For Whom the Ink Flows

     Ever since I was a little girl and discovered that the written word stirred something in me, I, too, wanted to write and stir something in others. The first thing I remember writing consciously was a poem about the sun and the moon and the contrasts between them. I was ten, in the fourth grade, and my teacher entered that poem in a local contest for students where it was chosen one of the winners. I met the other winners at a luncheon (one of whom was the 17-year-old Naomi Shihab), and after eating, we all read our poems aloud and had a general discussion, during which I was my typical anxiety-ridden silent self. However, like most silent people, I used my ears, and was introduced to a world in which people not only wrote, but talked about why they wrote what they wrote. Naomi, in particular, was very articulate and passionate about her poetry; in fact, she was the only person there that has stuck in my memory all these years. Maybe I knew then, even at ten years old, that she would eventually become one of the country's most respected poets. Yet it wasn't her work that impressed me (I was ten; what did I know?) -- it was her passion for it. It seemed to me that she had to write poetry, that she was born to do it.

     My desire to write -- not just poetry, but prose as well -- was not a result of that early success; rather, it was endorsed by it. The desire has always been there, just as my love of music has been, and these two powerful forces both propel and nourish my life even now, when I do neither for my living. They make living more livable. But can I call myself a writer? A poet? I spend hours writing these posts; I can spend days writing one draft of a short poem. What is the recompense?

     Friends and fellow poets tell me I am a poet, even when I haven't submitted anything in months, even when I haven't been in print for months, even when I haven't written anything for months. And when I do write something, how many people actually read it? A handful? A couple of hundred at the most? If no one reads my poems, can I still call myself a poet? Moreover, should I really care whether anyone at all reads my poems?

     My fellow poets (if I am a fellow in the first place) also tell me, "We write because we love it and we have to write." Yes, when I feel the urge to put pen to paper, the urge is irresistible; when I have something to say -- or more often, something to purge -- I indeed have to write. But it doesn't stop there. I have to write well. What I write has to show craft, intelligence, thought, artistry; each and every word has to be considered and reconsidered, every punctuation mark has to have sense and significance. Poetry is work, sometimes exhilarating, but other times painfully frustrating. In short, it is refined purging, not simply venting for its own sake, not simply stringing together warm, fuzzy words and images. It is striving to make sense of my own soul.

     Yes, I write for myself, poetry as well as prose. Publication, payment, readership -- should these things truly matter, or should I merely consider them bonuses? Should I reroute my motivation, attempt to write poetry as a "voice" for some social or political purpose? No, that's not me; that's never been me. I have always believed that, intimately personal, even confessional, as my writing is, if what I write is true for myself, it may be true for others. If what I write is a map of my own heart and soul, it may share a common landscape with the hearts and souls of others. We are all of the same species, after all, fashioned of the same fallible flesh. My words will surely stir something in someone, as was my hope at ten years old.
     So I will continue as I have begun, and let my ink flow -- when it flows. I will continue to hone the craft and cherish the long voyage, even the all-too-frequent squalls that come of my failings and inadequacies. I will continue to submit my work, when I have sufficient and worthy work to submit. I will continue to write this blog, and post the occasional poem on it in the hope that someone out there will read and appreciate it. But if, in the end, my writing is the proverbial tree that fell and no one heard fall, I should be able to say, without any regret whatever, So be it. I should. Whether or not I can remains to be seen.

    

The Young Poet

     When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher asked each of us to write a poem. Whether or not she told us the real reason, I don't remember (I probably wasn't paying attention, as usual), but it was that she planned to enter one of them in the Young Pegasus Poetry Contest, a city-wide contest sponsored by the San Antonio Public Library for budding poets grades 1-12. I wrote a concrete poem (a poem that has a significant shape on the page) in the shape of a diamond called "Sun and Moon" which was chosen as one of the winners in the fifth grade division. The results for being a winner were publication in that year's Young Pegasus anthology, a luncheon at which all the winners met and shared their poems, and a taped television appearance in which the older winners read their own poems and the younger had their poems read by one of the judges.
     The only person I remember at that winners' luncheon was the then 17-year-old Naomi Shihab (Nye), who is today one of this country's most respected and prolific poets. I remember her, not for her poetry, but for her appearance that day -- she looked like a poet to me: loose, flowing clothes, waist-long hair in a braid, very sort of bohemian.
     The television appearance was rather embarrassing for me and, I imagine, for the rest of the younger winners who weren't allowed to read our own pieces. Instead, each of us had to perch on a stool doing absolutely nothing except look straight at the camera, goofy and uncomfortable, while listening to his or her poem being read. What on earth were they thinking, putting us through such embarrassment?!
     This did not put me off writing poetry, however. Through middle school, I wrote quite a lot of it, compiling my work into a collection called Poems of a Childhood Romance. Except for drafts of a few of the poems, it has since disappeared. (Judging from those extant drafts, it's no great loss!) I wrote a few more in high school, but by then I was more interested in writing songs in the style of Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, John Denver, etc., and I dreamt of wandering round the country with my guitar and a knapsack, earning my weekly bread by singing my ballads in smoky, dimly lit coffee houses. Eventually, of course, I intended to meet a fellow balladeer, preferably a James Taylor type, build a cabin with him in the mountains, have twenty children, and live off the land.
     On the other hand, I was still the aspiring concert pianist, giving performances and entering (but hardly ever winning) competitions. This persona dressed more neatly than the balladeer, enjoyed meals at stylish restaurants (Ms. von's treat), and dreamt of dwelling in marble halls, single, but with a string of wealthy and powerful lovers.
     In both these fantasies, I never stopped writing in one form or another.
     When I was in the eighth grade I followed my sister Alice's example and started to keep a journal. Being an aspiring writer, I never meant my journal to be private, but passed it round among my friends (is it any wonder I eventually decided to blog?). I also wrote short stories, which were really my own original episodes of The Partridge Family, all of which were centered around Keith (David Cassidy). There was even a rough outline and one chapter of a novel entitled Sisters and Lovers, a tale of two orphaned sisters in early 20th-century San Francisco; the elder was prudent and practical, the younger impulsive and romantic. If this sounds suspiciously like an American Sense and Sensibility, let me hasten to say I hadn't even heard of that novel at that time, much less read it. However, I had read Little Women and was very much influenced by Alcott's style -- in fact, that was the start of my love affair with the semi-colon.
     The novel, poetry, and song writing all fizzled out (temporarily) by my senior year in high school, but I continued to keep a journal and my dreams of becoming a concert pianist.