My 6-day Journey Back to Words

Wow, what a 6-day stretch of words, words, words! And hugs, and tears, and new ideas, and new friends, and--yeah, it was amazing.

I took yesterday afternoon to drift back into my "real life"-- but then, poetry is part of my life, and it needs to weave itself back in. For quite a while, I've been living life in separate cubicles, mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. Too regimented, too fragmented, too fractured. I'll take today to wander through my house and set things to rights, too-- a messy house distracts me. 

On Wednesday, we were somewhat playfully instructed to write an oath that we'd keep for the last day and a half of the conference, and I'm going to keep mine. I think I'll revise it a little:

To live intentionally; to honor my talent and my craft and to engage with them without limits.

One thing that did surprise me this week about my own work is that I didn't immediately slip into the facile world of silly rhymes. This is something that often happens to me, probably as a form of defense mechanism. The impulse to rhyme and bounce along in a short poem is strong when your life is in chaos. It is safe, neat, and skims the surface well. It shows that you have facility with language, but does not show all the cards you hold. This week, yes, there was silliness, but with intention. I found myself writing prose-style drafts to dump all the "stuff" out of my mental bag so I could start to sort it out. I could see, with the gentle guidance of our poetry mentors, where I have often been too tightly controlled, too "neat" in my writing. That is what I've been trying to puzzle out: why is so much of my work so damned flat? It's precise, it's essayistic, it is compliant. It is, as my favorite college professor pointed out about my essays all those years ago, too safe.

It's pretty dishonest to claim to be a writer, and then hold the actual "stuff" back. That is not to say I need to be scatalogical (though if it serves, it's there to use). And I'm pretty sure I'll never pop messy bodily functions into a poem. I went to a reading once, and the poet was reading about poop. Nope. I won't. There was another poet once who wrote about someone ejaculating off a balcony at a concert and the result falling into a tuba. While unforgettable, I'm pretty sure that's not my style.

There's been a long stretch of time where I have been mentally and emotionally just hanging on, for a variety of reasons. Family crises, work disturbances, gee, a freaking pandemic... and my way of surviving these traumatic events was to cling to words a little too tightly. I, unwittingly, was squeezing the life out of the very art I wanted to hold close. 

Note to self: sand, fingers, you know. 

I'm so grateful for this week, and for the opportunity to re-engage with people who are doing the same struggle-dance. We all flounder around in our own quicksand, but to have someone --or several someones-- there to hoist us out is a real gift.

Honor your art, whatever it is. It's a gift, and not to use it well is a slap in the face to whichever deity bestowed it on you.

Have a great day,

C