Souvenir

I’ll just say it.  I want to publish another poetry collection.  The last, Clinician’s Guide to the Soul, came out in 2008.  Yes, I still have plenty of unsold copies.  No, there has been no demand for a new book.  Yes, a number of the poems I’ve written since then have found their way into print.  No, I have no idea how I’d manage distribution of a new offering.  But I know the title—have known it for years now.  It is hovering.

A couple of weeks ago, we took several cartons of books needing new homes to Friends of the Library, a large used bookstore near here.  It was immediately apparent that others had been spending some of their quarantine time doing the same sort of culling.  It was nearly impossible to enter the store what with cartons stacked up inside and out.  We were told to leave ours outside on the crowded sidewalk with all the other large and small containers, some sealed, some open to the elements.  Damp book covers stared back at us forlornly.  Will our donations ever be catalogued, shelved and resold?  I felt both guilty and sad abandoning them there.

That said, I can’t seem to resist the urge to gather up uncollected poems from the scattered periodicals in which they’ve landed and rescue those languishing in computer files.  I want to use them as puzzle pieces from which to create a whole new story for the readers I always imagine when I write. I want to illuminate them with visual art, lay them out in a pleasing way. I want to make a book with a spine, ISBN number and barcode.  The print run would necessarily be modest—I could call it a limited edition.

If nothing else, it would be a souvenir, something to remember myself by. 

Doodling

One recent afternoon, doodling with colored pencils in my 5x7 notebook (blue and green were the colors that drew me), I found myself filling in some open spaces with three phrases

the creative journey

fits and starts

and yes, an arc.

As I sat there looking at what I’d written, three p’s popped into mind:  presence, patience and practice.  Perhaps these were reminders of what lies at the heart of the creative journey, at least for me, at least at this stage of my life. Show up, wait patiently for inspiration then, inspired or not, put something on paper, if only a doodle.  I wrote the three words at the top of the page.

Then three other words presented themselves. I wrote them at the bottom of the page realizing that they indicated obstacles to creativity:  time, purpose, productivity.  They resonated but didn’t seem quite on point.  I crossed out time and wrote haste.  I changed purpose to resistance and, finally, productivity to greed.  The message from me to me cautioned against a rush to complete work, resistance to themes that seem unfamiliar or take me in a new direction, and greed—putting out work for the sake of putting it out, adding it to my portfolio and, with luck, publishing it.  None of these impulses nourish creativity. 

Interesting where a doodle can lead.  Interesting what happens as I (in poet Billy Collins’s words) wait for a little flame / to appear at the tip of my pencil.

Ephemera

This time of pandemic invites reflection.  Reading Louise Glück’s essays on poetry the other day, I thought about her statement that “the advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.”  As a poet, I’d like to think this is true—and it is for a very few.  But, like life, poetry, art and other creative work are for the most part ephemeral.

I think about this website and all the care that’s been lavished on its design and contents including the poems, photographs and proselets (what I call these short pieces I write for my online notebook).  But the moment I fail to pay the bills for my domain name (sagefemmepress.com) and internet platform (Squarespace), the whole thing will vanish into the ether.  True, I have poems in print and can make hard copies of the notebook entries but I’m quite sure they, too, will have their day and then disappear.

So, why?  Those of you who have read my work are a small group and those who visit this website, even smaller.  But I, like all of us, need a way to express myself.  I want to make sense of my experiences of life and bring my thoughts and feelings to light.  This can happen in any number of ways—cooking, crafting, conversation, meditation, to name a few.  As a nurse, family caregiver and writer, healing art has become mine.  It’s a privilege and a necessity for me and, I hope, a small gift of enlightenment to those who receive it.

From the Q-Zone

Quarantine comes from the Italian for 40 days, 40 as in the 40 days and nights of flood in Noah’s time, Jesus’s 40 days of spiritual torment in the desert before beginning his ministry and the edict in 14th century Venice that ships remain at anchor for 40 days before entering port during plague years. I didn’t know this etymology 40 days ago but I know it now.  I am, in effect, quarantined like everyone else in my part of the world while the covid-19 pandemic plays out.  This quarantine, for me, has already lasted longer than that.  But 40, Google tells me, is simply a metaphor for “a long time.”

