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.