The After-Times: Poetry During a Pandemic, and Maybe Beyond

 

When COVID-19 was recognized as a threat to an unvaccinated population back in March, 2020, my employer, a seasonal retreat center gearing up for another round of workshops, sent the staff home for about two weeks, to be on the safe side. My Beloved and I picked up a bottle of minty hand sanitizer at the Dollar Store for safety’s sake. Two weeks soon became five months, and I was finally furloughed at the beginning of August, after working remotely. I'd watched the call volume drop sharply as the season’s opening was pushed further and further out, then finally cancelled. 

 

 While some writers thrive under pressure, I am not one of them. I had my freelancing experience back in the mid-2000s, when I’d saved up a few bucks from a miserable gig at Cosmodemonic Communications. I got by well enough, but it wasn’t the time to begin a freelance career. I’ve come to learn I need the security of a 9 to 5 to free myself up enough to be creative. It does cut into my time to do so, but it’s the only way for me. 

 

 After I was furloughed, I panicked. I tried to continue my routine- short walk at 12:00 noon, my own low impact version of yoga in the morning. Despite adequate unemployment support, I still worried I’d be out on the street in a heartbeat. A friend offered me some job coaching time, which I needed for sanity’s sake as well as to bring my own employment worthiness up to snuff. It turned out I was a far more marketable commodity than I thought. I picked up a couple of unpleasant gigs over the months, and with every new set of tasks, every new computer program, I realized that I actually missed my retreat center work. 

 

 I was called back in March of 2021, a year after this unimaginable era had begun. Again I worked from home until the beginning of July, when those of us remaining on the payroll (about half as many folks as before) reconvened on campus to birth this ‘bridge’ season. Half as many classes and participants. All must be vaccinated. Incredibly, there was kickback about this, from staff and guests alike. I gained a private office, so many had been let go. I work better and harder, and get to crank WQXR between calls. I go home exhausted. I sleep in fits and starts. I worry about the second round of the virus. 

 

 I spent a good deal of time while working from home organizing files, discarding that which no longer thrills me. I began a project to scan my old newspaper clippings onto a flash drive, which will itself probably be obsolete in a few years. I finalized my Ziegfeld poems, and sent strong query letters to a dozen college presses. I compiled a chapbook of fairly recent poems, and almost printed it before I spilled a cup of coffee on my old laptop on Memorial Day. I could reconstruct the work, much of which was backed up onto a flash drive of its own. It was the harsh reality of how dependent I was on technology to practice my art that seemed to shake me so. 

 

 In the last year I’ve had to replace both the computer and the printer. The printer in particular is the latest version of my old reliable HP, but a shittier design and now with a Wifi mind of its own. The madness between us never ends, and it has come close to ending up in the street several times. The chapbook remains unpublished. I am stymied about the cover art, usually my favorite part of the home printing process. A so-called arts festival I’d planned to sell at turned out to be a scam, and live readings are still few and far between. I let go the rush, and settled into civilian life for a while. 

 

 I’ve been writing a monthly column for Albany Poets (albanypoets.com) in the last few months, and my last piece talked about the possibility of retiring from the Poetry Life. It’s still a tempting notion. I felt I had nothing left to say, and that few others had much to say to me. Even the silly tricks of erasure and freewriting produced nothing to jog a poem from my noggin. My routine, especially without regular readings in the flesh, provided little stimulation for the arts. I gained back the 20 pounds I’d managed to carve from my frame as quickly as it had come off. A monthly group of poet friends continue to Zoom, and I’ve always managed to scrape up something to share, but I never felt the need to produce much more. 

 

 I had no regrets. I’m happy with what I’ve written so far. If I was to pass away tomorrow, there would be files and clippings to keep my loved ones occupied until grief exhausted itself. But one occurrence did inspire me again, an odd one. I am in the habit of googling exes, as so many of us are. I determined that one of mine had passed in March, of what I could not tell. It was the most bare bones obituary I’d ever seen, and sad for someone who’d been so interested in so much around him, and himself. As my Beloved pointed out, there was no one left to write his story. I wasn’t grief-stricken myself. Too much time had passed, and it had been a good break for me. But the idea of no obituary must have finally touched on a poetry nerve. I wrote a poem, one that I’m pretty happy with. I’ll run it by the Zoom group next week to see if it can stand on its own, without a knowledge of intimate history behind it. And maybe it will see the light of day sometime.  

