BornWilder

Author. Certified Coach. Catalytic Speaker

Poetry

Onward and Forward

by

upclose of orange chinese lantern with blurred background of woods in winter
[See end of post for text overlay.]

Joy in 2022

It’s 2022, and I keep thinking of the word Joy. Maybe I return to it to move past 2021—a reflex to the news cycle. Perhaps Joy is the mantra 2022 needs.

Joy Joy Joy

It’s a beautiful-looking word with the tall majestic “J,” the perfectly round “o,” and the low-hanging “y.”

While looking for ways to spread joy, I found Poems of Joy, Hope, and Community to Bring Us Together, a compilation from the Academy of American Poets. Here’s a few of my favorites:

“When Giving Is All We Have” by Albert Rios
“Darling Coffee” by Meena Alexander
“[I wandered lonely as a Cloud]” by William Wordsworth
“To All My Friends” by May Yang

One way to pursue joy? (You know what I’m going to say.) Write!

Back in April 2020, I wrote a post on lyric poetry. (My most popular post to date.) It was early-pandemic, and I needed to find my way through the emotions of it. I shared my daily poems for a while. But you don’t have to show anyone what you write (and the content doesn’t have to be joyful). Writing for the sake of writing is pursuing joy—an inner feeling that endures hardship, a steady ship in turbulent waters.

Get started today

For quick reference, the tips below are pulled from the blog post mentioned above.

Tips to write a lyric poem

handwritten poem in cursive on plain white paper
“I opened the window / and laughter blew in–
  • Start with “I” –the subjective and personal experience.
  • Do something in the poem. A simple act you do often. “I opened the window.”
  • Think of something that relates to the act you wrote down. It could be another action or an idea, a whimsical thought, or an emotion. “I opened the window and the breeze brushed my cheek.” “I opened the window and my eyes softened.” “I opened the window, tears down my cheeks.”
  • Keep going, making associations between physical actions, ideas, emotions, or thoughts.
  • Try not to think too much, let the first action inspire the next action or idea, and so on.
  • Having trouble? You know the game where you say a word and another person has to say the first thing that pops into their head? It’s like that. If you can’t think of anything, go back to the physical act that you know. “I opened the window and walked to the kitchen. I sliced a strawberry and thought of summers with my grandmother…”

Have fun. Stay safe. Find joy.

Text overlay on lantern image:
The soil has moved
over thousands of years
to make way–there is no end
though the end draws near. We wash
each day our dirt
again and again
and again
we wake and sweep the front porch.

Poem from Coronavirus Daily project. Image and text by author. All rights reserved.

On Poetry and Space

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There is no shortage of cultural and global issues to be part of right now. I donate, volunteer, and support. But I’m constantly at odds with where to put my public service energy, often becoming overwhelmed by all the options*.

I also get sidetracked, wondering if the space where others live inspires or suppresses them? I can’t help but consider: Can examining our spaces–our homes and communities–change our relationship with them? Does that change help the common good? Since 2016, my answer keeps coming back as yes.

Writers are told to follow their obsessions.

I’ve written posts on poetry and space. Posts that barely scratch the surface of how I think about the topics. I need more dedicated time to weave these threads together. Next week, I start a grant application, that, if awarded, will fund research on poetry, space, and architecture. (Friend and writer Rita Lewis is helping me.) I’m also giving a seminar on the subject in October.

When I first researched architectural space, I saw a pattern. Historians and architects couldn’t describe the space created by the built environment. Instead, they turned to poetry, as some of us do when we want to understand what we cannot see. The pattern was revelatory to me. Poetry and architecture touched a core identity I struggled with: the idea of home. I felt others could benefit too.

Gaston Bachelard, in The Poetics of Space, writes, “Come what may the house helps us to say: I will be an inhabitant of the world, in spite of the world.” And Louis Hammer, in “Architecture and the Poetry of Space,” writes, “Every building is a palimpsest on which are written countless poems of space.” People are inhabitants. As inhabitants, people create poems. You’re in a poem right now. What does that poem say?

*Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement

If you get overwhelmed when it comes to public service, read Stanford University’s Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement. From the website: “The Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement describe a range of possibilities by which we can make a contribution to the common good.” Then take a survey that might help you find your path to civic engagement. It was built for students, but anyone can take it–no data is recorded.

Quote and photo by author. (From “Emotional House” in Anything That Happens.) All rights reserved.

Lazy Summer Days

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To have a writing process, one needs to be writing.

I kept up as well as I could during the pandemic lockdown amidst all the stress and added work of remote learning for my school-aged children. After the release of Anything That Happens, I shifted my writing energy to marketing. Now that I’m in the midst of summer days, full of disparate activities and routine upheaval, I need to get back to the writer’s chair. Yes, I am writing right now. But blog posts are all that I’m writing at the moment. And it’s not enough.

