I was brushing my teeth and heard what I thought was the toilet running. When I listened carefully, I heard, out our newly opened window, either early spring peepers or some other melodious little creatures out there in the parkland across Silver Drive. How lovely that spring comes eventually even this far north. Forsythia are blooming. Trees and bushes that had strange looking bulges are now sprouting funny little leaves, or needle-like things.
I’m excited about my garden project here in the restored asylum at the Grand Traverse Commons where we live. We have all dollar donations we need; the perennial garden area has been cleared of crabgrass and has some of the bags of compost and soil mixed in; the larger area will have loads of soil brought early this week from the huge pile the Commons has collected and cleaned up. We have the help of a master gardener from our Botanical Gardens, that’s part of this whole complex. I’ll send you pictures as we go!
You can call this step one of the garden project. More photos to follow!
Here we are, almost half through National Poetry Month, and I forgot in my monthly newspaper column to even mention it! I wrote the column two weeks early, and, as I am wont to do, didn’t look ahead.
I’ve agreed to join a writing circle for the month of April. You could call it atonement for forgetting; you could call it insanity. The idea is that the ten of us poets contribute prompts to add up to one for each day of the month. We each write a poem based on the daily prompt. Our leader, Teresa, sends us the email every day with all ten addresses on it, so when we’re done, we send our poem to the group.
At first I was able to concentrate. As the days go on, it’s more of a struggle. What I write is sometimes utterly awful, and sometimes not yet a poem, but I turn it in. I keep plodding on. Occasionally there’s a spark of possibility.
Why, you ask, waste my time writing stuff that’s going nowhere? It’s keeping the wheels greased. There’s that. Also I think there’s something to be said for putting it out there, not allowing myself to be paralyzed with concern with whether it’s worthy to be seen. Like this blog post. I promised myself long ago I would post every other week, no matter what. Once in a while I think, “Wow, that was a good one.” A lot of times I think, well, maybe someone who’s really bored will want to read it. Sometimes after I post, I admit I feel uneasy, vaguely embarrassed.
What arrives from the depths of the mind can be both interesting and rich if I can reach the depths. That seems to be the issue. If I’m always primping on the surface, applying eyeliner and lipstick, the surface may be presentable, but so what? What we all crave, I think, is to see underneath, which may explain the popularity of memoirs. Though even they may be a bit fake, designing a surface that seems like depth but is intended to present oneself in a certain way, you know what I mean?
A poem that comes from the depths is always a surprise. Certainly it is to me. Where did that come from? How did I know to write that? It seems to emerge when the kind of control that’s equivalent to carefully applied makeup falls away. The poem may be messy, disorganized, but we can feel it’s the truth. We humans are messy and disorganized, yes? The falling away happens most often if we press ahead, not letting up, not stopping to primp. True of all the arts, I think.
Nothing wrong with makeup. Nothing wrong with editing. But after the fact. After the raw exploration that may feel uncomfortably out of control.
P.S. Two events coming up! Thomas Lynch and I, and two other poets yet to be named are going to be guests of Brilliant Books for a Zoom discussion about poetry , our books, and whatever else occurs to us, on April 28th, 7-8:30. I’m really looking forward to this! Here’s the link:
https://www.brilliant-books.net/event/poetry-month-panel-discussion
Also I’ll be reading on Sunday, May 2, 3:00 at Malaprop bookstore in North Carolina. Virtually, of course. Here’s the information to register.
https://www.malaprops.com/event/poetrio-fleda-brown-rita-quillen-gretchen-primack