 

 

Speechless: A Month Without Sound

I thought it was just a momentary hoarseness, the after effects of a particularly good New Year’s Day gathering. By the third day, though, as the roughness lingered, I began to worry. The last and only time I lost my voice was shortly before I resigned from Cosmodemonic Communications, back in the late 2000s. My body pulled all sort of imploding tricks then. I had rashes under my arms that responded only to a cream prescribed by a doctor who’d treated victims of Hiroshima’s atomic aftereffects. I vomited violently one morning, so hard that my face was purple with burst blood vessels. And, my voice left me, a final sign that it was time to go.

I am under no such stress now. There is still promise for 2019, artistically at least, and the other aspects of life are under the usual illusion of control and serenity. I stayed home from work, hoping a full day of two of rest would fix things, but they did not. I began to worry that I’d done some actual damage to my vocal cords. I held back tears frequently, afraid that sobs would do more harm. I checked my neck for swellings or lumps, the common American paranoia that all too often becomes reality. I finally called my doctor, and with forceful croaks, made an appointment.

She found nothing wrong, and prescribed vocal rest, and an appointment with an ENT if there was no improvement. My day job is on the phone, so vocal rest was difficult. My employers were kind, and found work for me to do, but even so, I took two more sick days, hoping physical rest would speed my recovery. I finally called the ENT my Beloved went to a few months ago for a definitive opinion.

Dr. K’s office was neat and calming, but the diplomas on the wall revealed a career of over fifty years, older by far than the ‘80s pastels in the waiting room wallpaper. His receptionist, a pleasant, efficient woman, handed me a form to fill out that had been created on a typewriter. As I waited, she worked on her IBM Selectric, the satisfying clicks a comfort in my muteness. The doctor looked down my throat, and needing to get closer, told me he wanted to send a scope down. I’d been afraid this was what he’d want. He tried to comfort me, saying, “I do this with little children all the time.” “They’re not old enough to be scared,” I replied in my raspy squeak.

Three sprays of Novocain down my right nostril later, Dr. K gently snaked the camera down to my larynx. I felt a tiny movement, nothing more. He saw no infection, damage, or any of my other worst fears. The diagnosis was the same as the others had guessed, “mild” laryngitis, and again I was told to rest my voice.  

During all this silence, because this is what I do, I made plans to live the rest of my life without a voice. There was poetry, which could always be read by others, or just given up altogether. There was looking for another job, because clearly I couldn’t continue where I was. I wondered how much I would make on Disability, and how long it would take to get during a long-term government shut-down. I wondered how I’d manage visiting my parents, who worry about everything, and how I would hide my own worry to comfort their fears.

I worked on a little chapbook to take my mind off things. No new poems, but an old manuscript that had been rejected several times. I did some trimming, and started laying it out in my primitive way. I spent a week on a collage for the cover that I’ve since ditched in favor of a totally different concept. My Beloved and I watched TV, as we always do, flipping through all the YouTube vids from Disneyland fanatics. We’ll be totally prepared, if we ever bother.

And of course my voice came back, little by little. I’d test it every morning before I got out of bed. The high notes are still out of reach, but I can get by. I’m back on the phones at work. There are a couple poetry readings to get to next week. I’m featuring in late February, and hope to have that crazy chapbook put together by then, under my own wobbly Flying Monkey imprint. And, as long as the TSA folks stay on the job, the Florida trip is back on. 

The Thrill Is Gone: Bookstores and Me

          Back in the day, after college and before the lost decade I spent at Cosmodemonic Communications, I had a long career in the retail book industry. Beginning with a short stint at the old Waldenbooks in the barely-there Hudson Valley Mall, to three years at the dearly departed Ariel Booksellers in New Paltz, to a couple of years at Norman Levine’s Editions in Boiceville, books were my close companions, night lights of the mind, portals to times and lives I wanted to dip into without commitment, return to without hesitation. 

            I’m feeling lately like maybe I’ve read too many books. I can’t tell you the last novel I finished, or even collection of poetry. I used to spend hours in the stacks, happily pawing through the shredded covers for one treasure, a new poet or an old one I hadn’t read enough of, a magazine printed the year I was born, or even a few craft or cookbooks I’d spend more time reading than emulating. 

