Writing the Life Poetic

Maybe love is just a matter of timing and light

Spring has sprung (a leak)!

In celebration of these past, many days of downpour, I share with you an image found on a morning dog walk that has come to symbolize Portland to me!

The poetry of motherhood

I usually save reflections on motherhood for my Here Comes Theo blog. But today, still high on the fumes of Mother's Day, I can't resist considering the relationship between motherhood and poetry.

In my life, motherhood and poetry have been twin teachers in unselfing. Each asks that I show up, pay attention, tend what needs care, let my mind be relaxed and receptive, and dedicate my entire being to disclosing what is asking to come through.

When Theo was an infant, it was poetry that eased those endless night wakings and bone-numbing exhaustion with the wisdom of sitting with my discomfort, being curious about it and friendly toward it, and grateful for the capacity to feel the full impact of my initiation into motherhood.

As Theo has become a toddler, he has reminded me how much surprise is available to us if we let go of what we think we know. On the day he made it clear with gestures that he believed clouds to be composed of the steam from choo choo trains, my inner eye widened to a far greater range of possibility. When he pointed to the Frido Kahlo magnet on the fridge and pronounced, "Dada," I could see it. And, unfortunately, I had to admit my resemblance to the "but not the hippopotamus" hippo in his board book when Theo pointed it out. I work hard in my regular poetry practice to become receptive to metaphor. For my son, figurative imagery is as natural as laughter.

I have stopped trying to understand any of it: how I have become this thick-around-the-middle, middle-aged mother with a swarm of beloved beings staggering around my neighborhood sidewalks in pursuit of our many clashing pleasures. We are a pack traveling together, stanzas adding up to some greater whole that is being shaped through our daily rhythms into the economies of scale that poetry serves up best: music, rhythm, line, imagery, and the rush toward beauty. The compression of time, responsibility, desire and clarifying love that writes through us a narrative through which we look forward and back in search of who we are.

 

Having waited more than a decade for my life circumstances to line up with my desire to mother, I am grateful for the gift of patience that poetry has cultivated in me. A poem will not be forced forward, and neither will our lives, no matter how carefully we plan or intend.

This blessing of life with Theo feels so much of the time far too enormous for words. I have to let my looking go dim, and gather impressions from the periphery of observation. I stand inside and outside myself, senseless, exhausted, bleary and besotted. I sit with him on our little rug in the kitchen as he drinks his morning milk, and I think how our greatest bliss can be nursed from the most simple of rituals. This is the poetry of motherhood. The repetition. The ordinary. The obvious. When I am far too deep to know, I simply slow down and witness. The names of our shared world bubble up like laughter, like grief. The tickle is contagious, until our kitchen is spinning.

Tell a new story

When our son Theo was a year old, "kitty" had been his one and only word for months. All he wanted was to glimpse of one of our cats, sneak a quick stroke of fur. But nothing doing. The cats made themselves invisible when Theo was awake. A lurching, shrieking munchkin chanting "kitty" clearly wasn't their cup of milk.

So we did what any reasonable family with two dogs, two cats and an infant son would do: we adopted a kitten. Our theory was that a kitten growing up in the company of a baby wouldn't  know to be afraid. And we wanted Theo to have the sidekick he yearned for. In this one, blessed instance amidst the endless unknowns and mistakes of new parenthood, our theory proved spot-on.

Snow Pea came to us through a friend of a friend. She had been found abandoned in a tree and needed a home. The deal was sealed instantly: the kitten loved Theo, and Theo loved the kitten. She supervised his baths, helping to play with toys and bubbles. She shared my lap in his rocking chair at story time, she slept in his crib when it was unoccupied, and would spoon Theo on the changing table to ease the diaper transitions. This kitten was clearly one of the most confident, relaxed and loving beings I'd ever come into contact with. She was assured of her right to be the center of all attention; and every being in the house respected her tiny, feline authority. We fell head-over-paws in love with her. 

Our grown cats had a different opinion. Valentino, who had always considered himself the baby/prince of the family had been mightily insulted when a human baby showed up on the scene. The final insult of a new, feline youngster in the mix was just too much for his ego to handle. Any time Snow Pea entered a room or a lap, Valentino exited it. A (literal) pissing match began on our bed, on the high-status side where my husband sleeps. If the bedroom door was left open for even a minute, we'd spend the next few days laundering bedding. Worry about Valentino's hardship clouded my delight. And so it went from October to April.

