Long ago in a faraway kingdom . . .

I wrote a creative doctoral paper. It was "about" contemporary poetry, but ultimately it was about my own struggle to reconcile why I write the way I write. My outside reader from the music department said that the thing she liked about my poetry was that I didn't speak in poems like a victim. She said I took on real "life turmoil" I'll call it for lack of a better phrase, but that my poems indicated strength and determination in the face of personal adversity. In other words, I wasn't a whiner; I wasn't a complaint poet.

Well, tonight's a reading, and I'm in that state that always precedes such events: are the poems cringingly solipsistic; are they trite because of my attempts at humor? Don't get me wrong; I think this is a good thing for me to go through. Poetry is for me the only writing I get to do that isn't in some important way contrived. Sure, I contrive to come up with a good line, contrive to place it well rhythmically with other lines, but poetry is the place where I have the privilege of revisioning audience rather than predicting audience. The poem is mine. It's all about me, but I would love it if the reader/listener felt some connection, walked away with some feeling like "I know what she's talking about. Been there, done that."

I think that's the greatest thing about writing creatively, aside from its therapeutic value I so believe in. I used to belong to a writing group long ago and far away in that place we'll call Idaho, and my only critic (the only one of the four of us who would actually give me a critical response without worrying about what my emotional response would be) would tell me my poems were too cryptic. And they were. I really wanted to put something out there, talk about what was on my mind, but I was too close to things and too unskilled as a writer to know how to do it.

When I went to the Rocky Mountain Writers Festival this year in April, people said my poetry had changed. They liked my new stuff, as they called it. Ironically, some of that new stuff was already old to me because I'd written it over the span of my five year absence from the writing scene there. But I had to say, and I still have to say, that I kinda know what they're talking about. When you as a writer can take the time to get away from big things and enact some change, the substance and texture of the writing can change. The comfort zone from which you write can result, at least in my case, in something more lucid, less laden with . . .

whatever such things are laden with. I don't have any answers about poetry. I have so many times wished it would go away, leave my life -- out damned spot -- that might as well be me talking, but only sometimes. So, as I prepare some poems for tonight by reading through my new stuff, I know I'm going to decide they're all horrible, embarrassing, total clunkers. But I know I'm going to read them any way. And maybe somebody's going to come up to me after the reading and say (it's happened in the past, so I'm crossing my fingers) something like "I really like what you wrote about . . ."

If you're around the vicinity of Clinton, NY, and you want to hear some poems and prose, the College Street Cafe is the place to be at 7:30 tonight.

One last thing: I really had my hopes up for the debate last night, and was sorely disappointed. Joe Biden acted like a civilized human being, and Sarah Palin (I swear this is true) kept her accent and gestures under control so well that I couldn't work on my impersonation. Just as I fell asleep one half hour in, Daryl said her accent was coming back, but by then I'd moved on to bigger and better things in the Land of Nod.

I asked Daryl this morning who the dem v.p. candidate should be. If you'll give me your ideas, I'll let you know his and my response in my next blog post. Think complementary here, if you like. Or think facetiously, if you want. I'm interested either way in what you have to say. Whatchu got?

Happy weekend!