I go through cycles of hopelessness when it comes to writing. Well, at least writing creatively (I am pretty content with the how and what of the writing I do to pull in a paycheck.) But poetry is slippery, and sometimes feels not like poetry at all, especially when buried in more prose-centric projects,. I often say I am a fiction writer trapped in the body of a poet., meaning my mouth and my hands work out what is happening in my brain, but they don't always work together well. And poetry, specifically, as I see the publishing community, often leaves a distaste I cannot always describe. I used to be much more enthusiastic and enjoyed certain things I no longer enjoy at all. But the poems, they still want to be born somehow.
A couple weeks back, I stumbled on this Brenda Hillman piece and laughed out at the mention of a poets audience, the five people and one of them a tree. I have no idea how many people read or are interested in my work, and its probably better I do not know the smallness or the largeness of it. What frustrates me perhaps more is that as I feel I've gotten better at the art of it, that my skills have gotten keener, it feels like the world's interest in poetry in general, and of course interest in my own work, has gotten narrower and narrower and smaller and smaller. Claustrophobically so.
So I started the year, wanting nothing from the work but its own rewards--aside from audience or sharing or readership, however small. Whatever dime I am dropping into the ocean of work being produced at any given moment. It's a kinder place, but far lonelier sometimes. I try to go back to when I was just starting. When I was 19 and writing terrible slender poems and submitting them to vanity anthologies in the back of Writers Digest,. Or later, when I was moving in on something like good writing and sending out work to publishers. That girl would be grateful that anyone was interested enough to want to read or publish her work at all. But that girl also want to play the game, which had nothing at all to do with the poetry itself. the awards, the book deals, the acceptances. I played for a very long time with minimal results (but then even those results would have astounded baby poet me. )When you take those things away, there is just the work and trying to share it.
Unlike cicadas, our emerging isn't an identifiable thing with a start and end date and life cycle. We are emerging all the time...
