Writing, and Not Writing, Lots of Questions

It's an interesting time for me as a poet. I wrote so much the past few months, I find myself unable to write anything right now. Not that it's so bad. I believe the poems need time to sit, percolate, and bubble up like sourdough starter. I'm not sitting idle, by any means. I'm revising an earlier batch of poems, round three, so to speak, of revisions. I revise numerous times, then put them away for a while before taking them out to revise again. This makes me happier that assigning a set number to my revisions. Lather, rinse, repeat has worked well for me in the past.

By trial and error I've found I need to revise my poems until I can't stand to look at the poem any more, then I tuck it away. A cold, critical eye is able to handle the process of revision much more adeptly than a warm, fuzzy one. I find the same to be true of my stories. I haven't touched The Fantasy Novel in months, and when I pulled it out to look at it, my eye went unerringly to clunky phrasings and extraneous information.

It's hard, given the present day culture of produce—hurry, hurry, hurry—and produce more, to repeat the careful and concise steps of revision and more importantly, letting a work lie fallow. We want the work out there, garnering praise, or at least a response, justifying our existence as poet and writer. Have you ever let something go out the door that wasn't quite the way you wanted it, but your neediness got in the way of what was right for the work? I have. It's hard to admit I don't always take the care I should with a piece because I want to get it 'out there'.

I've tried to remedy that the past few months by the radical idea of taking my time. My Time. Not someone else's notion of where and when I should be as a writer, but what my instincts tell me are best for me and a particular piece of work. I'm not sure it's a product of growing older, the influence of the impatience of youth on our culture, or the pull of the moon, so it's been hard to resist the lure of shoving my work out there willy-nilly. I know that inside, I'm really more tortoise than hare, but I've let myself get sucked into the notion that quantity was more important than quality. Now is a good time to declare, I move at my own pace, produce in my own good time. Poetry is not a race to be won, but a trip to be savored. Besides, I've never been good at racing - too many birds to look at on the track.

Have you run into this problem of wanting to meet Other People's Expectations? If so, how did you overcome the urge to do what everyone else wanted you to do? Or did you? Just wondering.

New Poets Of The American West

Coming in July - I have a poem in this anthology. Here, read all about it: (I would be the "and many more!"...)


New Poets of the American West

an anthology of poets
from eleven Western states

Edited by Lowell Jaeger


Kim Addonizio • Sandra Alcosser • Sherman Alexie • Jimmy Santiago Baca •Ellen Bass • Jim Barnes • Marvin Bell • James Bertolino • Sherwin Bitsui • Judy Blunt • Christopher Buckley • Henry Carlile • Maxine Chernoff • Marilyn Chin • Katharine Coles • Mary Crow • Matthew Dickman • Gary Gildner • Raphael Jesús Gonzáles • Dana Gioia • Samuel Green • Mark Halperin • Sam Hamill • Joy Harjo • Jim Harrison • Jane Hirshfield • Garrett Hongo • Christopher Howell • Linda Hussa • Lawson Fasao Inada • Mark Irwin • Lowell Jaeger • Ilya Kaminsky • Melissa Kwasny • Lance Larson • Dorianne Laux • David Lee • Philip Levine • Adrian C. Louis • Clarence Major • Ron McFarland • Sandra McPherson • Jane Miller • Dixie Partridge • Simon Ortiz • Carol Muske-Dukes • Robert Pack • Greg Pape • Lucia Perillo • David Ray • Lois Red Elk • David Romtvedt • Alberto Rios • Pattiann Rogers • William Pitt Root • Wendy Rose • Vern Rutsala • Kay Ryan • Reg Saner • Leslie Marmon Silko • Maurya Simon • Floyd Skloot • Gary Soto • Kim Stafford • David St. John • Primus St. John • Luci Tapahonzo • Rawdon Tomlinson • Bill Tremblay • David Wagoner • Robert Wrigley • Al Young • and many more!


New Poets of the American West is a panoramic (and revealing) view of the West through the eyes of more than 250 poets and 450 poems, including poems in English, Spanish, Navajo, Salish, Assiniboin, and Dakota languages. Collected here are poems about horse racing, mining, trash collecting, nuclear testing, firefighting, border crossings, buffalo hunting, surfing, logging, and sifting flour. In these pages you will visit flea markets, military bases, internment camps, reservations, funerals, weddings, rodeos, nursing homes, national parks, backyard barbecues, prisons, forests, meadows, rivers, and mountain tops. In your “mind’s eye,” you will meet a simple-minded girl who gets run over by a bull, two mothers watching a bear menacingly nosing toward unsuspecting children, and children who “have yet to be toilet trained out of their souls.” You will learn to “reach into the sacred womb, / grasp a placid hoof / and coax life toward this certain moment.” You’ll teach poetry to third graders, converse with hitchhikers, lament for an incarcerated brother “trying to fill the holes in his soul / with Camel cigarettes / and crude tattoos.” You will sit at the kitchen table where perhaps the world will end “while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.” In the short time each of us has in this world, here’s your chance to experience life widely and to reflect on your experiences deeply. Lowell Jaeger, Editor In New Poets of the American West, we hear from Native Americans and first-generation immigrants, from ranchlanders and megaopolites, from poet-teachers and street-poets, and more. In fact, the West is so big, and home to such diversity that the deeper one reads in this anthology, the more voices and world views one encounters, the more textures of thought, emotion, and language one discovers, the less we may find ourselves able to speak of a single, stable something called the American West. Rather, we may find ourselves living in (or reading into) not one West, but many.


