Apprenticed to Poetry: Choosing the Life that Saved My Life, Part One

This next series of blog posts is a written version of a “sermon” or talk I gave at the UU Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. They are a lovely and lively group of people who believe heartily in allowing the creative spirit to soar. Sometimes we all need a pep rally, though; especially during the dark days of winter. What brings back the light is the brightness we ourselves create. So let these words inspire you to revive your sleeping bear. Whisper in her ear, “Awaken my friend. The child of your creation is waiting to be born. It’s time to re-create Spring once again.”

Apprenticed to Poetry: Choosing the Life that Saved My Life, Part One

by Mendy Knott

The Writer

by Richard Wilbur 1976

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy;
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses;
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking.
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life and death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Ask yourself, when did I first fall in love with something that was not another person or creature, but rather an expression of someone’s creative passion. Perhaps you fell in love with a landscape, architecture, a movie, a book, a song, or even a poem. And something stirred within you, poked you perhaps with a kind of excruciating pleasure, and a voice inside whispered “ I want to do this, too. I want to re-create this feeling in my own way, in my own words, with crayons or paints or a pencil.” And because you didn’t know you couldn’t or weren’t suppose to, or didn’t know how, you tried it. You loved it! You felt different, good, wonderful, brilliant!

Later on, someone, a parent or a teacher or someone with “authority” on the subject would let you know that you were doing it wrong, that your creation wasn’t really “all that” and quite possibly never would be. Ah, the spirit crushers are everywhere. Not everyone is as lucky as the daughter in the above poem whose father understands the struggle to create, the life and death of it, and wishes her a “lucky passage.” One of my mother’s favorite criticisms was “Oh, you’re so sensitive.” This was not a compliment coming from a Depression Era child who smirked at what she perceived as weakness of any kind.

Most of us will face our creative longings several times and turn away before we finally embrace the challenge; shoulder the courage and determination it takes to immerse ourselves in our truest passion. Because of the spirit-crushers we let the paint set harden. We allow the clay to dry to brick. The pens are a dried flower bouquet in a jar, untouched. The books about writing, the poetry we loved, and our notebooks remain high on a shelf above the mysteries and romances that are dog-eared and worn. Because it does takes courage. It takes believing in ourselves, and faith. A certain amount of “screw you” is called for. We must have a desire or need big enough to override our fears of imperfection.

It takes dedication, persistence, and practice; some would say a sort of benign delusion or obsession. We must be willing to become “rogue scholars” learning all we can on our own, doing homework nobody makes us do. Often, we must be our own mentors and cheerleaders. The road can be long and rough, but the personal rewards are oh so sweet.

(Continued in the next post...)

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the poetry collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here. Or, if cookbooks are more your style, get a copy of Mendy's family cookbook Across the Arklatex at www.twopoets.us.

An Artist's Responsibility

Two events urge me to write on this cold, gray, weepy Sunday: Congresswoman Gifford's assassination attempt and the birthday of a truly great writer and intuitive speaker, Dr. Martin Luther King. These two people, separated by an entire generation, took their creative gifts and their responsibilities into the arena of personal sacrifice. Their courage both inspires and intimidates me. How do I hold myself to be true to what seem like such impossible ideals? How do we as artists respond to their personal sacrifice?

What is the artist's responsibility in a time of crisis and turmoil? Do we have one, not only to ourselves, but to the larger community? These questions plague both artists and critics alike and there are as many answers, it seems, as there are people with opinions. Since I have a blog and write about artistic responsibility, among other aspects of the creative individual's life, I feel a need to address this issue.

All King and Giffords were doing, in reality, were practicing their first amendment rights; the same rights with which every artist and individual in this country are endowed. We have a responsibility to practice these rights. Everyone knows if you don't practice you'll never get good at anything, right? If the artists and teachers and public speakers are afraid to express themselves openly, then who will stand for the citizen on the street? Who will use their gifts of writing and rhetoric to rise to the occasion of justice and freedom and take the risks that prove responsibility, even if it costs us our lives? Surely this is too much to ask of our artists, a quiet and reclusive people. That image, even when true, can no long serve as an excuse for us to remain quiet around the injustices we observe or experience daily.

