The boardwalk at Grass River in the fall.
I’m headed today back to Antrim County to give a reading and a workshop. I am entirely skeptical of workshops. On the other hand, it’s good to put people in the same room trying to do the same work. They spark off each other. The part I’m skeptical about is the cookie-cutter nature of this so-called teaching. I’ve devised a sheet of questions to start people writing. I keep thinking, can’t you do this for yourself? I remember my meditation teacher saying he thought giving no direction is better than guiding toward a direction. In other words, we need the muddle, the confusion, the “Am I doing this right?” Writers are probably better off with the muddle.
Yet, I’ve seen some good poems come from workshop questions. Which brings me to a question: is the goal a “good poem”? The goal may be simply being led by Virgil through the nine circles of hell to get to some meaningful moment. The goal may be finally seeing clearly because we learn to concentrate. All this is messy, deeply frustrating, humiliating.
I have written a “Letter to the Reader” for The End of the Clockwork Universe,” plus a set of questions for, say, a book club. I’ve seen this done for fiction and thought maybe it would be helpful for poems, also. I don’t know how the press will want to use it, but I hope they do. The poems could use a “way in” in some cases. I’m thinking of readers who don’t read many poems. Don’t they deserve help?
So I’ve argued myself here out of my original position! People often need a way in. I devise a “way in” for my own poems, don’t I? I sometimes take someone else’s poem and use it as a springboard. I riff on a phrase I found. I use stuff to get to my own stuff.
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I’ve been thinking about my memoir of moving into a retirement community, still sitting in a computer file. I’ll come back to it. We’ve been here two years. We need to be here, now that Jerry is less mobile, and more tired. And I’ve had back surgery. I am quick to ache from certain kinds of movements. I’m more tired, too. At first I thought we were premature in making this move, but life sneaked up on us.
Our darling little house on 8th Street, the last of its renovations in progress: the new posts and porch railings. Once it was perfect, sigh, we sold it to move to a one-level condo.
We talk about, what if we’d stayed in our beautiful condo? Sometimes it feels, in my head, as if we’re still there. Or in our little house on 8th Street with all the stairs. We practically re-built that house. In a way, we’re still there, both places. We’ve brought our past with us. The rug under my feet came from an auction in Pennsylvania when we lived in Delaware. I was so anxious to get it I bid twice. A little snicker around the room. It has stylized animals on its dark blue background. Deer, I think. And maybe birds, but they could be anything. It may be a Heriz, with its border, but I’m not sure. I’ve forgotten what I knew about rugs.
The details will disappear unless I write about them. They’ll disappear anyway. The past, the houses we’ve had, will dissipate into the ether along with me. There are two ways to go with that knowledge, I think. One is that nothing matters. The other is that my job as a human is to relish the details of being human and alive. To elevate them, like jewels in the sun. To turn to each object as a revelation.
I guess this is why I write this blog. To elevate the moment. It’s only a humble moment. It’s 7:45. The sky is beginning to be visible out of the dark, a paleness. The blackness of the bushes outside my window are beginning to have definition, leaves. There’s a stillness. I’d maybe like to be at the lake, watching the light rise on the water, but I carry it with me. I’m glad to be here, now. Life is more defined, more organized.
Sometimes I think we are all such a muddle of our places and moments that eventually it’s like a soup. We can taste the separate flavors, but the soup itself takes over, a new thing.
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Registration is full for my reading at Bos Winery in Elk Rapids (6:00 on Wednesday, 135 Ames St. ) and the workshop at Grass River on Thursday. I look forward to this! Grass River Nature Preserve is one of my favorite places. All the little ferns and bogs and trees and water trickling through under the boardwalk.