Hello Briefers!
As I mentioned in my post last week, I found myself returning to the keyboard this summer after a writer’s lull of more than a year and a half. Only, instead of working on my latest feature screenplay (which is outlined and about which I am very excited), I have spent the last three months producing… poems, of all things. I explain it by saying that my creative “radio dial” has been spinning and, it seems, finally picked up a clear enough signal. And the more I type, the stronger that sound becomes.
Writing poetry has some amazingly unexpected parallels to screenwriting: the importance of structure, pace, brevity, word choice, and understanding the power of the white on the page. But unlike in a screenplay, which you meticulously, exhaustingly plot and outline, poems often find their endings on their own.
It’s thrilling to discover what a poem is really about AS I write it.
As music producer Rick Rubin wrote in his book The Creative Act, “we are all translators for a message the universe is sending.” I don’t write a poem as much as it courses out of me… at least, at first. As with all good work: revise, revise, revise.
I say all this after carrying a heavy weight for months, more than a year, really…
I worried about whether or not I would ever write again. Truly. For weeks (that turned into months and is now at nearly TWO YEARS) I have nursed a baby through long nights and long days and the “writer” in me faded into a caricature of the “exhausted mother” — messy hair, no makeup, dirty clothes, a baby on her hip, etc. etc. etc.
I worried that whatever creative muscles I had were atrophying beyond repair.
So, when I stumbled on this excerpt from this incredible interview with poet Jane Hirshfield the other day I was a bit gobsmacked. My jaw hung there softly for a few seconds.
When was the last time you felt like someone took the words right out of your mouth? Only the words were better, smarter, clearer than your postpartum brain cells could muster.
Then I dove deeper into her interview with Palette Poetry and found this nugget:
If Jane Hirshfield, the author of eight books of poetry, still finds it difficult to call herself a poet, then it’s probably OK that I am uncomfortable with the term myself. “When I’m writing poems, I’m a poet. When I’m not writing poems, I am not.”
I’ve spent this nap hour writing rough drafts of poetry… like the one below. I am not a poet. I am a woman who writes poetry because, for whatever reason, that is the signal my brain is currently picking up on in the invisible realm that holds all great ideas.
Old Faithful
maybe I could be a good mother,
but I’m so fucking tired.
can you swear while writing poetry?
It doesn’t feel very elegant, I know
my brain is supposed to be a spring of
words but instead they spew
from my mouth in a rage,
a hot, helpless geyser
like that one in Yellowstone, with
a stench of resentment and longing.
maybe I could be a good poet,
but I’m just so fucking tired.
Whether you are a writer or not — have you ever felt like you’ve drifted away from something you used to love to do? Did you find your way back with longing?
Are you ever embarrassed to call yourself a writer or a poet or an athlete or a mother or a friend or any other label?
I’d love to hear from you!
Thank you, as always, for taking this Brief Mental Naptime with me. Until next time!