Tonight, I recorded an older poem as one of my #31daysofhalloween bits. A poem that I realized with a start was probably written exactly 20 years ago--given that it's about fall and dusk and cemeteries and just very Octoberish. I believe it was workshopped in my very first MFA workshop, but I think the shine had worn off by October. Up til then, each week the instructor had everyone vote on their favorite, all the poems passed out with no names, and for the first 6 weeks, each week I was the awkward winner. It was something I wanted but also did not want. Granted, the poems were decent, though not spectacular, and there were better poems on the part of a couple others, though they were more experimental and less liked by all. There was no ribbon or prize, but it did mean some people really started to hate me for it and then were gunning for me the rest of the semester and into the next.
Because I kept winning, the instructor discontinued the voting, later saying in a conference at the end of the semester that it seemed like my classmates had grown tired of my poems. And maybe he was right. That first semester in my MFA program, I was already doing the things poets do, publishing and entering contests and shopping around that first crude version of the book. I was also a few years older than my peers, it being my second rodeo of grad school with a small gap between. It got worse before it got better. By the spring, things were so vicious I carried a printed-out copy of a really nice journal acceptance letter to stop myself from bursting into tears.
The poem in question, "fugue," (which you can also read here at Tryst) is not really the best poem in the now long out-of-print THE FEVER ALMANAC, where it later appeared, but it is quite appropo to the season. so I chose to record that one specifically tonight on my little microphone before making a short video for it. It's also not the worst (incidentally that poem before it in Tryst was so bad it didn't even make the book.). It was strange to hear my voice move over the words--so familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar. There are a few creepier poems in that first book, including one about Bloody Mary legends. Others about ghosts and rundown hotels and flooded subways. There were times when I liked that fledgling first book less, but in recent years I look at it far more generously given everything that has come after it. There are even a couple of poems late in the book like "sangria," "night drive" and "predictions" that I really love.
Over the years the poems have piled up and piled on. And of course, they've gotten darker, if that's possible. I took the opportunity to read aloud just to myself, but not record, several other pieces in that book and maybe I should do it more often. Maybe just as a way to connect with that past writerly self to keep going. I read some pieces and maybe get just a little charge like I did back when it was all shiny and new. Not huge, but maybe just enough....