Brady Harrison, Professor
University of Montana

New Poets of the American West
is available for purchase
at amazon.com or by contacting:
fvccbookstore.com
or call 406-756-3814 (9:00 - 5:00 M-F)

For more information, please contact Lowell Jaeger at
406-756-3907 or ljaeger@fvcc.edu
ISBN: 978-0-9795185-4-6
7 x 10 - 550 pp
$24

Abandoning Poetical Fears

I used to find it hard to paddle my little poetry kayak through the writing/revision ocean, afraid of being buffeted by wayward similes and inappropriate metaphors, fated to rise and fall with the swell of current (ha!) poetic issues. My legs braced, teeth gritted, my back and arms grew sore from furious paddling, as I read and read and read other poets, how to books, every nut and bolts and widget guide on the shelf. I stuck close to shore, afraid of the deep waters of personal introspection, the shoals of classic mythology.

You can only read for so long and put off the inevitable. I like mythology, psychology, history and the brash interactions of the three. One day I looked up and discovered something novel (to me). If you didn't paddle so frantically, dig so deep, try so hard, it was actually easier to navigate the ins and outs of writing poetry that said what you wanted it to say. That reflected your inner passions and interests. I relaxed and let the words take me where they wanted to go. I quit trying to write about topics I wasn't interested in, and toward specific markets. As soon as I stopped listening to everyone else, writing got easier.

Not that I ignored everything other people said about my writing. My writer's group has some darn good editors, and I would be foolish not to consider their critiques carefully. After many years of listening, applying some suggestions and ignoring others that didn't 'feel' right, I think I finally discovered something profound. My own voice. Overshadowed by my fears, I'd been swamped by immobility and indecision. Time to jettison those unwelcome stowaways.

I found out just why my poetry watercraft was a kayak. It takes a beating, gets flipped around, dunked, and rights itself again without a whole lot of fuss. Once you know what you're doing, the waves are no longer a worry. Yes, sometimes I'll write crappy poems, I can accept that now. Yes, sometimes a poem stumbles, or sings off key. That's okay. It's all part of the process. I've known for a long time I am a process artist, not a project artist – I love the thrill of creation, the discovery, the learning. Why should my poetry be any different?

My final discovery was that as I let go and enjoyed the process, it became easier to also become a project artist/writer. I set myself projects to complete -doable projects, not impossible tasks- then settled back and enjoyed the ride. Deep in the process of creating poetry lurks my inner kayaker, eager to get paddling, undaunted by lashing waves – but still prissy enough to hate getting completely wet. Ah well, even our inner critic deserves some empathy.

How are your literary kayaking skills these days?

Day Trippin'

This weekend featured a day trip around my little area of Wyoming. First up was the Vore Buffalo Jump near Sundance, WY.

It's a sinkhole where Native Americans used to run buffalo over the edge into the pit below, where they could kill and butcher them more readily. (Think pre-horse times.)

The jump is literally right off the Interstate, you can see cars going by, down in the sink hole it's pretty quiet - except for the busybody blackbirds. The three on the fence supervised us the entire time we were there. The pit is covered, although the signage says the layers of bones are 25 feet deep. That's a lot of dead buffalo.From Wikipedia: "The Vore site was used as a kill site and butchering site from about 1300 AD to about 1700 AD... Lithic evidence suggests that the Kiowa and Apache used the site as they migrated southwards to their modern home in the Texas-New Mexico region.. Later peoples using the Vore site included the Shoshone, Hidatsa, Crow and Cheyenne."Bison rib bone?

View from the bottom of the pit.

After, we headed north toward Devil's Tower.

Because I can always use more pictures of the Tower under all kinds of weather conditions.

Plus, it was a nice drive, green and dramatic.

We could stop and explore interesting photo op sites--

and point them out...

Until next time, your roving blogger,
Constance

What's On The Easel

Busy. Youngest child getting married today.
So here's a quick roundup of art projects in the works.

Mountain Goat underpainting.
Have to put his overcoat on, and sky and he'll be good to go.

Calla Lily underpainting. My first attempt at a flower painting in a long time. Not enamored with painting flowers, but I need still life practice. A tulip came out much better. I was going to paint a lemon and lime, but ended up using them for dinner. The fate of most still life subjects I suspect. Paint fast.

Woodblock for the first print in my "36 Views of Devil's Tower series. I actually have View 2 carved and ready to print, because it's on lino. Faster and less splinters.

And finally, a one-two punch of apple blossoms.

Before I even had time to paint them, let alone photograph them, they opened, they bloomed, now they're gone.

Ah well, the lilacs have yet to bloom. When they do, I'll be waiting, brush in hand.


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