March spring break theme: Poetry!

Because I have always worked at another full-time job in addition to my career as a children’s book author, I have had to focus my writing efforts toward producing pieces that I hope will be publishable. Given that I can devote, on average, only an hour a day to my professional writing (my own blog is called “An Hour a Day”), I need to make sure that I wring maximum benefit from that hour, keeping my eyes on the prize of meeting publishers’ deadlines. I love every minute that I spend writing, but the vast majority of my writing minutes have been devoted to scribbling a page a day, in my hour a day, on some children’s book-in-progress.

Then, seven or eight years ago, I had the chance to attend a poetry writing retreat in early January, held at a historic inn in rural Pennsylvania. I loved writing poetry as a child and adolescent, but had written no poetry since, except on the happy occasions when I needed to craft a poem on behalf of a poetry-writing book character.  But that winter I was at a bad place in my personal life, and a dear friend who was planning to attend the retreat urged me to sign up for it. So I did. And poetry came back into my life again.

The first year at the retreat I could hardly write anything. My words remained frozen within me. The second year a few dripped out, drop by drop, from some melting corners of my hurting heart. The third year, poetry gushed out of me in a torrent, a deluge, a Genesis-worthy flood. I continued writing poetry after the retreat ended; I arranged poem-a-day exchanges with fellow writers; I signed up for a wonderful poetry boot camp with poet Molly Fisk; I took a challenge from contests sponsored by Tupelo Press to write poems prompted by first lines of Petrarch sonnets and by fragments from Sappho.

For a while I entertained the idea of trying to “do” something with my poems. I had some on fairy tale themes – perhaps a kid’s book of fairy tale poems? I had many, many, MANY poems about doomed love – perhaps the New Yorker would want me to become a regular contributor?

But then I discovered, after taking a few of my fairy tale poems to my writing group for critique, that I didn’t like hearing suggestions for improvement. Like the worst stubborn novice, I liked my poems just fine the way they were. Rather than sending them off to poetry journals for possible publication (and much more possible rejection), I found that I liked emailing them to a few friends, just to share. Poetry, I realized, was not meant to be part of my writing career. It was something I wanted as a break from my writing career, albeit a break that itself involved writing. It was therapeutic, cathartic, liberating, and most of all fun. Poetry, at least for now, is writing I do not for a publisher, but for me.

So here’s one little fruit from the season I spent writing poems inspired by Sappho. The prompt here was a three-word fragment: “If not, winter.” This blog will be the only place it’s ever published. And, as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine and dandy.

Do You Love Me?

If not, winter

If yes, spring

If not, feet

If yes, wing

If not, empty

If yes, filled

If not, barren

If yes, tilled

If not, hole

If yes, healed

If not, desert

If yes, field

If not, homeless

If yes, home

If not, silence

If yes, poem