It’s likely I have said this before, but from what I know, important things need repeating. A sentiment reaffirmed by meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach. She talks about meditation as an act of remembering. Remember to breathe. Remember to clear the mind, focus on the sensations in the body and the sounds in the room. Be present. She describes the act of remembering as “waking up.”

Writing is the foundation to what keeps my happy, happy. I’ve always written first and foremost for me. I need the mental and emotional dump. Sitting at my desk, listening to The Hours soundtrack by Philip Glass, and writing poetry eases stress. It’s a place I am my honest expression, my “waking up.” And I’m usually good at feeding my writing process. This summer is different for many reasons. But I’m certain the pandemic, and the year that it consumed, continues to underlie all other stressors. I don’t have to read the news to know I’m not alone. Every therapist I know, from massage to clinical psychologist, is busier than ever.

Last month, I mentioned relaxing into the disorder of the summer. I adapted pretty well but recently started feeling like I was being ricocheted through the days. Just this week, I realized a crucial piece that keeps me grounded was missing: Writing. Today, I remember there is always time to write. There has to be. Everyone around me, especially my raucous children, is better off when I slow down and clear my mind–sometimes by meditation, most often by writing.

I feel better already.

Another virtual book launch question answered.

Where does shame now live (or hide, or fade, or die) for you?

When I answered this question at the launch, my first thought was the book. It was the logical answer. I had spent years dissecting my shame and studying guilt. The book became my container to place it all, polished and readied for show. But…

The more I thought about the question, the more I saw shame’s tendrils in my life. Why do I struggle with being an authority? What areas in my life do I still feel like I don’t deserve something? What more is there to uncover?

So …

I know I don’t wear a veil of shame every day.

I also know that I held onto shame for so long it changed how I see myself at a deep level. So deep that I don’t notice it–I believe it’s who I am.

Shame doesn’t beat me down like it once did. But, I believe shame still tells me I’m not good enough sometimes. Writing a book doesn’t cure those feelings. Sharing the book and talking about shame helps tremendously (like this question from the launch). And luckily, I have memory. Similar to remembering to breathe and remembering to write, I remember that the more I remain true to my honest self, the tentacles of shame will let go.

Photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Lyric Poetry

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My school-aged children attended their last day at school on March 13, 2020. The following week I transitioned my house and work-life to include homeschool. On Sunday morning I woke up early, before everyone else in the house, and cried. A good, deep cry as I sat at my new “teacher’s desk.” Then I wrote the above poem and felt a wash of relief, so I decided to write a daily poem during North Carolina’s stay-at-home orders. I post them at Coronavirus Daily and on Facebook.

As long as I’ve been writing, I’ve written lyric poetry. In fifth grade, I wrote a poem that prompted the principal to call my parents.

In Poetry as Survival, Gregory Orr says, “How to respond to the strangeness and unpredictability of our own emotional being? One important answer is the lyric, the ‘I’ poem dramatizing inner and outer experience.”

The poem in fifth grade was fiction, but I used the dramatized “I” in order to relate to the content of the poem, which was about sexual abuse. It was 1985, missing kids were on milk cartons and “stranger danger” had been debunked. While writing the poem for a class assignment, I didn’t know I was trying to reconcile that people I trusted might harm me. I used “I” in the poem to get inside my feelings about the new information that changed my view of the world. My teacher thought it was a confession, which prompted the call from the principal.

What is lyric poetry?

Lyric Poetry* – (From Greek for “lyre,” an ancient stringed instrument.) Originally, poetry was meant to be sung, accompanied by music from the lyre or lute.

Lyric poetry now refers to a category of poetry (distinct from narrative poetry and dramatic poetry). A lyric poem is:

  • short in form
  • concentrated in its expression
  • subjective in its observations
  • personal in subject matter
  • song-like in quality

The relief that came over me when I wrote that first coronavirus-inspired poem is a strong thread of what has sustained me through the past five weeks. My family and I are extremely fortunate so far. We’re healthy. We still have income. We have food and shelter. The added stress in my life is, at this point, minimal in comparison to so many others. But the stress is there–the pandemic touches us all. And just like in fifth grade, writing lyric poetry helps reconcile my emotions.

Orr tells us that “Human culture ‘invented’ or evolved the personal lyric as a means of helping individuals survive the existential crises represented by extremities of subjectivity and also by such outer circumstances as poverty, suffering, pain, illness, violence, or loss of a loved one.”

The Covid-19 pandemic prompted a larger-than-usual collective existential crisis. As a society, we’re redefining what is “essential” in our daily lives. We’re questioning value and purpose. When this is all just a story we tell the next generations, what will we say changed within us? What strengthened? Why?

Write a lyric poem!

