Sabbath #152

A few days remain until I leave home for two weeks to enter a vortex of literary insanity between the White and Green Mountains of Vermont. I say insanity because I leave the familiar to return to the familiar. A small room, community meals, literary inquiry, immersion. I return to myself, my writer self where my thinking shifts with the landscape. I have been making this bi-annual journey for 17 years, first as student then as staff. Much has changed. I am changed.  And today I think I still do not have a book out. How could that be possible? This reality haunts me always but hits me hard when I arrive. Yes, I write and publish poems. Yes, I have a beautiful letterpress chapbook. Yes, I have a completed nonfiction book, yet to be published, three rejections. Yes, I passed one mss of poems around to first book contests. Yes, I have a new volume with over 50 poems in a file. Yes, recently an online journal published 5 poems. I have at least one poem forthcoming in the spring. A few more out for consideration. A startling rejection recently in my inbox offered no encouragement. Apparently a consensus could not be reached… something about tonality. The bed in my study is covered with hard copies of poems, some of which are not entered in this new computer. Some written three computers ago. I earn a living, I do the work. I earn a living , I do the work. I am no different than any other writer. Earning a living doing the work, day by day. I read, I teach, I see therapy clients, my day job. I have family and a dog. But when I arrive on campus I struggle mightily with the fact that I do not have a volume of poems published or forthcoming. I harshly judge myself. And I believe others may also. Last residency someone said tome, “don’t you have enough poems for a book?” I think about Jack Gilbert, a volume every 10 years. And I think this is the new year. This is the year I will compile and complete the new book of poems and send it out. Sometimes I meditate hard for the knock at the door, the invitation. Then I meditate or pray about the poems themselves. Can I write one good poem? One poem that stands alone. One poem that does all things… Yesterday I reread Eliot’s East Coker. I’m beginning another study on Seamus Heaney in honor of his passing. Can I claim the marsh like he claims the bog? Did I inherit the marsh, both East and West coasts? Am I more marsh than sea and sand? And I admit I am affected by what my colleagues think. Can I even call myself a colleague without a book even though I know I am part of the literary endeavor. And truly what difference does it make? I am committed to a life of letters, regardless of my own shortcomings and how others see me. Everyday, I know poetry saves my life. The pursuit of the right word, the turn of a phrase, time to sit and stare out of the window and as Tod Goldberg said last week, “work” by doing so. Yesterday I took the dog to the field. The temperature was 12. For Virginia that’s pretty cold. I loved watching him run and return the ball. Routine and ritual. That’s writing too. Routine and ritual. And entering a literary community for 10 days that has it’s own routine and ritual. I will settle in my room, open my notebook and begin January poems no matter what consequence. Although I look forward to the day I take the journey with a book published.