A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Eighty-Four

Early today, my friend and collaborator Freesia McKee asked me why I write poems.  The question was asked in the proper spirit, to be clear, as can be hard to do with such a simple, yet deep inquiry, and my answer was rather vague, and involved acknowledged circularity.  But, as I have considered it more, I am finding that it is connecting to a great many things in my thinking right now, both in terms of my own approach to writing, and in terms of my life and history, and the intersections of these things.

I think that one aspect of the answer roots in my fascination with language, which is, at least in part, a result of my difficulties in learning to read.  I know that even before I read, I had a mind for language in many ways.  A friend of mine's mother, when I was struggling with basic literacy skills in first grade, commented that I couldn't be that dumb as I had the best vocabulary of any children she knew my age.  I bring this up because I do not really know if I am projecting some of this, based on my own perception of events, but I had a great deal of emotional trauma that developed around my not being able to read, and when I did finally crack that, I became incredibly voracious and read all the time.  In many ways, I was driven to appreciate reading by those experiences, and by extension, to appreciate language and the craft of writing.

The first time I was introduced to poetry in a way that I recall was when I was probably ten years old in Mrs. Melnick's class.  In class, Mrs. Melnick introduced us to a number of poets.  I recall reading Langston Hughes most clearly, but I am sure there was Whitman.  What I recall most was being asked to write our own poems and finding it a liberation to be able to attempt to express something from inside of me in that way.  It was a vehicle, even than, for my interiority, my subjective experience to come forth.  I think that is still at the core of my desire as a writer.  It is, in many ways, a desire to both understand and to be understood.

As I have expressed before, I tend to think of a piece of written text as a sort of vessel for the real poem.  The poem is not the words, is not any kind of object that exists in physical space; it is, to me, the internal experience, the place inside the mind that the poem is intended to guide a reader towards, the way a map can lead a person to a physical space.  I think it is largely that desire to find a way to connect with others, to somehow allow a connection where another can share that internal reality, if only for a moment.  I think that is what the best poems have always done for me: pierced that sense of isolation, of being separate, by providing me the capacity to step beyond my own thinking and see through another's vision.  It is the desire for that connection, for that interaction that drives me to write, and it is the hope of finding ways of cultivating deeper experiences that motivates my craft.