I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know
How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
(Photo Collage by Karla Schultz; Used by Permission)
After I wrote today’s poem, “The Quest,” about names, I realized that there was only one poem to spotlight today–this classic by Dickinson. It is one that I have memorized, that I repeat aloud irritatingly often, and in which I was see and hear something new each time.
Background for My Poem “The Quest”:
This week, I talked with a friend who needed to adjust her middle name legally on some documents, so that got me thinking about names and name changes. Then, this morning, I was reading Chapter Ten: “Our Real Names” from one of my go-to books on the craft of poetry (Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge) and a memory from childhood resurfaced.
I rather think I might eventually write a series of poems about dream names, pen names, nick names, secret names, unspoken names, the names of characters, children, and pets, and place names.
Naming is such a rich topic. Perhaps the naming instinct is what gave rise to language itself? Is a name something we are given or something we make?
This book, Poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge, (Three Rivers Press, 1996) turned the key for me. Back in 2003, as the mother of a pre-schooler and a professional fundraising and writing consultant to local and national non-profits and fledgling yoga teacher with a new yoga studio and a new publisher of materials on labyrinths, I was busy with wonderful things, but I began to feel too distant from my core identity as a poet. (One I realized when I was eight years old.) I can’t recall whether I found this book of essays and exercises or it found me. Suffice to say, that although it took three years (from 2003, when I bought my copy, to 2006 when I let it sink all the way in,) this slender volume exploded a lie I had been telling myself: that I couldn’t write a poem unless I was “inspired.”
You might have thought that participating in an MFA program in poetry would already have weeded out that lie, but it was tenacious. The remedy? Reading Wooldridge’s encouraging and funny and poignant prose, and then really giving her “Poem Tickets” exercise a chance (found in Chapter Four, “The Answer Squash.”)
I don’t want to pretend it was easy, because it wasn’t. I tried on my own, but it wasn’t until I asked for help, and my wise artist-friend, Julia Uleberg Swanson, helped me get the words and phrases I had clipped and saved taped onto actual tickets. We had a blast doing that in her studio. Afterwards, I took tickets home and housed them in a silver Revere Ware bowl and kept them on my desk next to my computer. Each day, I would pull one or two or three and then write a poem-ish thing. The only rule was that it had to use each of the phrases I had pulled.
To my surprise, I found that I could do this, day in and day out, until the tickets were gone. I also found that no matter how seemingly random the prompts, each poem spoke in some direct way to my inner or outer experience. I ended up with more than 30 “poem-ish things.” Many remained in that larval state, like this one.
A surprising number of others, buffed lightly with revisions, found their place in the world. Here are a few examples.
“Evidence” was the first poem of mine to be accepted in 2010 for the annual Poet-Artist Collaboration at The Crossings Gallery in Zumbrota, Minnesota.“Orpheus” was first published in Swamp Lily Review in 2013. I included it in my first book-length collection, Still Life with Poppies: Elegies (Kelsay Books, 2016.)I included this sonnet-esque poem, “En Plein Air Ultramarine,” in my second book-length collection, Cloud Song, in 2017.“Clue” was my first poem accepted by Blue Unicorn, in 2018, and I included it in my third book-length collection, Concertina, in 2019
Not only have I had more easy and enjoyment in composing poems since working with the poem tickets, I have been more willing to risk rejection and steadily send work out. Coincidence? Somehow, I think not. Funny, but though I have long loved the cover of Poemcrazy, for its exuberance and its homage to photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, I only today see the outline of the ticket surrounding the title!
I actually make a strong connection between the poem tickets exercise and the NaPoWriMo experience. Without the poem ticket experience ten years before, I am not sure that I would have had the courage to take on the poem-a-day challenge in 2016. How glad I am that I did! Perhaps this summer would be a good time for me to take a new look at Poemcrazy to see it there is another form of practice that will speak to where I am now?
Regarding Today’s Poem: “Windblown”
I don’t have much to say about today’s poem, other than that it was wholly unanticipated. The photographs below illustrate the weird and lovely unfolding in our early spring garden.
What?Hmmmm…Time for spring cleaning on the back porch as well as the garden…What comes first? Flamingo or its egg?
Until tomorrow, let’s all keep our eyes open, see what the day brings!
LESLIE
Like this! That just blew into my mailbox all unasked for, and opportunity to clothe myself in (beautiful but expensive) poetry. As a metaphor, okay, I will buy it! But my wallet stays shut. I do love the easy look and the way the cover model’s hair echoes the shape of a heart.