Then, last night, something new happened. For the first time since Snow Pea came home, Valentino snuggled up with me as I was reading in bed -- he'd been avoiding our bedroom in protest, except to mark it. When SP promptly appeared to join us, Valentino didn't leave in a huff. Instead, he patiently accommodated her dramatic head-butts and tail-hugging, and even allowed her to settle down between the two of us. The clincher was Valentino grooming Snow Pea's head.

It occurred to me in that moment that what had shifted for Valentino was his story -- and Snow Pea's role in it. Whatever he believed last week about Snow Pea stealing his thunder, his baby-status, his prime real estate on the bed had suddenly yielded to the revelation that this kitty was kind of nice, fun to lick, pretty ok to snuggle up with.

In my experience, six months is a pretty quick turnaround for a cat to rewrite his turf war story. The question is, how quickly are we humans willing to rewrite ours?

When we remember that how we relate to our circumstances is truly a choice, to be managed with great care, we have far more range in navigating the joys and challenges of our lives. When life takes turns we weren't prepared for, what kind of stories are we going to tell?  What is the gain to be dusted off and polished up after the loss settles in? Do you choose to see the enemy taking your special couch cushion, or find the friend who might just make the cushion a cozier place to be?

If you're telling a story that's keeping you unhappy or uninspired or at odds with someone important to you, maybe it's time to start telling a new story.

When in doubt, take poetry

"What would you do if you could do anything you wanted to," asks James Martin, Jesuit Priest and author of The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything in this brief conversation.

When at Wharton School studying business, the priest says he shared his desire to study poetry with his advisor, who responded, “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Martin disagreed, went on to study poetry, and says it's what he remembers best from his education.

Of course, there are dozens of "practical" reasons not to pursue poetry. It won't pay the rent or mortgage, after all, and no one at your corporate blah-bla-dey-blah job may give a whit about your affinity for Whitman.

The good news is this: no one needs to care about poetry other than you. And though inspiration may not directly fill your bank account, it will fill your sails. Who knows -- passion may have an even greater, untapped earning potential than that predictable paycheck.

I was extremely fortunate to have parents who understood that it matters less what you study in school -- and matters more that you are passionately engaged with what you are learning. So, you may as well study what interests you; it will teach you how to think, and thinking works best when you care about the subject matter.

When I was studying comparative literature in college, a friend's father badgered me about what I would "do" with such a degree. I went on to create a successful marketing consulting business. When I took a break from that to get my graduate degree in creative writing, he jumped in again to remind me how useless such an education would be in the "real world." I assured this well-meaning man that I'd take care of such unpredictable circumstances by marrying his eldest son and letting him support me...and that was the last I ever heard of my wasted time studying what I loved.

In my experience, when we let love lead, our lives and our work become far less confusing. We don't end up in business school (because we "should") when we are far better suited to teach composition, author books or join a tap dancing troupe. When we trust our passions to steer us where we are intended to go, we may find ourselves in a less prescribed career track. And it may take some exploring to determine exactly how and where we fit. Good thing creative people are good at exploring!

Studying poetry may not lead to your next, big career move. But it just might make you happy. And there's no better compass than happiness.

What would you do if you could do anything you wanted to? When in doubt, take poetry.

This is the sound of me doing nothing

A book deadline is an incredible gift of a burden: my own, invented boulder that I pushed uphill for six months before lobbing it across the ether to my beloved editor. This book (The Productive Writer: Tips and Tools for Writing More, Stressing Less and Creating Success, due out this December) has had a life of its own, possessing my (way too) early mornings and later-than-I'd-like-to-admit evenings. It has been a relationship with the possible coming into form. The tyranny and the bliss of the blank page, day after day, after day.

And in parallel, I've also been teaching two classes, working a very demanding "day" and often "night" job, dealing with some challenging family health stuff, playing with my son, walking the dogs, and occasionally showering. It's been many months since I've sat still, with unstructured thoughts pooling like fresh water into my empty hands. 

Until now.

