Timeline #1

In an effort to help me remember why I write I’ve going to try to recount some of the pivotal moments along the way.

When I was in the 7th grade I had Mrs. Brophy for English at State Street Middle School in Alliance, Ohio. For one nine week grading period we had a student teacher who taught us the foundation of poetry. I wish I could remember her name or any sliver of who she was, but I can’t. What I do remember is how big of an influence she was on me.

 

For nine weeks I got to feel like I finally knew what I was good at. I’d been writing short stories for two years. Most of the stories I wrote between 5th grade and graduation are still in a small travelling suitcase in my childhood bedroom closet. This was different. I was able to take all of those lonely feelings  I had being a chubby, quiet, “white” speaking girl who was never going to be popular and channel them into poetry. I wrote a 47 part series called The Outcast about that very subject. I wrote quatrains and cinquains and rhyming poems (the only ones I’d written then and the last as well). I loved getting my weekly poems back with 5/5 and ‘great job’ written on them. I still have one of the last papers she handed back that year. She wrote that I reminded her of Emily Dickenson.

 

Now at the time I had barely had any exposure of poetry other than an Essence collection of black poetry I’d read (I’m pretty sure it had a kente cloth hardcover). So to be compared to some long dead white poet took me aback, but once I learned what her comment meant, I ran with it. From that moment on fiction took a backseat to poetry and my path was set.

Intellectual Starvation aka Pity Party bka Stir Crazy

It’s funny I drafted this slip of a post below over a year ago and never posted it but I’m still struggling with the main point of it. I am still questioning whether or not writing is my path.

 

Maybe I started it myself with all my “fashion” posting and dedication to that blog versus actually doing what I need to do. I’ve been out of school for six months now and how many completely new poems have I written? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Why? Quite frankly I think I’ve burned myself out. Sure I get tweaks of jealousy and inspiration when I see others writing or hearing of their accomplishments, but have I truly picked up a pen? Nope. As afraid as I am to admit it, I think I don’t care anymore (or at least right now). It’s been a long road and now that I’ve reached the home stretch I don’t know if I have what it takes to continue.

I can’t begin to express how sure I am that reading essay after essay is killing my own desire to write, that when I think of trying to write myself, it’s been stifled. I was made aware this was a possibility, but for it to hit this hard? I didn’t expect it. I can’t stop myself from thinking of the adage “Those who can’t teach, those who can do.” Is that really me? Is the reason I’ve been turned down by Cave Canem twice now due to me being simply mediocre? Are my publication rejections due to my work not being up to snuff?

In my old blog(s) I tried to write about what it feels like to have the world seemingly moving forward for everyone around you and you are still standing in place. I’ve been called impatient on more than one occasion by more than one person and honestly when I’m having my moments when I am completely open and honest? I call bullsh*t. Why? Because I think I am extraordinarily patient. By definition what I’ve done these last eight years required patience, sacrifice and hardwork. Not only did I go to school full time, I also held down 1-3 jobs while doing so. So coming out with education and job experience I figured I’d be better off then where I am. Yes, I’m a college professor. So? Yes, I get to do what I went to school to do. So? I could have walked into some random job out of high school and made this salary and a lot more. Don’t get me wrong. At the end of the day it’s not all about salary. What it is about is equal payoff and results. Yes I know life isn’t fair and to be honest, there are many times when I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this is it. No matter how many degrees, how much job experience, how qualified or prepared I am, this…slow drowning is it.

When In Doubt Start at the Beginning

I suppose I should start at the beginning. I used to be a writer. Or rather I should say I am still a writer; I’m just in hibernation. I have been writing for years. Poems and short stories came easily to me as did the praise of teachers and open mic crowds. I recorded on CDS and won slams and then I got serious. I got an English degree when I decided my Sociology degree wasn’t fulfilling. Then I got an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry. Pretty fancy, right? In theory it is. But what I got along with student  loan debts, a batch of poems I USED to feel strongly about and my Master’s hood was a load of burnout.  I mean I literally haven’t seriously (and my half serious attempts were more like a quarter) written anything since I graduated in January 2008. Sure, I’ve been published since then, but I haven’t enjoyed the ACT of writing. I loved my school and the people I worked with during my MFA, but I lost the most important thing along the way. I lost my voice. Yes, it’s pretty easy to say that and it’s pretty easy to say just write until something works. But I can’t.

 

I get the words somewhat formed in my head and then I edit them out of existence before they ever hit the page. It was never like this before. I wrote all the time.  I read at open mics every Thursday and it was always my goal not to repeat work unless I was responding to a request. I wish I could go back to that. I remember why I went to my program (the only one I applied to by the way. I wanted to go there that badly). I applied after a wonderful week in Provincetown at the Fine Arts Works Center. I had been awarded a scholarship to study for a week with Major Jackson (who was faculty at the school I wanted to go to) and after a thirteen hour drive to the Cape from Ohio, I felt energized and new. My writing changed. I picked up new habits. I looked at the page differently. Little did I know this would be the onset of the drought to come.

 

During grad school I learned to doubt my work, to pick it apart until it was neatly arranged and ordered. What I lost was my soul. I’ve always written what I like to call quiet poems.  There’s always content, but just like me they’ve never been loud. Now I don’t have confidence that what I’m writing matters to anyone. Sure it should matter to me, but that’s not good enough. Art should be for self, but I’d be lying to you if I said that some of us write not only for ourselves but for knowledge that what we do is good and people notice.

 

So where does all of this leave me? Well, it leaves me a poet without poems. There are, dare I say, thousands of poems I’ve written over my writing career, but no book, no chapbook, no contest wins. I want them and I know they won’t come easily. What scares me is that I will never get back on the horse again and if I do, I’ll always remain the altered writer I’ve become. What scares me is that my writing has run its course, that I’ve tamed something in me that can never be freed again.