Digging Yellow Dock Is Always A Potent Metaphor

Saturday morning, fairly early and definitely quiet. I am bearing witness to the slow waking of my neighborhood, the first weekend the students are back. Classes start Monday. The tone has changed. Still, over the trill of crickets and songbirds' breakfast chatter, a church bell sounds in the distance, signal that morning mass is over. The miracle has happened once again. The sun is gentle and crisp.

In the past week, I have been systematically addressing the 2 years of overgrowth in my garden. I have to be gentle with my back so I have to limit my time but, if I am consistent, I can make good progress. I always identified with the tortoise when I was a kid.

Since we have also had consistent rain this week, coupled with the end of season pacing that allows the roots to flex their muscles less, the soil is perfect for disruption.

I have to decide how I want to redefine the form and texture of this garden, now that the sister maples are gone. The stump mulch I convinced the arborists to leave behind has been fully incorporated into my garden and the neighbor's yard. There is a topography now to play with, as well as new planting options since there is so much more light. I can return to my interplay with rocks. I know there are some that are ready to be off the ground, ready cause confusion and marvel with their acrobatics as they balance in musical ways. 

I dig weeds best when I am working through some new level of healing or awareness. This has been another summer of facing zero income and redefining my work plan. It is the summer of my 40th high school reunion, a significant milestone. It is the summer of my recommitment, after considerable review, to the work, the learning, the journey of my identity as both poet and educator.

There are so many ways I can express all of the ideas that swirl through my brain, much like Hurricane Irene this morning, slapping the east coast with her outrage. Somewhere I find the eye of the frenzy as I dislodge the deepest tap of the dock root or chicory. Fear is exorcised and everything becomes clear  for a few moments. I ignore the incessant ringing of the phone inside the house, bill collectors and those who anticipate I am available. I am working. I am not obliged to answer quite yet. I am writing and I am strengthening, readying for the next phase of both my life and my sometimes awkward career path. 

I do this work because I want to share all the ways I am excited about language and communication. I love the making of poems. I love the ways people know each other and themselves better through the many masks poetry may wear in connecting with human understanding. How they discover and thrive in their own creation or comprehension. I find tremendous satisfaction in sharing this art that I adore, this way of engaging in life.

I love music. I like poems for that reason too. 

I am creating a patchwork quilt of work to sustain me, hoping I get through and build a stability once again. I am becoming more and more vigilant in my reaching out to readers and advocates.  There is work and I will find it. Or the people who will benefit from my perspective and my approach to learning and writing will find me. There is purpose in what I do, what Quraysh and I have created in our dialogue that became our book.

One of the unanticipated lessons in writing Our Difficult Sunlight has been discovering that I like to write prose. It is why I am offering more through the blog as well. I am a writer. This forum has become a consistent part of my practice. 

The other day, someone asked me how I had time to write if I am blogging regularly. I responded that this is writing. I also realized that I am just taking some time away from poetry. I value the quiet times. Like Saturday morning in the yard. A time for review and redefinition. A time for the fluster of a flock of powdery brown little budgies chasing to the far side of the street to perch on the church railing.

Besides, when the air smells like ice cubes melting on a countertop and the bird commentary echoes The View, I can retreat from the deadlines, the proposal concepts, snippets of poems, agendas, calendars, and urgent communication, the marketing plan, the storm in my brain. I can stop typing now to watch the daddylonglegs stroll the bind weed that has adopted my front railing. I can write. It is my passion, my entertainment, my art, my mission, it is my work. It is my identity. 

I have dug very deep to attain that knowledge. I vow again: Onward. As directed one New Year's by my dear friend Phil, Proceed and be bold. 

I can return to my pitchfork and weed weasel, as I am about to do.

I trust the work will come. I have many irons in the fire. I have been creating options and choices. Each time I have reached a roadblock, I have regrouped and charted an alternate course. I hope I am right. I would like to not struggle so much but that may be contrary to the dharma anyway, so I dig deep, loosen the tangle of overgrowth, listen to the devas as they help me design the planned community of my front garden, how the wind chime choruses their recommendations. It is all part of the revision process, the eternal thumb puzzle that is my life (to quote my friend Brian).

More on Making Things...

Ask.com answers my query with the following: Poem is from the Greek poema, a noun derived from the verb poie-o, to make or do. Poets are often called makers.Thanks to my dear friend Linda Moore for bringing this derivation to my attention originally. 

It is this making that keeps swirling through my thoughts. Too many poets are too much in their heads. We are a solitary sort in our creative process. But learning to allow the environment of the poem and all it is striving to achieve be a welcoming place for me is the work at hand. In writing a poem, I believe myself as the source of the work, rather than the conduit. In making a poem, I am a creative first responder to the moment of noticing, awareness that opens the window for a breeze that is inspiration. It is the mirror that reflects this moment in time. I, as poet, will commit those images, moments, sounds, thoughts, words to breath and into type. I respond to this life we have been dreamed into with my verse.

It is in this making that we poets must be willing to be most honest. It is with the intention of honest reflection that the best poems are written, those poems that reflect the world to itself through the individual lens of that artist who commits to the act of making the poem, establishing contact. It is through the poet's lens that we can see through windows of the places and times where and when others have lived, are living.

We teach a great deal through poetic verse. We see with the eyes of a fly, so many lenses. The poet must be conscious and speak for, to, and with the greater community. We have done this for thousands of years. We teach language through the sound and meter of poetry, even in pre-reading. It is in the pulse of our blood as a people. Poetry is organic, more than the towers and lecture halls of academia may have allowed us to believe throughout the 20th century. More than the media of the age would accept. Poetry is for everyone. We enjoy it more than many admit or recognize. 

