The Best Laid Plans...

My apologies, dear blog followers. I can't believe that I haven't posted since the end of January. My intentions are good, my life is very full and getting even moreso. In February I decided to go back to college and enter an online Creative Writing and English program. The program features 8 week terms rather than 16 week semesters which can be really intense when you're taking a writing class, which I did in March and April. I don't have any good excuses for February but there you have it.

In eight weeks of class I amassed a writing portfolio of almost 60,000 words including a fair amount of poetry, a couple short stories, a critical paper, a lot of stream of consciousness writing and many story and poem ideas and snippets. I want to give public thanks to my instructor, Daryl Morazzini, for helping me get back in touch with and encouraging my inner poet, and to encourage you to read a cross-genre short story of his titled When They Come For You. It is a very good story although not an easy read. It tells a non-fiction story using elements of  folklore, mythology and comic books.  

When I decided to go back to school and began looking at this Creative Writing program, I realized that I would need to take two of three offered workshop classes in fiction writing, non-fiction writing and poetry. Although I had written a lot of [really bad to mediocre] poetry in my younger days, for some reason I had rationalized that I didn't have any more ideas for poetry and that perhaps I wasn't a poet at heart. The next natural step was for me to decide that when it came time, I would take the fiction and non-fiction workshops and avoid poetry at all costs. The best laid plans...

Then I had to take the Introduction to Creative Writing class. As expected, we started out with fiction and I wrote a few things that I thought were pretty good. I don't seem to be at a loss for story ideas and I'm lucky that I don't often suffer from writer's block. I came out of those weeks with solid grades, as expected. Then came the non-fiction weeks and I learned that writing non-fiction does not come as easily to me. Then we moved to poetry.

As you can well expect, Daryl gave us poetry writing assignments. I thought I had no poetry left in me and soon realized how absolutely wrong I was. A villanelle, a ghazal, free-verse, a pantoum. It has been like opening a floodgate. I did well on the poetry assignments. In response to one week's collection of poetry he wrote:

You have a strong eye for the "breath" in poems, your lines and your your images are just rolling off my tongue, the words stacked one on top of the other in a flowing and progressive manner. Your poems are slightly mystical, a tinge of darkness flows through them, and I believe that you will access the deepest levels of poetry if you continue pursuing your craft and and your interiority of Self through your brilliant and passionate writing..

Of the next week's collection of poems he said "[i]t was wonderful to read these poems out loud and see them on the paper. Please promise me you will read these at an open mic soon." Say what?!

Look, I have friends who are performance poets but I have never considered reading my poetry aloud at an open mic or a slam or anywhere else. I have a love of words, not a love of the sound of words. We listened to Ginsberg read Kaddish and I understood beat poetry but still don't think of it as my kind of poetry.

He did ask me to promise, though. So I committed to read some poetry aloud at the next salon my writers' group holds. After having done that, I thought "but that isn't an open mic." Daryl has been so kind about my poetry that I feel an obligation to keep the full promise. I will read at an open mic. Soon. I'll let you know how that goes. If you're in town I will probably ask you to come along for moral support. And while I was feeling brave about making that decision I sent off a couple of my best poems from my final collection for the class to a contest. I rationalize I can use it to start getting used to rejection. And I don't think I'll be taking the non-fiction workshop.