My taxes are filed, my deluge of documents have landed in my editor's email box on-deadline, my clients have everything they were expecting today, and I am...still. Looking out a sunny window, at a tidy desk, a gigantic cat in my lap. This is the sound of me doing nothing...almost.

To celebrate, I will take a shower, let my toddler son pat me on the back (one of his latest intimacy favorites), and then eat sushi with my husband and mother in law. Later tonight, I will take a bath and contemplate how grateful I am to have spent these many months meditating (through writing) on topics that I am passionate about, so I can then share those thoughts with others.

I have learned so much about my own approach to -- and opinions about -- productivity as I've been writing. Mostly, I am simply grateful that I have kept at this writing life of mine over the years. I think that's what it all boils down to in the end: being committed enough to the word to keep moving toward it; then discovering along the way where we're headed -- and finding creative ways to get there.

Tomorrow, I'll be back at it -- I owe some big writing deliverables to some big clients -- and I'll be packing up for my reading and teaching extravaganza with the Manzanita Writers Series on Saturday. If you are in the area, it would be so much fun to see you.

Wherever you are, dear reader, I hope you will celebrate with me by taking a moment to appreciate whatever boulders you are pushing and naming the gifts they have given you. Then, I invite you to sit somewhere sunny with your hands in your lap (or on a fat cat) and listen to the sound of your own brilliance pooling in your inner ear.

Letter to Rudy

Dear Rudy,

I am writing a book. It is due in a week. I also have a full-time job, a husband and a toddler son, and a father who has been in the hospital across the country for nearly a month with multiple surgeries and complications. I am exhausted and full of bad food; my back hurts and my hair is a mess. It's been a hard time, Rudy.

But when the note came from Sanford just now, I stepped out of time and returned to you, who I haven't seen in more than seven years. I went back to that night I was walking Odie through the dark, sleeping neighborhood in 1997. He was days out of the hospital from a terrifying illness that almost took his life and had cost many thousands of dollars. He was moving slow, and he stopped. Something was squeaking in the bushes. He carried you out in that terrifying mouth of his, tender as a mother.

I carried you home, Rudy, and you were not in good shape -- smaller than my hand and starving. Sanford was out with the car, so I took a taxi to the same emergency vet where Odie had come back to life. And they told me your chances weren't good. Do what you can, I told them, no matter what the cost. They were a little surprised that I would invest in a hopeless case of a new acquaintance after so much hope had already been spent on our beloved dog. 

You lived, Rudy. You were gray and glossy and full of bravado. You made Sanford your king, and he bottle fed you forward into the long and lustrous future of these 13 years. We loved Sanford, you and I. But your needs were simpler, your love less complicated. Eventually, I left and you stayed.

Over the years, there were new cats and men in my life, and you had a new family, too. I've lost three cats since we lived together, and have been raising three more. There has been much to occupy me in this separate life of mine.

But the heart is a magnificent instrument. It leaps the fences of time and story. It knows where it belongs, and with whom. When Sanford's note came, Rudy, that great root of your being was plucked right out of me like a tooth: dead.

I hold your absence the way I held your brand new, uncertain body: with respect for all that I don't understand, these entrances and exits of souls. I hold you with gratitude, Rudy, for loving Sanford all those years when I could not forgive him. It has taken us a long time to return to gentleness. Thank you, Rudy, for showing us the way.

Poetry for the People Student Poem: ERIKA DREIFUS

Late Winter in the City
By Erika Dreifus

I hold the child's mittened hand
as we leave the diner. We pass
the drugstore, the dry cleaners',
countless dogs on leashes
and the humans who walk them.
We breathe in cold air and watch it
reemerge, warmed and visible.
Thank God for the sun, pale as it is.
The child's gaze fixes on a tree
capping the corner, and she asks,
"When are the leaves coming back?"


Erika Dreifus began working on this poem in Sage Cohen's Poetry for the People (Level One) course. Based in New York City, Erika blogs about writing and publishing at http://practicing-writing.blogspot.com. Her story collection, Quiet Americans, will be published in early 2011 by Last Light Studio Books.

Sweats are the new cape

Phone booth, take me away to those single-bounding leaps over the impossible! Oh, wait -- there are no more phone booths.

