Archive for the ‘being a poet’ Category

Ana Ribeiro, fellow poet and friend from Wilmington, NC wrote on her blog a nice poem for Easter … about walking around the river walk that overlooks the Cape Fear River, being alone and just noticing things. “Easter in Wilmington,” by Ana Ribeiro is here. Having lived for many years in Wilmington, this poem brought me back there in the reading of it. I was there when I read the poem… hearing the river move against the shore… feeling reflective… noticing things… writing about what I see.

Today was a nice Easter day. I spent time with friends from my church, after attending the 3 hour long Mass last night. Then I went to the Weaver Street Market area, a hang-out in Carrboro. I thought I’d sit outside, enjoy the warmth (temps were in the 80s today). I had brought two poetry collections, one by Anne Sexton (her complete poems) and one by Sylvia Plath (her complete poems). I don’t know why I decided on those two collections, as I wasn’t in a depressive mood – those two poets clearly had a thing for depression or with depression. Anyway, I thought it would lead to some inspiration. I sometimes feel like I have something to write, something to share, but need something, some inspiration to get it out.

I actually didn’t get to reading much. I spent the early evening hours editing some poetry by my friend Ryan. He had asked me to edit a couple collections of his and this is the first of two. I’m amazed at how long this is taking me, though. I’m not even halfway though. I guess I want to be thorough and feel like my name will be connected with this in some way.

Anyway, I guess I also wanted to meet people in this town. Perhaps being on the computer isn’t the best way to do that. I only got people asking me, “Is this chair free?” To which, I’d respond, “of course, it is, I’m alone.” I think if you spend time reading something or writing… or just sitting somewhere with pencil and paper, that inspires more conversations or makes it more likely that someone will make conversation. I remember last year, at Wrightsville Beach, doing some writing and having someone at one point ask if I was an artist. Now, come to think of it, maybe having one’s head in a book wouldn’t make one look open to conversation. I think a book of poems will make one less likely to look lost in one’s own world.

I don’t know… when I do get in moods like this, and have that feeling that there is something I need to write, I tend to read a poem, then look up, look around, notice things. Even when I write about something I might notice outside, at this location here in Carrboro, or at the beach, if I were to go to the beach … something that catches my eye, inspires me, I think this could be an expression of something from my subconscious… something that was telling me I need to write, even before I knew what I wanted to write. I mean if I go to the beach and write about things that inspire me once I get there, I have known times when I felt like I had satisfied that desire within me, that had expressed itself before I even got to the beach. Maybe I need an editor for this to see if I’m making any sense here.

Nothing inspired me, and I didn’t have that spirit that Ana had, as she expresses in her blog posting. Maybe I needed to just spend more time observing and writing. Maybe I need to do so… maybe it is healthy, cathartic or something like that. Maybe it becomes a need for folks, like us.

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The appeal of poetry about family: Poetry versus Greeting Card Verse

I remember long ago being told about the difference between poetry and greeting card verse. As a poet, you should strive to avoid greeting card verse type poems. As mature poets, that might seem like a rather juvenile bit of advice, maybe. However, I was thinking of this when I considered some poems that I wrote about or dedicated to family members – my father, or my grandparents. I was wondering, what appeal could these have for a general audience outside my family. At a recent poet reading (at St. Andrews College), Jeff Wyatt read a poem read a poem dedicated to his father. Probably no one in the audience, other than maybe 2 or 3 folks even met his father.

What does this have to do with the topic of greeting card verse? Well, in a greeting card, one might right something for a father that could be given to any father on Father’s Day, for example. Jeff’s poem and the poems that I’ve written to my father, these could not be applied to any father. Jeff’s father was a pilot, so I wonder if there was a connection there. Maybe someone listening to that poem, who had or has a father who is a pilot would connect because of that. There is something more though. I appreciated Jeff’s poem, yet my father wasn’t a pilot and I don’t know any pilots. I cannot really put into words what it was that allowed me to appreciate Jeff’s poem.

Now, let’s turn to my poems about family. My poems had to do with the dynamics of the unique relationship between my father and me, or between me and my father and my grandparents. I might have to reproduce the poems here to make my point, but maybe not. Maybe, though there are very unique aspects to the circumstances of our lives and our relationships – myself and my parents, grandparents, I think that perhaps there are universal themes here. Some themes that stand out in my poems are the ways in which a guy (I, myself) is the same or different than his father or grandparents and how that plays out in the relationship over time… What a family tries to leave behind for the next generation… how a guy learns to appreciate these things only later in life.

As a poet, we have to have faith that our listeners will be able to appreciate something within our poetry, even when it seems we are writing something that is so personal that it would have no appeal other than with our own family.

