dear poet, revisited

 April, if any time of year, seems the perfect time to write a letter to your past poet self. To that 19-year-old addressing SASE's frantically  over summer break. Or that 15-year-old writing poems about flamingos as dead seagulls in her diary. (Even then, so many birds.) Or maybe to the poet who looked at the world one day, amidst grad school and other plans, and said THIS. This is what I want to be doing with my life. This is what I am good at. I've done it somewhat before. A letter to that girl, or maybe to poets in general. A calling out across time and inky pages. A holler across great distances.

Truth be told poet, this poetry thing will bring you as much occasional angst as it will joy. You will get better, but mostly readers will probably care less as the shine wears off and the newness wanes. Getting that first book will be hard, but sometimes the subsequent ones will be even harder or may even never happen for some, so be grateful if it does. You will probably face down the specter of quitting at least a half dozen times, sometimes when the world, either yours or the world in general, will be in upheaval. When poetry seems like the most over-indulgent way to spend time or exist in the world. When you will wonder why you've sunk years and resources and mental energy into something that usually takes more than it gives by far.

When people talk about the "poetry world" it really doesn't exist. Or more that it exists, but as a loose cancellation of different circling and overlapping poetry worlds. You will fall in with at least 3-4 different communities of writers, of which sometimes you are the only overlap. Sometimes you will feel like you belong to no community at all. Or that you must make one, carve one out with your own fingers, through journals or presses. Sometimes, things will feel like transactions and this is when you will hate it all the most and be most in danger of tipping over the side and into the drink.

You will be tempted to blame the poems, but really, it's not the writing's fault. The writing will become gentler to wrangle and easier to handle. To get it to do what you wanted, mostly by giving up wanting everything at all. To merely follow rather than lead.  You will wander, your hand gripping its tail for miles and across decades. You will alternatively feel like you are writing too much or not even remotely enough. That if you are writing too much, people will get bored with you and your books and all these words. That you are just TOO MUCH sometimes with all of it, though also at the same time, not enough.  That maybe the gains you've had are simply luck and timing and chaotic change, and really, you don't belong here, wherever here is. Or worse, that there is something inherently wrong with everything that comes out of your fingers and to the keyboard. That somewhere, the doubters were right in workshops and gossipy clutches of grad students, you just aren't that good. Showy and ambitious, yet just not good.

And you may begin to think this too. So, of course, don't. Also that maybe THIS is why you've failed to garner many of the keys to the kingdom--the journals and accolades and attention. Which is of course, wrong, since so many keys are based on class and education and who you know or hang out with. That of course, even if they weren't outside your league, there is never enough of them for poets many of whom are probably better/luckier/more hardworking than you.

So you go on like this for years possibly, at turns ecstatic about your work, but also slyly doubting it's quality. Thankful that its easier to get what you want from words now after all these years, but also highly suspicious that it all may be for naught. You remind yourself how many great writers from centuries before probably felt this way about their work, some rather famously, so it may just be par for the course for writers in general, but especially poets. Where the stakes are high and startlingly small all at once.