Writing good poetry is
like falling through air. Not
water. Because water stops you. Water slows you down. Water makes you think about whether you
really want to keep going down. Water is
all free fall; water lets you go down deeply.
Deeply into words, language and ideas.
Tess Gallagher eloquently
wrote,
“I Stop Writing the Poem”
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.
Why do we stop writing
the poem? We stop to work. We stop to arrange the clothing. To arrange the sandwiches on a plate, laying
out the cilantro and parsley. Sliced red
onions, peppers, olives. Then back to
poem and if we’re not lucky, the poem may be lost, may have scurried away and
hidden among the dirty linens.
Women start with being
women. We start with our children. All else is small, and insignificant compared
to this: How are my children? Is my relationship with my children
sustained? We bring together the arms of
the shirt, of the pants, of the giant life we have with our children and feel
it hinging and unhinging. You cannot be
a successful poet, writer or even person and lose your relationship with your
children. That’s key, and yet, we want
our poetry to achieve a level of mastery.
Not craft. Not clean loving well
laid lines. Not something that runs out
of an MFA program perfect and sweet. No,
poetry that has plenty to do. Poetry
that can stop tenderness and get to the other side. Poetry that’s the small girl wanting to grow
up and the woman wishing for a dress so that she can seduce the waiters.
It’s different being a
woman writer. But should it be? Women, if they are not careful are ghost
writers. They can write standing up
straight and beautiful against the sky, and their words can remain
invisible. We need to write so we’re not
left out in the cold. We need to write
the big stories. Not the domestic
stories, the enormous stories that flatten myths.
Poetry that’s outside the
lines. That’s wild. That has a job to do. No matter who lives or who dies.
Tess Gallager will be
reading at the Red Hen Press reading at the Gerding Theatre at 8 pm with Caleb
Barber, Brendan Constantine and Tanya Chernov.