Enforced seclusion should be a writer’s friend.  There you are in your favorite chair with your yellow legal pad and purple pen watching clouds pass overhead, opening yourself to inspiration.  I’ve just finished reading Patti Smith’s memoir M Train which begins with this arresting statement:  “It’s not so easy writing about nothing.”  M Train, it turns out, is a collection of Smith’s dreams, musings, vignettes from daily life and fragments of personal history loosely strung together like beads on a necklace.  It drew me in.  Smith did manage to make something out of what she called nothing.

I, on the other hand, feel burdened by a surplus of “somethings”—unread books that may serve my work, poems in draft that won’t come to life, weighty pandemic themes asking to be addressed.  The editor of a periodical I admire has issued a call to send in anything we past and present contributors have written about this challenging time. I have nothing.  I wait.  I’m tempted to be facile and claim that it’s not easy making nothing out of something.  But what I’ve learned is this:  the impetus does not come from me.  It’s given, just as I believe it was to Patti Smith as she sat in her favorite café with notebook and pen.  It will come when it comes and I will be ready.

Job Description

I’m reading an interview with the writer Barry Lopez in The Sun, one of my favorite literary periodicals.  In it, Fred Bahnson, the interviewer, poses a question about an essay Lopez had written late in life about sexual abuse he’d suffered as a child.  Lopez replied that he’d spent years dealing with the emotional disruption this experience had caused and finally concluded that, as a writer, he was capable of addressing the subject in an objective way.  “I wanted to write this out and have it behind me,” he said.  Publication of the essay brought lots of mail—personal pleas for help, requests for testimony by lawyers, and exhortations to support legislation before Congress.  He declined these.  “My job,” he told Bahnson, “is to create clarity around complex issues, and to hand it to other people who are smarter than I am, and more strategic, who know how to draw up and implement effective laws.  I know what I’m not any good at.”

Lopez’s response struck a chord.  This is an election year in the United States.  An enormously consequential election.  One issue at the top of the list in most voters’ minds is health care.  I know a lot about health care as a nurse and administrator with many decades of experience. I care deeply about these issues. Once, years ago, I testified before a Congressional committee. Once I attended a demonstration in front of the District Building in D.C.  I’ve written on health policy a few times, narrative pieces inspired by personal experiences.  But I no longer show up  at rallies.  I do not contact my elected representatives, write letters to the editor or post my views on social media. I don’t join action networks.  What I do is write—in my fashion—as a poet and essayist and, in that way, reach a small number of attuned readers.

This year in particular I feel guilty about my lack of activism, my failure to make more practical contributions toward better health in this country.  But maybe this is not my job description.  Maybe my job is, as Lopez says, to create clarity around complex issues in order to provide insight and inspiration for those with the skills to create meaningful change.  Maybe my challenge is to accept my limitations and focus on doing my job.

Finding le mot juste

I’m reading Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking.  It’s literary fiction, a mystery actually, certainly not a place I’d expect to happen upon this passage:

The poet must be open to the possibility that she has to go a long way before a word rises, or a sentence holds, or a rhythm opens, and even then nothing is assured, not even the words that have staked their original claim or meaning.  Sometimes it happens at the most unexpected moment, and the poet has to enter the mystery, rebuild the poem from there.

Yes, finding the right word, phrase or sound.  I typically spend hours, days, months on the hunt when I have a poem in draft.  I consult my dictionaries (American Heritage and rhyming) and a thesaurus.  I tune into random conversations or unrelated reading in search mode.  I keep paper and pen by my bedside in case there’s a dream offering.  And when there’s a breakthrough (the word ignore slid into consciousness the other day while I was recycling a stack of old papers—just the one I needed), the satisfaction is enormous.  McCann put me in mind of a poem of mine that expresses how I felt on finding le mot juste in a poem by my fellow poet Cortney Davis.

Wisp
To Cortney

I lift the word from the heart of your poem
and set it down deep into mine.
It aligns perfectly—
the poet’s answer to a poet’s question,
your gift of life to my failed conception.

I am thrilled with my find—
this little wisp of sound, in itself
no more than a common noun
but think where it’s been,
the web of invention starting to spin.

Why do I read?

I’ve been asking myself this question.  Why am I always waiting for the next great read to find its way to me when even the best of them seem to flow over and through me like a river. I recently plowed, pencil in hand, through Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. Even though I was drawn to the subject and thoroughly engaged as I read, what will I remember about the probabilistic science of genetics a year from now?  Will I forget the author’s name?  even the name of the book?  What about Rachel Joyce’s poignant and thought-provoking novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry?  I’ve already lost track of most of the twists and turns in the remarkable journey I took with Harold.

