verse in print.

I continue to ask, "What is the rush?!" Certainly the contest and reading period deadlines are motivators but why not sit with the poem a little longer and notice that a word has been repeated three or four times, with no true purpose to the repetition. Or notice that the whole first stanza is not only editorializing and telling the reader what the poem to follow is about, but that it is burying a spectacular line that would open the work up with true panache, and thereby engaging the reader immediately in the experience rather than narrating it? Or perhaps the poet can take the time to proofread the submission and avoid the sloppy typos that shed a callous light on their professionalism? There will always be another reading period or contest. In fact, the plethora of such is diminishing the whole and making the whole business entirely too confusing.

Now I will say that I am honored to be in a national community of poets and to serve them with my efforts, as are my colleagues who work together diligently to publish our journal. I admire the commitment of our entire staff, all of whom (including me) are volunteers. 

I also want to say that often I contact a poet whose poem is so close to stellar to suggest edits that will take it to its fullest potential, based on comments as the poem circulates through our ranks. The poets are always gracious and the usual comment is, "Wow, thanks. I did not even notice that."

But that not noticing is another problem. We are charged with the responsibility to notice by our nature and post as Poet. If we do not give the poem ample attention to observe the blemishes and missed opportunities, we are failing the poem, the potential audience, and ourselves. Every syllable should count. Every syllable should earn its way into the piece. And every syllable should sing.

We also have to remember that we are limited thematically by the essence of human nature and the human condition. Although we may be feeling the excruciating pain of a parent with a critical disease, the heartbreak of loss or abuse, the joy of a newborn child, the bliss of a bird in flight, so are thousands of other people who may be poets as well. We are motivated by our own pains and pleasures to create art. But we then are well advised to step away from the creation emotionally and take a good hard look from the points of craft and uniqueness. How have we described that circumstance or individual in ways that make our own voice and vision unlike any other?

This is the finer element of making a poem and making it our own. It is also the key to more publication. Lastly, it is the path to fullness and satisfaction as a writer and creative being.