Myself, My Poet Self, and Struggling with Poetry
I’ve been trying to write about how I’ve been struggling with poetry lately. Specifically struggling with the poetry publishing world. Truthfully, if I asked myself the series of questions my therapist often reminds me to ask, this struggle is a question about my writing identity.
Am I a poet if the only lines I break are broken further by rejections reading, “We enjoyed your work but decided not to accept your manuscript for publication?” Does the pentameter still exist if no one is there to bob their head to the beat?
I continue to ask myself these questions in my self-deprecating and cruel ways as my writing expands to include fiction and essays and reviews. I’ve made time and space for all these other types of writing primarily because I haven’t been writing much poetry in the last couple of years.
This isn’t fully true. Poetry is still my go-to in moments when an idea or line strike and I’ve transferred more than a few into the computer for…well that’s what I’m wondering. For submission? For a new manuscript? To add to the current manuscript that can’t find a home?
It isn’t clear. The poems come and I’m not sure where they fit or even if they should. I have a few ideas for collections I want to do, trends I can see in my writing. But it doesn’t feel worth it to pursue. I’m not sure if there’s a point to investing the time.
That’s also not exactly true. It feels worth it. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I’ll get more of the same type of rejection I’ve been getting for almost a decade of submitting manuscripts for publication: we like it but no. If I focus on these essays or fiction, the answer hasn’t really been anything yet. There is something to achieve or the possibility of more on the horizon. With poetry, it feels like so many spaces have told me in their own way that I’ve failed.
I can remember being in a former friend’s garage, sitting in a lawn chair, smoking a cigar, and talking about going to New Jersey in the fall for my MFA. The nights that summer were cool and often full of smoking then playing pool. Sometimes at the same time. I was 23 play-acting as a city laborer in his 40’s with two kids in high school.
In between long puffs of smoke that trailed out the open garage door, I told my friend the plan: by the end of the MFA, I’d have a book ready for publication. At worst, I’d get the book accepted somewhere by the time I was 26 and be well on my way to a life of publishing, writing, and doing what the poets do. My surety was absolute. This was the plan. This was what reality would be. This is who I would be in a couple of years from that garage. I watched the smoke curl even slower towards the door.
None of this panned out. Instead, I had a kid and worked on writing in the small moments between my role of keeping them alive and chauffeuring them to different spaces. Once, my manuscript was accepted for publication from a small press. Then, a mere four months after that acceptance, the press stopped publishing full length poetry books. I couldn’t help but read this as a comment on my own work and identity as a poet.
But, I’ve kept submitting. Definitely less often than I did. Definitely with less hope in my internal submission jar. Definitely assuming rejection before I even press send.
This lack of connection with poetry isn’t just the rejection. That’s over simplifying it. A year ago, my father died suddenly. It’s one of the reasons I started this website. Most of my poems include a fictional version of him lurking between the caesuras or dancing all over the stanzas. Instead of directly grieving I asked myself in the quiet hours between cleaning out his house, “What about the book? Do I edit it to include his death?” I hadn’t even found a place to cremate him yet.
Before that, though, there was more. I’ve felt unmoored from the poetry community that I built in grad school and on the east coast. Even before I moved to central Illinois, the people who wrote and loved poetry felt more and more distant from me. Part of it was having a kid when no one else did. Part of it was time. Part of it was my jealousy that they could keep writing and, seemingly, not feel the ache of rejection like I did.
The move to central Illinois made the distance worse. I’m not from here, so incorporating myself into poetry communities is made even more difficult. Again, I have a child and work and budgets that make it difficult to throw myself into conversation with the poets around me. Those that I have gotten closer with live far and have complicated lives as well. We’re all trying to survive.
So, I’ve thought of quitting poetry. Or, quitting the submitting. I can’t really quit the writing. That’s not in the cards. But I could keep it all to myself. Share it at the rare poetry reading. Maybe a couple of those remaining friends. Then I was given the opportunity to teach a poetry workshop. Which, without thought, I jumped at. Yes. Absolutely.
Which gave me pause. How could I teach a poetry workshop in the state I was in? How could I engage with students who loved, hated, or struggled with poetry while I didn’t even know if that poetry world was what I wanted? I settled on the fact that I was asked to teach Business Writing and Literature of Religion with no background in either before and did a damn good job. I could do this too.
As I prepped for the upcoming semester, I found myself reaching out to the local library to try to restart a poetry open mic that was run for years before Covid threw a wrench into it. Why? I can’t even make it to the bookstore open mic without fear that someone may ask me to read a poem. While driving back from donating plasma (another thing, another way to stem the increasing price of everything) I pulled into the recreation center in town. I asked if they had a writing group. If not, could I run one focused on poetry?
When I got back into the car, there were at least three versions of my self screaming at the person in the driver’s seat. Again, why? Why would I put myself in a situation where poetry was centered? What inside me was driving me towards something, anything with poetry?
I picked up The Science of Things We Can Believe by Christen Noel Kauffman and started reading it. I don’t know this poet nor was I familiar with the book. It was one of many I grabbed with some remaining professional development funds I needed to use or it would disappear. I think I picked it because I liked the cover. And I remember feeling drawn to the small excerpt I read.
I started reading this poetry book and kept putting it down. I’m in two book clubs so those needed to get read and I needed to prep more for the semester. Then I picked up Kauffman’s book again. Started from where I left off. I felt the poems wash over me like sweat on a hot day though my skin felt like it wicked it all away. I put it down again, angry that I couldn’t focus on the words, the book, the writing that was clearly drawing me back.
I couldn’t read anything else. I felt drawn to Kauffman’s words and it felt so silly because these aren’t even the typical poems I love and why was it the only thing I could read? I was angry at the pull. I was frustrated that I couldn’t just leave it alone.
And I started again. Stopped. Started. And the poems made me mmmmm like my love was gently caressing my scalp. All at once, a fog lifted.
I started understanding the poems and rereading them. I felt connected with parts of the book that struggled with faith and love and existence. Aren’t all poems somehow about existence? And I felt connected again.
I don’t know if this was something special in the book or if it was just the right time to have picked it up. But I’m grateful to it. It made me feel less alone.
I’m still not fully connected with my poet self. Even writing this, I’m struggling with the different plans and ideas I have, the poems I’ve yet to write. I’m nursing a struggle from last Friday when I took out my notebook to write and the words came in jumbled, confused messes. That, and a person in the room could not stop chatting directly to me.
Still the work of poetry felt harder then, made me take a few days to readjust, to believe that this didn’t mean the end of me, the poet. If this writing thing was easy, I’d still be doing it but would it be the thing that makes me feel like I belong in this world? Would it be the thing that keeps me tethered to the various parts of myself?
I want to have my poetry shared with others. I want to hold a book with my name on it and weep for my father, finally. I want, more than anything, to believe I am a poet, that what I create matters, that I have a voice which will know when it should be quiet and when it shouldn’t. I’m working on it.
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