This morning, just as I woke up, a simple answer came to me.  Reading provides essential nourishment for the growth, development and continued well-being of my mind and soul.  Compare it to food for the body.  Individual meals may be satisfying, distasteful or hum-drum.  Most are forgotten by the next day.  But you can only fast for so long before your body fails.

So it is with reading.  And, as with food, there is the occasional memorable feast that enlarges your knowledge, understanding and appreciation for life. Knowing Woman by Irene Claremont de Castillejo is one of the books that did this for me many years ago and on every subsequent reread. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is another.

An appetite for the written word is a great gift for which I’ll always be grateful.

Free Cell

You hear about the cheats writers have to avoid facing the blank page.  They sharpen pencils they’ll never use, eat, wash dishes, run errands, hunt for a lost sock.  My cheat is Free Cell. It’s a highly addictive form of solitaire, almost always winnable but sometimes extremely challenging, installed on all Windows operating systems since 1995.  I don’t know exactly when I discovered it and started to play, but it was at least 10,000 games ago. Ctrl+Z lets you erase your mistakes.  One click and you begin a new game.  Surely this is just junk food for the mind.  And yet!

For me there’s something restorative about manipulating numbers rather than words.  And isn’t finding patterns in a scramble of red and black cards roughly parallel to the process of bringing order to words and ideas that first appear in the imagination and must be wrestled into poetic form or crafted into a coherent essay? 

 While I admit to real satisfaction when I win, there is a point beyond which taking refuge in Free Cell is not therapeutic and the ease of the one-click access to a new game does not enhance my artistic practice.  New ideas emerge in the shower or on a walk but not so far while playing a computer game.  But we all need something to reboot ourselves.  This is a confession and a commitment.  A confession that I’ve squandered hours of my one wild and precious life playing an unnecessary game and a commitment to hold myself responsible for redeeming more of the hours still allotted to me. 

 Thus, one last confession:  It took 42 Free Cell games to write this short reflection.

Working Poems

Poetry is dead, they say.  I don’t know who they are or what evidence they have of the demise but I hear and read this claim regularly.  Now consider.  Poetry slams and spoken word poetry attract large and enthusiastic young audiences.  Rap is a powerful and pervasive popular form.  Professions like mine in health care have recognized the value of the arts, poetry in particular, in communicating with each other, our students and those we care for.  Poems still appear in a number of newspapers and general periodicals.  You hear poetry at weddings, anniversaries and funerals.  You sometimes hear it from the pulpit or podium.  At times of crisis in their lives, non-poets are sometimes driven to express themselves in poetry even though it may remain known only to themselves.  High art or academic poetry may lack a wide readership but it finds publishers.

I like to think that my poems have work in the world, that they pull on their blue, pink or white- collared shirts each morning and troop off purposefully to do honest labor in a hospital, hospice, school or home.  They may boost someone’s spirits, provide comfort or diversion, tell a story or offer perspective.  They might provide the key to unraveling some puzzle. They may inspire reflection or contemplation. 

Am I making too great a claim?  Perhaps—but not entirely.  I’ve had enough feedback along the way to trust that many of my poems find readers ready to receive them.  Once this happens their work is done.

The Poetry of Witness

I recently watched this 2015 documentary featuring Carolyn Forché and five other contemporary poets who have used poetry to describe and illuminate their experiences of war, imprisonment, exile and other kinds of extremity.  Forché herself spent time in El Salvador during the brutal civil war of the 1980s and published a collection titled The Country Between Us featuring poems from those years in which she allows her imagination to work on experience to create art.  The results, she says, stand as evidence of what happened to her and others during that time.  She believes that, at the heart of what she has written, is truth.

I found her words encouraging because I often think back on poems I have written about my own years as a witness to struggle and suffering.  As a nurse, I have doubted my right to speak for a patient whose son has been murdered on the street, a heroin-addicted woman who has given birth to yet another child she did not want, a bedbound elder alone and visited by no one, or a Salvadoran mother who left her children behind when she made the terrifying migration to Washington DC and suffers physically and emotionally as a result.  Is it unethical? patronizing?  necessary?  One thing I have come to believe—I can give voice to those who are voiceless.  Even though my imagination plays on my memories and perspective as witness, I trust that I can illuminate their lives through my words.  They have souls.  Their stories should be told.