These are questions we at least must ask ourselves. I'm not sure anyone can decide the answer but the individual artist. I cannot make a proclamation for each and every creative individual. Nor can I say what form that responsibility will take. Some of us are natural street corner speakers. Some of us do our work with introspection inside our rooms or in the solitude of nature. But we all know the work is not finished until it is shared. At some point, we must all take a stand in public for the ideals we claim to believe in our writing; in the work we practice at home, alone.

As for me, well, I've been about this work for a long time now. I am accustomed as an "out"spoken lesbian poet and writer to speaking my mind in public. As an ex-cop, I am completely aware of how devastatingly messy the consequences of "speaking truth to power" can be. Dr. King and Congresswoman Giffords knew absolutely the risks they were taking every time they decided to speak directly to the people. And yet, they found the risk worth taking.

So do I. People have been killing or attempting to kill poets and politicians for as long as they have existed; a very long time indeed. Those who refuse to follow the rules (not law) of the status quo, who insist on shaking up the apathy of the well-heeled and well-fed few, will always be suspect and subject to disappearance, by way of bullet, bullying, or by the simple refusal to acknowledge. But hey, this is our job! And we have a right, perhaps even a responsibility, to do it to the best of our ability even in the face of adversity.

We are the poets, the writers, the artists of our generation. We cannot, nor should we ever, "hide our lights beneath a bushel" or let the people down. It is now, and always will be, our job to accept the risks and speak out. If this is not true for you, Artist, perhaps you should look into a different line of work. Consider it said.

Revision: Sleeping With Your Work

Once you've begun working on a larger piece--say, a collection of poems or short stories, a novel, or a show for your art work--more drastic measures may be in order. I find it helpful to let myself go a bit. I do not mean drink and do dope like the "tortured artist" stereotype with which we are all too familiar. In fact, this can be tempting at times, but it's a great way to screw up whatever potential you have for great art, too. You may be in pain, at least a little at this stage of the game, but pain is an essential part of the process. It is, my creative friends, the razor's edge.

That sharpening of the senses may feel a little (or a lot) like pain, but shows us the finer points of our work and helps us shave away all that is not essential to the final product. You actually need that pain, so don't dull it. Sure, stepping back at the end of the day with a glass of wine or a beer and observing what you have accomplished that day with an objective eye is fine. You may even want to make yourself a note or two to be reviewed in the bright light of morning. But I advise strongly against touching your work or making any changes while under the influence of intoxicants of any kind. They are painkillers, and as I said, a little pain is your friend right now.

The days of the drunk and drugged up artist are over, or should be anyway. Personally, I think it was bullshit in the first place; a figment of their imagination, a creature invented so that the creator had an excuse to indulge, self-indulge, and over-indulge. You can be special without drawing a lot of unnecessary or unwanted attention to yourself. If the tortured look appeals to you, (and I admit there's something to that frazzled appearance and feeling at times), there are other, much safer ways to achieve it than spending all night at a local bar talking about your work as opposed to doing it.

I simply don't bathe or shower or comb my hair for a few days. I don't change my clothes. I sweat when I work. I look wrinkled and worn (and I usually am). I stay up late and get up early. I eat a lot of yogurt and popcorn, or just forget to eat entirely. Most of us Americans can afford a missed meal once in awhile. I forget to brush my teeth. In other words, I look as raggedy as I am beginning to feel. It's the real thing, though, and not chemically induced.

Finally, let me encourage you to sleep with your work. That's right--at the beginning I advised you to sleep on the work before beginning to edit. But now that you are in the thick of it and your office or workspace looks like a tornado came through, not once but several times, I'm telling you to lie down in the midst of it and go to sleep. I find this eccentricity not only helpful, but comforting. I'm already so up to my chin in the project that I might as well go ahead and camp out amid the papers and pens, laptop, glasses, cups, and crumb-laden plates. I cannot entirely discount the idea that osmosis really works, at least a little.

