I thought about writing up a massive overview of 2019, poetically speaking, but on examination, I think I have covered all the highlights already in blog posts, so I'll spare you the self-aggrandizing horn blowing. Suffice it to say that 2019 was one of my most satisfying years as a poet, and 2020 looks to be on a par.
We started with a package on the doorstep on January 1, and Love's Compass has continued to not only sell well, but has enjoyed an awful lot of attention around the interwebs and beyond. It's a book I'm very proud of, and I'm happy that others are enjoying it too. One of my goals in writing at all is to speak to others about our commonalities. The details may vary, altho usually not as much as one might imagine, but the basic emotions, motivations, and outcomes are very consistent. One of the ways I stay on a relatively even keel (aside from my therapist) is poetry, and I'm glad that it often has the power to connect with others instead of just being a place for my brain to let off pressure.
There is the art of it as well. Those readers who have known me since the Hills School know that I was a visual artist as well as a writer from my earliest days. I have a theory that I actually drew the most before I learned language, and that makes sense. I am not much motivated beyond needlework and the occasional self-published chapbook to do much visual stuff, but poetry and writing in general has proven to be tremendously gratifying. Nothing is ever perfect, nothing is ever finished, but learning to live with that reality has been a life lesson in itself.
Today is Valentine's Day, and for years I wrote poems for my Beloved in honor of the occasion. Somehow that tradition has fallen by the wayside, as with so much else when the fires of new love burn down to steady coals. I have always prided myself to be able to write on demand, but I am more selective about my subjects now. Here's a poem from early on, wrong season but right sentiment. Enjoy all your loves, every day:
Romeo in July
It is hard
to be Romeo after a day at the shop,
smelling of
tires, black-uniformed, exhausted,
hard to keep
awake in the dim trailer light,
Martha
Stewart declaiming her pumpkin spoonbread
in her
helpful, monotonous way.
It is
difficult, Manny, Moe& Jack aside,
to work up a
spark, but you did,
our long
separations gasoline to light
a few short
hours on a Friday, several Fridays in July.
It is hard,
too, to be Juliet without poison,
long drives
after cubicle days,
Great
Gildersleeve riding shotgun,
Jack Benny
soothing Carmichael in the rumble seat,
Juliet with
no nurse to run interference,
while I slip
into something easier
to take off
again, Juliet who can tell by now
Barrymores
from the understudies,
Juliet of
the ample belly and speckled thighs,
Romeo of the
hand-rolled smokes,
twelve-step
clubs and weekend father’s taxi.
The Thruway
our balcony,
our masked
ball a couple of plates of chicken fingers,
popcorn and
a video, our hopeless romance
aroma of a
discount candle,
wooden fish
dangling from curtain rods,
smoky blue
eyes hovering in bedside lamplight,
rimmed with
sleep, slipping to the edge of the stage,
no encores,
the merciful knife of night
ending our drawn-out
scene.
CAR 11/15/06