            I can still straighten a shelf up like nobody’s business. I remember dusting the fronts, the tops, filling the carts with new arrivals to merge into an already bursting shelf, and figuring out how to make them all fit. I knew the business. But who knew the business would change so drastically in my lifetime. I’m sure the clues were there, while I had my nose buried in Sylvia Plath’s journal or Allen Ginsberg’s collected works. The Internet. Before my current position, I had a final fling at the book business, and failed at my post badly. Unsupported, with a staff of just one (me), I spent my days alone washing windows, mopping the floor, making coffee, and doing just about everything but working with books. 

            The store is still open, and the owner is still breathing, both facts equally depressing. It was a used bookstore, but I was often instructed to sift through piles of buy-backs for books in good enough shape to pass as new. I spent too much money (really, money) on new titles, a mistake I wasn’t aware of until after the fact. The books were an afterthought, shoved onto shelves without thought or philosophy. Being fired was a stroke of luck, since I’d resigned myself to the mess, but the books were no comfort. They were helpless themselves in the murky wood and coffee grounds of the joint. 

            A couple of weeks ago we stopped at an outlet mall in Central New York, one where sneakers were the star. In the far corner was a bookstore of sorts, remainders and lesser known titles deeply discounted. Even with a decent salary, no longer having to rely on strips or bargain books to fill my shelves, I found nothing I wanted to take home with me. I knew the end of all the fiction, the rhyme schemes of the few poetry books on hand. I have plenty of cookbooks I already don’t use, although I’ve read them all several times. Even the books on CD didn’t interest me—what good is a book on CD once you’ve listened. I’ve no interest in the ghostwritten pop autobiographies, or the bodice-ripping romances, the simplistic craft manuals written for those who need written instructions for tying their shoelaces every morning. There was not one book in the whole store I was willing to take home. 

            I’m more interested now in clearing my shelves, my walls, my closets. It’s almost as if I’ve moved the library inside my head. I need the physical space these days to make some headway on the few projects I intend to go forward with. I have my Handler’s companionship day and night, so perhaps the books resent our drifting apart. But like old lovers, I’ll keep in touch with some, part amicably with others. Some will be dropped off at the thrift shop where they’re given away, because that’s the option I like best. Time grows a little short, and I hate to think of the clean up after I’ve dropped the body if I don’t do some of it myself ahead of time. It is time to pare down and focus. If only I can put down this Harriet Carter catalog… anybody need a wall phone with really, really big numbers?

           

How To Make Ends Meet—Art as Livelihood or Life

A recent New York Times article contemplates the effect a day job might have on the work of an artist. Is it beneficial? Is it necessary? Fact is, very few artists throughout the centuries have been able to support themselves by art alone. It may have been the fantasy many of us creative types grew up on in the 20^th century, but in reality, many more spend most of their adult lives juggling art, work, and love, with varying degrees of success. Consider the Pulitzers.

An amusing little volume I may still have kicking around studies the alcoholic careers of far too many Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, including of course Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Their literary output may or may not have been adversely affected by booze, but their personal lives certainly were. Papa wore out several wives, and even himself in the end it seems, illness aside. Scott’s great love was institutionalized for the last twenty years of their marriage. He ended his days in Hollywood, doctoring film scripts and living in a shabby flat. Would day jobs have saved either of these artists? Would their lives have been more livable, but their work impeded?

When it became clear that Plan A, teaching for most of the year with summers off to write Great American Novels, was not going to come to pass, Plan B went into effect. Plan B is a mix of paying back student loans (accomplished after ten years at Cosmodemonic Communications), making a home where I could breathe easy (accomplished in 2001, about a month before 9/11 knocked the wind out of all of us), and maintaining a relationship created in passion and sustained in love and partnership (started in 2002, still a work in progress). Amazingly, I have continued to write the whole time, poetry at least. I don’t think my fictional prose is very good after all.

The arts are the roses in my life’s garden, but would I sacrifice any one of the above elements to achieve greater literary notoriety? Not now. I enjoy my medium-fish-in-a-beautiful-pond status. Without love, home and financial solvency, no art would happen for me. I was unemployed for almost two years just before I started my most recent gig, in the registration department of a seasonal retreat center. During that time, although I suddenly had many hours a day to write, I did not. I was far more concerned with keeping body and soul together. Maybe some others can do it, but I still possess a few too many screws to chuck it all for the sake of art.

Excuse? I don’t think so. Sour grapes? If someone can master that juggling act, more power to them. I cannot. And I’m fine with that. I can still smell the roses, and the thorns are mostly out of range.