Poetic Writing

Yesterday I went to an early meeting and then met with a sponsee afterward for coffee and talk.  Leaving him for home and chores, I checked my email and found one from someone in the program who I barely know. This guy knew from some of my blogs that I really like an author named David Richo --- so he thought I'd like to know that David was doing a book signing at a local bookstore that afternoon.  I called the sponsee I'd just met with to let him know about the book signing because we had just been talking about some of Richo's books while we'd talked earlier that morning.  Both my sponsee and I were able to go to the book signing, he with his wife.  It was an amazing afternoon.

Richo's most recent book, "Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth" talks about how both the reading and writing of poetry can become an important part of one's spiritual work or practice.  As he was talking, he mentioned that many of us have had some really bad poetry teachers in our lives and that the damage done to poetic literature has been devastating.  That was the reason for his writing this book.  He dedicated it to all his poetry teachers.

As he talked about the book, I remembered back to college when I was taking a poetry class that I now realize killed off in me what had been a budding love of writing poetry.  This professor began the class by telling us that there was no one correct interpretation of a poem, that they were all open to a multitude of interpretations.  The class grade was going to be based on one midterm exam and a final exam.  None of the other work that we would turn in (mostly our interpretations of various poems) would have any impact on our grades.  I really enjoyed the class and the poetry it exposed.

The midterm was one question: interpret a single poem.  Several weeks later, I was devastated when I got my midterm back because on it was an "F".  Apparently I had found the one incorrect interpretation of this poem.  I somehow escaped the class with a C- (the final was to write a limrick and the only challenges were to not make it obscene and to avoid plagiarizing someone else's work) but yesterday I realized that after that class, I never again risked writing a poem.  In fact, I don't think until recently that I ever gave a poem more than a cursory onetime reading (Richo says any poem takes several readings before the meaning can be even lightly touched).  I interpreted all poems as "blah, blah, blah..." --- nothing of value.

I see now that in recent years I've slowly been recovering from this poetically damaging event back in college.  Poetic recovery began shortly after I got sober, which is when I developed a weird habit of memorizing certain passages or writings that I've found to be "beautiful" or "true".  By memorizing, I mean reading and reciting "beautiful" lines and paragraphs again and again and again and again....until they became song-like, musical and could be recited/sung aloud during long commutes to/from work every day...  Now I realize that many of these types of passages are the essence of poetry.  They are words that have somehow captured a deep truth about life and this truth has somehow struck me to my core.  I told this to Richo yesterday and he told me that the word "core" means our "heart".  That rung true for me.

I also shared with Richo that some months ago, I bought several more of his books---including this one on poetry.  What was strange, I told him, is that while he's becoming one of my favorite writers, I simply couldn't open this one particular book.  It's been sitting on my nightstand for weeks now and I couldn't get myself to open it.  Poetry was of absolutely no interest to me.  Yesterday, I understood why.  His sub-title contained the word "poetic"!  He laughed and said that when they were getting the book ready for publication, the original title had had the word "poetry" in the main title but they removed it because they were afraid that it would scare many people off!  So "poetry" got relegated to sub-titled status as a mere adjective.  And it still scared me off!

I also realized yesterday that I had fallen away from my routine of blogging.  It's been a month since my last blog.  In fact, CJ commented on my last blog yesterday and let me know that she was missing my blogs and wanted to know where I was.  I was glad to be missed.  [Of course, I wanted to snap back, "CJ, where have you! been!  Blog yourself!!!  Course, I wouldn't say something so mean and judgmental.]

I'd gotten distracted with other aspects of my life and my recovery and blogging had gotten pushed to the background.  Yesterday, I realized that writing is very important to me and my recovery.  I don't see blogging as poetry --- although sometimes I suppose there's "poetic" bits and pieces that accidentally get wedged in all the flow of words.  I want to play more with poetry soon.  Blogging comes easily to me.  I suspect that poetry takes more work, more discipline.  Editting.  Slicing/Dicing.  Listening.  Watching.  Being still.  Struck silly.

Yuck!  ;-}

OK, I'm back.  Will try to be more regular with the blogging.  Might share some of my poetry once I'm satisfied it's "done".  Cooked to imperfection.

Take care!

Mike L.