Last week, I was talking to my lead editors at HD about some recent work and they startled me a little by mentioning that I was a poet (it's not currently in my bio there, which is focused more on decor/DIY writing, but it was when I started) It's obviously not, of course, a secret. since anyone who looks at my website or socials can see it or buy my books. But I also spend a lot of time writing things for other people, far more time than I spend on creative work. And it is a mix of subjects and publications, most of which have their own unique style and voice. But, then again, I'd never considered how the "poetic voice" of my writing impacted those. My editors thankfully encouraged me to bring more of that poetic voice into my pieces, the idea of which I loved, since I had tried, these last two years, to stamp it out completely.
At first, it seemed necessary since a lot of my work was academic lessons, ie there wasn't much room for me in those. Or by-the-book dictionary entries for the antique site or passages for the real estate site in a sort of breezy neighborhood tour tone. Even my film writing for the gamer site had a sort of formula and media tone we all shared. Then later, even in lifestyle spaces, I read a lot of other pieces to try to match what I saw there. I guess I didn't know writing in my own voice was an option.but I'm glad it is.
My surprise that I had been found out as a poet was the more curious part, especially since, from the time I started writing when I was a teenager, it sometimes felt like a secret identity outside certain spaces. I was writing poems all along, but I was known more as a newspaper staffer. Then a theater kid. In college, as a lit major or theatre techie, not as much a writer myself, though I did things like public in the litmag and take occasional workshops. I went to grad school solely devoted to lit, then started working in libraries, where I was even more undercover. I'm pretty sure I never talked much about writing when I worked in the elementary school, though I must have since I did get invited to a couple classes to talk about poetry and was picked to judge/coordinate our entries in the district-wide writing contest. (the very same one I bailed on in 8th grade when I tried to write a horror novel and instead turned in an alphabet book.)
I was pretty slow to reveal it to my fellow co-workers at Columbia. The exception being the librarian, an interim department lead and later a friend, who hired me, who was really excited I was a creative writer and I think, in hindsight, probably hired me becuase of that since the pool was no doubt filled with people with more academic library experience than I had at the time. But soon he was in another department and it was a while before my other co-workers were aware I was even a writer, much less a poet. I was working really hard and doing things like founding lit mags and submitting work, but it probably wasn't until I started the MFA program that anyone knew what I was doing when I wasn't clocking long nights at the circ desk. It still was something I didn't really talk about, beyond requesting occasional nights off to attend readings.
In my personal life, it was perhaps even more on the down low. My parents and sister knew, of course, though my mom always said she didn't really understand any of it until she came to my first reading in like 2005. Some extended family members understood more than others.But only a couple ready my books. I was winning contests and getting my degree and finishing book # 1. I was seeing someone for a few years who I occasionally shared work and accomplishments with. The only people who really knew me as a poet, however, were other poets. Even as that relationship mostly ended and others began, I didn't exactly lead with the fact I wrote poetry, though if they were around long enough, I eventually at least talked about it, though only a couple ever really read my work in detail. Many were not particularly literary-minded to be honest. This was refreshing and disappointing all at once.
Even later, when I felt like my poetic exploits were more out there among the people I knew, poetry felt like this thing that belonged to another world, even though I did much to entwine it sometimes with my job, mounting readings and panels and exhibits that occasionally featured my work. There was library-me, who wrote articles and presentations about library programming and promo strategies and how to create a murder mystery. When I pretty much solely drafted our award-winning ACLR application in 2017, a feat that involved countless hours of work, the head of the national organization nearly laughed out loud at the fancy reception we'd earned when our director revealed a poet had wrote the entire thing (though I still think this, and the unending engine of my resentment over many things happening then and not being taken seriously, is why we won--a particular kind of word witchery.)
Still most days, I don't go about in the world exclaiming I am a poet. My mother, right before she left the care facility a month or so before her death, was one day boasting to the aide who was helping her, that I was a poet and it seemed sort of ridiculous in light of the sort of important work this woman was doing. Somewhat are frivolous, as all art is, and not at all necessary. Mostly because I always feel that no one cares. Or that that sort of work isn't valuable in the world. The real flesh and bone world, not the poetry world. Which I know isn't true, but if I wanted to be valuable I would have persisted in my desire to be a scientist or teacher, both things I gave up and decided to forge a life with words. There's a line in the American Psycho musical that always hits a certain way when I listen to the soundtrack:
"You're not moving mountains. Or changing lives.
You're just killing while you're killing time."
Still, sometimes it does feel like I am a secret agent. That I'm like Batman, except I write my little lines and tell my little stories instead of solving crime. Like there's a secret code word all of us poets know and reveal ourselves accordingly.