What's a contemporary writer -- with too many different identities to manage all of the costume changes -- to do?

With no place to do my superhero switcharoo lately, I've had to retire my cape for my street clothes: sweats. Poetic aside: this is both a literal and figurative image. Literally: getting things done is a sloppy job. Around me is a collection of stained mugs with used tea bags slumped around or stuck brittle to the sides. And under those are rumpled, paw-printed paper piles and files swarming with sticky notes. Figuratively: the humility of being imperfect, incomplete, incapable sometimes of living up to my own expectations.

All of this to say, I have I have been straining every seam of my life to accommodate book writing in the margins of full-time work, full-time motherhood and all the other stuff that needs to happen in life. As a result, I have had to cancel my trip to AWP next week to meet said book deadline. And I think it is also unlikely that I will get to do my part in the global momentum of poem-a-day writing throughout National Poetry Month (April.) Though I'm thinking I'll take a rain check for May.

Gone are the days of the phone booth and the idea that we must become someone else to do what has value. In these days of cell phones and sweat pants, we do the humble work of getting things done --  laying down words like bricks, one after the other, until we finish. There is nothing fancy or costumed about it.

And the writing exists in the weave of a whole, integrated life -- our writing life -- where we tend to our sick children and aging parents, we take the time to feed ourselves well, we sleep, we connect with friends and beloveds, we walk the dogs. And we write -- holding the paradox of aiming high while accepting what is. And we do what we can do, with that north star of platform and that energy source of desire keeping us moving forward. 

If writing a book is a marathon, then I think I'm wearing the right outfit; a cape would likely get tangled up in the wheels of the rolling desk chair anyway...

I invite you to do what you can do to enjoy this National Poetry Month and let it nourish your writing craft and practice. But don't worry that you can't do it all. Who you are is enough, and the outfit you're wearing is just perfect.

Coherence and the poetic soul

It has come to my attention recently that the majority of my literary community is not aware of my day job. This is not particularly surprising, as I have lived the majority of my adult life with a split identity. Until the past few years, Marketing Communications Consultant Sage was my public persona and Creative Sage scribbled quietly away in the private margins of that life.

It came as a bit of a shock to realize that in this chapter of life, in my abundant and beloved Portland literary community, the reverse is true -- my life as a marketing expert seems to have gone underground as my public poet persona is far more visible. The only dotted line back to my secret life as a promoter is the steady stream of feedback about how public I am as a poet and how unusual that is.

I have been fascinated to learn that so many of the people I know believe that I support myself entirely as a poet. This is such a wonderful idea that I've been wearing it for the past few days. I'm imagining myself writing poems at night and putting them under my pillow for the poem fairy, who generously makes a direct deposit into my bank account in exchange. I like this idea, and I'm going to try it!

I think I am particularly attuned to my place in our world now because I turned 40 this week. What does this have to do with the poem fairy and the marketing consultant, you might ask? On a vision quest at the coast this weekend, I took stock of where I've been and where I'm going as I stand at the helm of a new decade.

Today, I find myself answering to a call deep within me for coherence. Having lived happily and prosperously as a divided identity in the various spheres of my life, I am ready now to unify the whole and live from the power of that alignment. There is room enough for all of me, and I'm ready to bring all of my identities to the party in a single, integrated me.

My first step in that direction is to bring more of me to all of the work I do. Starting in January 2010 I'll be offering not just poetry classes, but also marketing classes. And I'll be expanding my services to support writers and businesses in accelerating their success as a coach, consultant and editor.

A lifetime of careful attention to the dynamics of language in poetry gives me an ear for what sings on the page. A long career of strategic thinking, planning, writing and implementation has honed my knowledge of what works in print and online communication. And a thorough training and natural affinity for listening and cheerleading have shaped some high-impact mentoring and coaching relationships. I'm ready to bring all of this juicy coherence to you!

No more split-personality Sage. I will be bringing you, dear reader, the best of what I have to offer, spanning the professional and the poetic, from here on out. I am welcoming all of me to the page and also welcoming all of you. What part of yourself might you bring forward and welcome into greater coherence as we enter 2010? And how might it make everything you do a little more fun, more powerful, more productive and more authentic? I look forward to hearing -- and maybe even accompanying you for a few steps on your journey.