I have a wonderful wood stove in my living room and an old couch made more comfortable by a board put beneath the cushions. In the middle of a long project revision and edit, I build up the fire around midnight, damp it down, put a comfy pillow and some soft blankets on the sofa and sleep there among my papers and notes. I watch the flames flicker and the coals glow until finally I fall asleep. It never fails. I sleep like a baby and wake completely refreshed and ready to dive into work, my creative project immediately to hand.

Lets face it. When you're deep in your work, you aren't good company for a lover or spouse anyway, so you might as well leave them alone. You are having an affair, an affair of the heart, with your work. If they love you, and have any sense of self-preservation at all, they will gladly leave you to it. Give them an absent-minded kiss, and lay down to sleep with your work. Show your creation that kind of respect, and I promise you will reap the rewards for your faithfulness in the end.

Revision: To Change or Not to Change

Photo via Creative Commons at Flickr

Once you've begun the process of revising a piece of art, stay with it. Work the poem or the painting for a specified amount of time each day. Do your free or fun write for fifteen or twenty minutes to loosen up before you turn to the left brain work of editing. I advise against starting to edit cold. Artists can be too hard on themselves without a warm-up. Always begin your day remembering how much you love your art by playing with it first.

Once you're done playing, you are ready to chisel or sand (depending on how much shaving needs to be done) your latest construction. Pull out the piece you slept on overnight from underneath your pillow and take a fresh look at it. " Ohmigod!" you cry. "I thought this was a decent piece of work. What a bunch of bull hockey!" Okay, that's the only negative say you get for the rest of the day. Just pick up your tools and see what you can do with this rough bit of raw material.

At this point, people often do one of two things: they throw the baby out with the bathwater, meaning they wad up their potential masterpiece and trash it even though that, once revised, the piece may have been priceless. It's very difficult to retrieve a complete idea and all it's inherent feelings, once it has been tossed to the dogs. Or they look at it with their lazy eye and tell themselves that's good enough. "My Muse wouldn't have led me down that primrose path if She didn't think it was worthwhile." Try to remember, your Muse is just another fickle god (or goddess), and as such, expects you to use a little common sense about the gifts she lays on your table. You need to clean the fish and before you serve it.

There are many, many books written about the revision process. Go to your local library and get some help. Turn to your writing group, take a workshop or a class. My current favorite is a book called Immersed in Verse: An Informative, Slightly Irreverent & Totally Tremendous Guide to Living the Poet's Life by my friend, the fabulous Allan Wolf. Don't be fooled by the playful cover and title. Yes, it is designed to appeal to young adults, but it is totally helpful to poets and writers who desire to take themselves seriously and create their best work.

Some of my and Allan's suggestions are the same:

1. Sleep on it
2. Save what you have
3. Remember that nothing is precious. There's more where that came from.
4. Play with the poem fearlessly.
5. Read it aloud. Many times.

And here's one Allan suggests that I like and will use in the future:

6. "Highlight the poem's golden moments." Allan says take a yellow highlighter and highlight your poem's three or four best lines. These are the lines that are essential to the core meaning of the poem. These lines are the "…organs – brain, heart, liver, and lungs," and might I say, soul of the poem.

Once you've highlighted these "golden moments," check out the rest of the poem with a critical eye. Do the rest of the words and phrases support and enhance these lines? Or do they simply weight them down like a ball and chain? Set the poem free! As my partner likes to say "Cut, cut, cut!" And as another writer once said, " You must kill your darlings." There will be another chance to use your favorite lines if they simply don't move your golden moments into the limelight.

On the other hand, never horde your favorites either. You have the perfect phrase, but you've been saving it for a piece you haven't gotten around to writing yet. It fits right here in this poem and highlights your golden moment, making it shine. But it was meant for another poem. What's a poet to do? USE IT! Never save anything. Again, there are always more brilliant metaphors where that one came from. You're a writer. You've got a million of 'em.

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here.