orange-colored day

i've been writing poetry again. i used to say i only write poetry when i'm in love, which is true, i guess? sammy rae "i'm talking about my love, it's not what you're thinking of" etc

i'm still waiting to hear back from a publication on my first poetry packet! i know it's silly to be waiting around for, because who the hell gets picked up on their first packet? now that i have a couple new poems, i should go ahead and retool a second one without waiting. i'm of two minds with submissions, really, because i want to do the whole "rejection is the name of the game. if i fail more than you do, i win" thing, but i ALSO can never forget the intensity with which guerrero said "i go into every competition thinking i'm going to win. otherwise, what's the fucking point?" i don't need to invest any of myself into the process, necessarily, but i do have to be invested in the quality of the work--i have to believe that it's worthy of publication. so. it's a balance thing?

anyway, i feel like i've learned soooo much about poetry since october when i put my first packet together--because unlike narrative writing, where i at least have a lot of technical knowledge memorized even if i don't have the skill to match it, i'm an actual beginner at the poetry stuff. so here are some of the thoughts from these early days!

ONE: i finally understand "tell all the truth but tell it slant." everything i've written up until last year was very straightforward and juvenile. it's as simple as show don't tell, i guess! no reader gets much out of you saying what you feel; you have to evoke it. "the truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind." explaining this makes it seem so very Duh. i've known it for a long, long time, but now i finally know it.

TWO: the act of writing poetry finally started to make sense for me when i started doing it for a very specific person each time. i've written like five poems that i actually like, and all of them have an explicit you. and this is what i finally got--that i can do this to tell people things i can't say to their faces. mostly this means my family members. i can do that because i'm pretty sure they'll never read a thing i write (submitting under a pen name has helped me to write more honestly, too) but it still means engaging in this fantasy, which is probably the whole reason i write in the first place; i'm a terrible communicator in speech, but there's this dream that if you find all the right words and put them in the right order, you might be able to make somebody else understand you. this is totally impossible, of course! no one i know has ever read something i've written and had some sort of epiphany about me, and no one ever will. practicality about that point is important, but i still think it's the best motivator i have, and understanding that means i finally know what i'm getting out of my everything.

THREE: in the past, when i've randomly decided "alright, i'm a poet now!" i've always tried to impose the same rules of discipline that i've used in narrative writing projects, which is why all those attempts have failed miserably & completely. idk why i ever believed that i could go "tomorrow at nine in the morning i'll sit down for an hour and write a poem!" hello? both of the poems that i've written recently and need to edit now were written the same way: it was the middle of the night and i couldn't stop thinking about a certain memory, and a certain phrase or sentiment got stuck in my head in the process, and then i had to get up and do something about it. the one from two nights ago was written on the back of a receipt from the clock shop because it was the first piece of paper i could find. so that's the way you've gotta do that, i guess. if you'd permit me a really shitty metaphor, you could say poetry is like bird-watching--i can go out with all my tools, but it'd be silly of me to wake up one day and say, "alright, i'm going to see this bird in this tree at this time..." you don't get to decide when it's there. your only job is to witness it when it happens.

so i've let go of any standards for "productivity;" when i save i've been writing poetry again, it's because this is the first time this year that i've been struck by a feeling and a phrase too strongly to look away from it. basically, poetry will never be something i "take seriously" in the sense that i've always thought i had to. i'll never be a poet. i might write three or four good poems a year. letting that be true has saved me from writing a lot of bad poetry.

FOUR: this gregory orr poem changed it all-

this is rlly the reason that i started to think about publishing poetry. i mean, this is what made it stop feeling totally selfish and silly. it's not, like, my Art or anything, and i have a hard time imagining anyone ever being Moved by anything i write--but if it were possible, that'd be a pretty nice thing to do for someone, right?

i like reading poetry for the same reason i like to write it--because i, as an awful communicator, so rarely have the words for anything. and so often i find a poem that articulates a feeling i'd never even know where to start with. there's this one thing i wrote last year with someone in mind, and a few months ago, when i was having trouble with the same person, a few lines from that poem started to loop in my mind and offered relief. it was the same thing that happens with any poem i love when a feeling i otherwise don't have words for rises in me. for the first time, the words were my own: i was able to put a feeling into words better than i have ever seen it put into words before. so, i think, that's the "value," if there is any. and i can feel good about putting that into the world!

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