Monthly Archives: December 2023

Work

Ending the year reading new-to-me poetry collections was my plan, though of course family life and all that distracted me quite a bit, in a pleasant way. Maybe I will reframe that as starting the new year with poetry collections. Which is to preface the following, an excerpt from “The Work,” a poem that contains a lovely reflection on what it means to leave one’s job and find one’s work–eg, retirement–in David Mason’s latest (2022) collection, Pacific Light:

~

Once, work was the thing one rose to by the clock,
the place one drove to, the faces one met getting coffee.
Now there are stones to be moved, but will they be moved?

...We are doing the work no other demands in the light
we are given, forgetting what day of the week it is,
the work all other work was a way of putting off.

That’s a useful way of thinking about post-job life, the work that everything else was a way to put off. So now we are poets or writers, artists, gardeners, people who spend time fishing, walking in the woods, hanging around in libraries, caring for grandchildren or pets. In his poem “One Day,” Mason writes “I was always too slow/and now my deadline/nobody knows,//not even the moon…” That concept of a deadline, so ubiquitous in all industries (and academia), churns workers into all kinds of stress. Needless to say, the term has a violent origin–“time limit,” 1920, American English newspaper jargon, from dead (adj.) + line (n.). Perhaps influenced by earlier use (1864) to mean the “do-not-cross” line in Civil War prisons.” [Thank you Etymology Online.] I am happy not to have so many deadlines now. Whatever work I do now, moving stones or writing poems, no other person demands it of me or sets the timing. “Not even the moon.”

Or maybe I’m mistaken, just a bit, because: gardening. I do have to follow the environment’s requirements and timing when it comes to that work. Nature can be a demanding “boss,” but the work rewards me. As does the work of reading and writing poetry. Pacific Light, by the way, is one of those rewarding books.

Nourishing

A few decades ago, at a time I knew very few infants, I made the acquaintance of a baby. This person stayed in my life for 20 years or so, but since then we haven’t had much contact–life happens, distances increase, friends of parents…etc. However, during their mid-adolescence they developed quite an interest in poetry, so we spoke a bit about that; I cannot say I was a mentor, but I may have been an inspiration of sorts. I had no doubt of their talent in the writing direction–at 14, they were composing better poems and essays than some adults I knew.

But again: life intervenes. Their life went in other directions than poetry. At least for awhile. Not long ago, though, when I was working with Moonstone Press on my chapbook Strange Ladies, I noticed the name Emma Wynn as author of Help Me to Fall, a recent chapbook from the press. Yes, the same person I knew when she was a child. I ordered the book, of course, and later attended a Zoom event that Moonstone hosted, in which Emma was reading. We said hello across the virtual divide. And now, Wynn has a full-length book out that I’m pleased to say is well worth reading. It is full of little marvels and careful observation, noticing the pain in love as well as the joys. Wynn writes, “Every day I turn over the stone of the world/ready to be surprised,” and I believe it. The section titled “Interlude” takes on such surprises with intimate words from letters written by historically-important people, crafted into poignant epistles of affection and potential regret and bitterness. To recognize that human beings are emotionally complicated seems to be one of Wynn’s impulses as a poet. 

To be emptied is to be full.
To be battered without bitterness
is to bloom spacious
at one's heart
and nourish, unknowing,
the lives of others.
(--from "Kernel")

As it is gift-giving “season,” I remind my readers that books make good, modestly-priced gifts and that purchasing from a business other than Amazon when possible helps out independent small presses and independent booksellers (some small press publishers, however, use Amazon as their selling platform, as do two of my publishers; so does FutureCycle, which published Wynn’s book).

See the links to my books on the “My Books” tab above or the links on the right of this page. Sorry for the self-promotion, and if you aren’t inclined to get my books–buy books by another poet! There are many I’ve mini-reviewed here in past posts. Americans, especially, should spend more time reading poems and less time watching crappy TV shows or obsessing over unreliable news media sites. Of course, this is my personal (read: biased) opinion, but I believe poetry can help people gain a more well-rounded understanding of others and the state of the world. If we were to read and reflect on poems now and then, we would find the process nourishing.

Other forms of gleaning

Of the many tasks that lie before me as I work toward restructuring my routine, the past drafts pile must be the most engaging long-term project. Other kinds of odd jobs can be done in brief segments; it doesn’t take more than half an hour to clean out a drawer or closet, throw laundry in the washing machine, or cut back the ornamental grass for the season. Even a big job, like uncluttering the attic, can be done bit by bit once we get the motivation. Those tasks don’t require much critical thinking, no analysis beyond “Do I need this anymore? Can I get rid of it? Can I consolidate it with other items of its kind? What will take this stain off?”

While I can’t say I love organizing and clearing out stuff, it is not really taxing work. Just tedious.

Sorting through the drafts pile isn’t tedious, but it’s monumental and a bit intimidating. The pile of poems dates back as far as 2001 and is made up of probably two reams of paper. It includes hundreds of fairly terrible poems and, if I am lucky, maybe 80-100 poems that have the potential to be meaningful, beautiful, or at least not embarrassingly bad. This pile’s the result of 20 years of procrastination, lack of time, lack of motivation, and generalized disorganization. I admit it! Now I must roll up the proverbial shirtsleeves and get to work: work which requires analysis, criticism, revision, sorting, culling, and–that precious commodity–time. I find I’m unable to accomplish much if I attempt the work in small bits, (though I do break it up into sections, more or less). If I don’t spend at least two hours at a go, I get distracted and indecisive. I read each draft carefully, several times, to assess.

So we’re looking at weeks and weeks here. Maybe months and months, though I hope not.

The way I choose to understand the process is as a type of gleaning and sifting. I’ve got the harvest in–a big pile of poem drafts, maybe ur-poems, maybe seeds of poems, maybe crap. My efforts help me to decide which ideas are interesting, even if the poems themselves are not pulling the weight of an intriguing possibility; which lines and images are worthwhile, even if they don’t operate too well in their current context; which pieces suffer from thoughtless lineation, weird syntax, clunky form, form that doesn’t suit the content, and the like; which poems are far too wordy or else missing vital words for clarity; and which poems are basically not worth putting any effort into because: Boring! Obscure! Derivative! Sentimental! Awkward! Meh! What was I thinking?!

And then, every once in awhile, I find a poem I like and had forgotten about, one that only needs a bit of appropriate tweaking. Eureka moments while wading through my own creative work.

Yes, I should have been doing this sort of gleaning and sifting all along, the way I did when I was first starting out as a poet, 45 years ago. It probably would have made things easier. I notice myself noticing myself, though…noticing my changes as a writer, my little obsessions and my past enthusiasms glimmering in the work, noticing the different ways I have approached Big Themes and smaller ones. There may be something useful in that offshoot of my major poetry drafts excavation. Who can tell?

~

The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet, 1857; image, Los Angeles County Museum of Art