The myth of poetry being too elusive for the average person, too challenging, is failing, is waning. There is a poem for everyone, a poem that speaks to that person's individual experience and understanding. A poem with which that reader feels competent in how they interpret the words and metaphor. We will never all like the same poem. But we will each be able to identify with one poem we rely upon or always remember.

The job of the poet is to catalog by using the wealth and lush capacity of language and image, to reflect everything of the human condition, of history, of nuance, of the marvel that this speck of the universe provides, as well as its pain,  or our outrage. 

My job is to create and to share, to communicate and connect. My job is to promote my creative art in all the ways it serves us and to encourage poetry as a viable aspect of lifelong learning as well as personal and cultural expression. I encourage others to make things as well.

Postscript:

From the Owl Publishing web site I fell upon, the following quote:  Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

The Free Dictionary on line offers this definition:

po·em

n.

1. A verbal composition designed to convey experiences, ideas, or emotions in a vivid and imaginative way, characterized by the use of language chosen for its sound and suggestive power and by the use of literary techniques such as meter, metaphor, and rhyme.

2. A composition in verse rather than in prose.

3. A literary composition written with an intensity or beauty of language more characteristic of poetry than of prose.

4. A creation, object, or experience having beauty suggestive of poetry.

---

[French poème, from Old French, from Latin poema, from Greek poiema, from poiein, to create; see k^wei-² in Indo-European roots.]

Complacency Is a Slow Death

This summer, as I focus on teaching adults rather than classrooms of school kids, a conversation surfaced in the poetry workshop regarding critique and suggestions from one writer to another.

One of the workshop participants took issue with another participant for the habit of offering rewrite suggestions. He felt that it was against protocol to rewrite another poet's work. This gentleman stated that he was very interested in receiving "harsh criticism" but that no one should rewrite his draft. Meanwhile, another member of the workshop was grappling with receiving comments from the other writers that did not suggest options for revision; he felt that simply stating what a reader felt was or was not successful does not deliver enough to help him make critical decisions for the growth of his work. He wants to be given examples of "how to fix it."

Here we have the age-old debate concerning workshopping. Workshop is the best way for any writer to take the work to a "control group" to ascertain its effectiveness and strengths. It is necessary to maintain an air of mutual regard. It is also supremely important to remember the difference between "critique" and "criticism." The difference also connects directly to ego issues on both sides. There must be an air of safety and respect among all participants for a beneficial exchange. A skilled facilitator will set that tone in the beginning and expect it to be maintained throughout the life of the workshop.

There are those who believe that there is no place for one poet rewriting another's work but I do not concur. In fact, my answer to the first gentleman was "Yes and no." No to the concept that a poem brought to workshop is so sacred that it cannot benefit from the ways that other writers may see the potential for the language and offer suggestions in tangible ways. Yes to the point that if, in the editorial suggestions, the person offering critique changes the context of the poem, that is not appropriate. We must strive to maintain the intention of the poem, but to provide viable options for the poet to consider. Then it is the poet's choice as to which suggestions will help deliver the success of the poem for the greatest readership.

In workshop, a poet has two jobs: to fairly offer critique to peers that will show a writer how much the poem is connecting with readers in a positive manner and to listen to comments about one's own poem in order to weigh the considerations fairly in developing the work. The fundamental difference between the words critique and criticism is that the first is a positive commentary that provides a constructive opportunity for discovery in the work; the second is based in negative response and can be hurtful. There is no place for criticism in workshop but critique is the foundation of the workshop process.

I have often heard poets who participate in ongoing workshops say that they were not planning to attend a session because they did not have any work to share. This misses the first responsibility of a workshop participant, that which each writer brings to the others. This is based on just getting one's own needs met without reciprocity. I believe it is a selfish  indulgence and negates what we all give each other in the workshop process. It also negates the ability to hear something regarding craft that will teach or illustrate something that may be incorporated in one's own work as the commentary flies. As members discuss one poem, all that craft discussion is applicable to the whole. Listen well.

Two other elements of a successful workshop experience are that of nonattachment and the willingness to revise for discovery. Do not bring a piece of writing that you are delighted with and feel is complete. If you are so satisfied, fine. Send the work out to be considered for publication. Mail it to your mom. Don't bring it to workshop for a pat on the back; stretch your arm over your shoulder and give that to yourself.

Do bring a poem that you either believe is very close and could benefit from the last phase of tweaking so every word brings value to the whole or bring a poem that stymies you. Make the workshop experience productive, one that shows you new approaches and opportunities that will benefit your poetry.

You must be able to develop a thick skin, a nonattachment to the work that will give you free reign to discover what the poem wants to be more than what you believe it is. We must be the navigators, holding the map and watching the road, but we benefit by letting the poem be the driver.

This nonattachment features strongly in the profile of a mature writer, one who knows that it is not about the end product as much as it is about the process. The life of the writer is of writing and creating but many seem to think that it is about publishing and there is a crush to meet that goal that results in work that is almost meeting its own potential but falls inches short of the true finish line. Again I ask, "What is the rush?" Honor the poem first! Take the time to fully serve its potential. Be willing to cut and change, to look up words and search for the perfect synonym. Be willing to let the poem fully evolve and take its time in so doing. Be willing to allow others to offer suggestions that they recognize, potentials they witness, in the off chance their vision as a reader will give you a key to another door of possibility for the life of your poem.

And for heaven's sake, never indulge in complacency. If you cannot be open to grow and experiment, you are not a poet, you are someone who writes poems, and that difference is as vast as the two definitions I cited above. There is no place for complacency in making art.