It’s difficult to feel hope and suffering–two opposing emotions–at the same time. It’s even tougher to sustain feeling them indefinitely. Yet that is what the pandemic is prompting us to do: be hopeful that we will overcome and be mindful and sympathetic to the suffering.

What do we do with our new emotions? It’s not like any problems we had in our lives before the pandemic disappeared. How do we cope?

In an interview, Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says, “Joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens…Happiness is not steady, but joy can be steady, and that’s what we really want. We want the happiness that lasts.”

For me, writing and sharing a daily poem is a joy through the pandemic that doesn’t depend on what happens. Whether it’s a tough day homeschooling kids, hedging our finances against the possibility of losing income, hearing stories of those suffering because of the pandemic, or the blanket uncertainty in our collective recovery, I have a joy I can depend on. It’s not exactly the deep joy that Br. Steindhl-Rast talks about. I think it’s my way to sustain steady happiness. Writing daily poems built a tangible thread through uncertain times. I transformed my inner experience into something I could see and share.

Tips to write a lyric poem.

I opened the window and laughter blew in
  • Start with “I” –the subjective and personal experience.
  • Do something in the poem. A simple act you do often. “I opened the window.”
  • Think of something that relates to the act you wrote down. It could be another action or an idea, a whimsical thought, or an emotion. “I opened the window and the breeze brushed my cheek.” “I opened the window and my eyes softened.” “I opened the window, tears down my cheeks.”
  • Keep going, making associations between physical actions, ideas, emotions, or thoughts.
  • Try not to think too much, let the first action inspire the next action or idea, and so on.
  • Having trouble? You know the game where you say a word and another person has to say the first thing that pops into their head? It’s like that. If you can’t think of anything, go back to the physical act that you know. “I opened the window and walked to the kitchen. I sliced a strawberry and thought of summers with my grandmother…”
  • Have fun. Stay safe. Find joy.

*Myers, Jack, Don C. Wukasch, eds. Dictionary of Poetic Terms. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2003.

On Poetry

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Poet Ralph Angel once said to a student: “I’m not interested in the story of my life. I’m interested in the fact of my life. The fact of my reality…any poet worth her salt…deals with their shit directly.”

In an interview with poet Gregory Orr, Krista Tippett said, “To talk about poetry is to talk about life.” Orr responded, “I hope so.”

In 2012, a friend and fellow alum of Vermont College of Fine Arts started Bite My Manifesto, a website designed to inspire. Here’s the beginning of my writing manifesto: “I started writing to grasp the chaos which is human nature. I kept writing to identify myself within said chaos.”

I’m interested in the fact of my life.
I started writing to grasp the chaos which is human nature.
To talk about poetry is to talk about life.

Pull up a chair and let us talk about life. Let’s deal with our own shit. As poet Lucille Clifton wrote, let’s celebrate:

that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Poetry as Order

Why does talking about poetry mean talking about life?

The poet’s work is to put words to that which can’t be seen; to express that which leaves us, otherwise, speechless. To some, it might seem counter-intuitive that writing poems is an act of order–don’t poets spend a bunch of time frolicking? Yes. (At least I do.) But there’s also an unromantic side to poetry.

When I write, I take what is going on inside my body–questions, ideas, memories, emotions–and place it onto something tangible.

Once all the “stuff” is out of my head, I look at the written words and begin to shape them. I decide how I want readers to enter the poem; how much tension or rhythm or surprise; how long I want them to linger on a line or how quickly I want them to run down the page; where to pause and pause just a breath longer; lead them all the way to the exit–not an end, but a threshold they walk through, that may just lead them back to the beginning.

What started as a jumble of words, becomes a cohesive piece of communication. It’s as if I can see my interior landscape before me.

But that is the talk of poem-making.

Order is also for the reading of poems. We reach for poems in times of need–to express our love or to give company to our loneliness. Poems help us order our interior landscape, not by providing direction but by reminding us we are not alone, and we have the strength to persevere.

To talk about a poem is to talk about the stirring and aching of the heart, the joy in a drop of rain, and the struggles of identity. Poems ask us to see ourselves in the words and also to accept that those words will outlive us.

In other words: You are poetry.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. Maybe one day we will sit around the table together and talk about the stuff of life via poetry. Until then, here’s a few resources to get you started.

Poetry Unbound at The On Being Project – “Immerse yourself in a single poem, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Short and unhurried; contemplative and energizing. Anchor your week by listening to the everyday poetry of your life, with new episodes on Monday and Friday during the season.” (Approximately 7 minutes.) For more poems and writing, visit their Poetry & Writing section.

Academy of American Poets: Sign up to receive a poem a day in your email. Learn more about Poem in Your Pocket Day. There’s teaching materials, a database of poems, and poems for kids.