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How does a poet find something new and original to say?… something creative? Something that will astonish the reader? I think one idea is to write what is personal – personal experiences and perspectives. Jean Jones said to be honest. I think the “Confessional Poets” were great at this. Confessional poetry involves thoughts, feelings and experiences that are quite personal, certainly honest. In some cases these might be quite unflattering things that the poet is sharing.

This is similar to the idea of what separates a poem from greeting card verse. A greeting card is generic and can be used, applied to an occasion and given to anyone that fits the occasion. For example, a father’s day card could be given to any father, or if not any father, any number of fathers. Sure, not every father’s day card works for anyone and any father, and for that reason we spend time finding “the right one.” However, there is a generic, if not cliché nature to greeting cards. In contrast, if I write a poem about my father, I’m going to be talking about my own unique experience of having known one person in particular. These are very much my own feelings, experiences, thoughts and memories. Maybe others can relate to what I write, and we do hope experience is universal and shared. However, such a poem, if I do it well, or right, expresses something unique; unique about my memories, the relationship, and about my father in particular.

I think this is partially what we seek to publish. I don’t mean specifically, poems about fathers. I mean poems that avoid generalities, cliché, greeting card verse.
Maybe this can be helpful for people to know who might want to get published on Word Salad.

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Hopefully, there are insights to be learned from our personal stories, or at least new inspirations for new poems. I remember when I started to see myself as a poet for the first time. It was late in 1991. I think it wasn’t till I moved to Wilmington, NC in April 92 that I really thought of myself as a poet. Maybe – it’s hard to say now. I had never read my poems to more than 2 people prior to April 1992. I had a mentor named Martin Kirby, that I started visiting and sharing my poetry with him in mid to late 1991. I’d sometimes show up and read to both him and his wife – they had a Sunday tradition of doing that and I was asked to join the tradition, for a while, till I moved.

Interestingly, I moved to Wilmington for a job as technical writer, at Corning. I should say that this job was more technical than creative or literary writing.

It was an interesting time. I was writing about pain, and loss and love that I had for a woman named Celta, who died in a fire. I didn’t know that I’d survive that loss and that the love I had would be a source of comfort or affirmation. I just wanted to escape, back then in 1991. And a part of me didn’t have any hope for living. I was almost suicidal. It really is ironic that I could feel so much pain having known such love. Maybe not, as I lost the source of that love. Maybe it was the love that kept me alive, made me what I am today… even though, all I seemed to know back then was pain.

I did know love though and that I was good – I don’t mean good as in good versus evil (though in that sense, I did know I was a good person) but that I was worthy, lovable, special. I know that sounds quaint but it is important. One cannot erase years of shyness but the positive feelings, dormant though they were, did make a difference. I doubt I would have otherwise shared things about myself, shared my poetry with others. Yes, indeed, that was it. In terms of sharing poetry, it wasn’t a thing I did just for me. I thought it was about sharing, giving.
And I knew that I had value. I had things to share. I wonder how quaint this sounds?

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I was at a reading Tuesday, this week and someone told me that my poems that she heard, this night, seemed to have more of a quality of reaching out beyond personal experiences or something to that effect. Granted, she has not been able to read or hear many poems by me. What was ironic was that the poems that I read, which she said had this quality of reaching out to others, were about very personal experiences. I had two poems about shyness. One was about being ignored or the way shy guys seem to be misunderstood – we probably seem like we aren’t interested in others, or we are rude or that we just don’t want to talk, even when that is the farthest from the truth. The other one was about feeling invisible, unnoticed.

It is really embarrassing to be so shy. It’s also true that shyness is about being embarrassed a great deal. I should write more about this.

I also shared my poem entitled, “A Question for Anne” – for Anne Sexton. I state that I understand what she meant when she wrote “To Bedlam and Part Way Back.” I was always fascinated by her story and enjoyed helping others in my work in the psychiatric/mental health field. I think it is fascinating to understand another person and their pain, suffering – well, I mean in my career it was fascinating how we could help people when you could really empathize and understand in that way. It’s too bad for Anne that the healing power of poetry was not enough.
Here’s the poem again, slightly revised just this past week:

A Question For Anne

I know what she meant
when Anne Sexton wrote,
“To Bedlam and Part
Way Back.”
Yet that’s where our stories
diverge. She never made it
all the way back.

While she found the healing power
of poetry,
in her life,
like her contemporary,
Sylvia Plath,
she took her own life.

So, I want to ask you,
Anne,
in that next life
have you finished
your awful rowing
toward God?
Are you there, now?

By Bruce Whealton
November 18, 2009

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