It’s dangerous to be a writer at the moment. Not that soldiers are going to come take us away. Not that the state is going to enforce publication of only those works favorable to the regime, although both of these, of course, have happened. It’s anger. Our anger and sense of helplessness. It’s the kind of poems we are likely to write unless we sit with and digest the anger. I’ve read a zillion student poems and essays. It’s easy for me to spot the ones that are spewing out their undigested anger at their childhood, their former husband’s betrayal, and so on.
It seems necessary to actually feel the anger—all its permutations. It isn’t long before it’s clear that anger is a cover for hurt, the hurt of a primary betrayal. “I cried out but Mommy didn’t come to help me” kind of hurt. “I didn’t get my way, which was the right way,” kind of hurt. “The country I love seems to be falling apart,” kind of hurt.
What would the right kind of writing be? Full of anger, a sense of betrayal, certainly. Despair, possibly. But filtered through wisdom. Through a broader lens than the personal ego.
Is anyone reading what we write? The reading skills of Americans have dwindled. It takes skill to read a poem, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go on using the best of my intellect as well as my broken (many times) heart, trusting that those who listen are the ones who will be changed, in some inexplicable way, as I am by the writing.
I’m working on a series I started right after the election. A non-traditional sonnet a day, or more like every other day or more. One day to write the draft, one day to make it better. It’s been deeply helpful for me, to displace my dismay and fear into a mere fourteen lines. To turn my attention to a birdhouse, a hermit, cutting down trees, a flute, Dante, and so on. You’ve probably noticed that even when you do that, your feelings permeate the whole.
James and Arlene, naturalists at Grass River
I remember I said I’d tell you about my workshop at Grass River Natural Area. It’s not far from our cottage, so I’ve been there many times. James, the naturalist and education director took me on the new sections of boardwalk not yet open to the public. He and Arlene, who’s worked there for 30 years, are priests of paying attention. Paying attention! James bent down to touch an almost invisible flower he was surprised to see blooming right now. The kind of noticing of a naturalist seems to me the root, the beginning, of repair. Nothing can be fixed unless it’s seen. Maybe nothing can be fixed anyway, but if it’s seen, it changes us.
I guess this is a lot of pontificating. Pontificating itself is an avoidance, isn’t it? Here I am, blundering along in what will soon feel like a very changed country. Trying to get my footing. But nothing has changed. It’s only been my seeing that’s changed. Things are not what I’d thought. What many of us had thought. So we absorb. And are changed by it.
The guest writers were asked to write a poem at Grass River that will be on a poster, placed somewhere in the area. Here’s what I wrote. Rhyme is another way to hold the world together, I think.
From Finch Creek
If you look down from the footbridge,
there’s the log and the ridge
of swirling behind it, pine needles
blocked up, perfectly wheedling
each other into position like
iron filings, in semicircles, little spikes
in the brilliant water. Beyond,
where three streams are working to bond,
it’s a roiling of waters. Below, the stream
exactly mirrors the mossy trees.
It’s so pleasing to see how it works
without my help! The earth perks
along, a huge magnet, holding us all.
You can’t control much, appalled
as you might be about the condition
of things. You can make it your mission
to fix the world, and that’s good,
but it helps to lean over the wood
railing sometimes and observe
the water do what it does, its swerve
of patterns. Things are taken care
of that way, in the long run. This affair
of living, short and passionate as it seems,
meanders its way down the stream
to link up with others at the bend,
no longer itself, exactly, but not the end.
The P.S.
I’ve gotten the massive press materials to begin marketing my new chapbook, Doctor of the World. I’ll show you the wonderful cover next time. Used to be, presses did the work of marketing. Now it’s all up to me. I’d a lot rather write than sell, sigh, but doing one means you need to do the other.