Thirty-Five Years Later, I Raise My Hand
In spring 1983 I enrolled in a poetry writing course thinking it might help improve my short fiction. I was a history major by default, had never taken a course in poetry, but believed, with absolutely no evidence, that I could write fiction. At the time I would have been hard-pressed to name five contemporary poets, even counting my professor. To be honest, the class struggled to hold my attention. Only about a quarter of the students seemed interested in writing, and the instructor was a bit, uh, tired. But for the first time in my life I read, really read, poetry. I fell in love with Galway Kinnell, Ai, James Wright and Carolyn Forche, to name just a few of my early enthusiasms. I wanted to write like them. So I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Most of it was laughably bad, but somehow I managed to win an undergraduate poetry contest, which suggested that hope existed. Maybe someday, I thought, one of my poems will be published. This radical idea had never occurred to me before. Publication seemed to be the privilege of special people, and a lifetime of gathered fact revealed that I was unequivocably nothing special.
Early on in the semester, perhaps even in the first class, the professor asked how many of us thought we’d still be writing poetry in twenty years. I didn’t raise my hand. I didn’t know where I’d be in six months, much less what I’d be doing in twenty years. Since I’d realized late in the game that teaching was not for me, I had no job prospects, and few marketable skills, despite experience in chugging beer, manning sound-powered phones on a ship’s helicopter tower, scraping barnacles and bending rules. The world was limited. The world was limitless.
Another gray day
dividing the old and young
Oh, this aching hip!
A song from that time:
’67-’68, LST out of Little Creek, deck force, corpsman striker, battleship gray, battleship gray, battleship gray….
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AFS out of Alameda, then Guam. Spent about two months on the deck, then was recruited for office work (someone discovered I could type). An interesting time.
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MM who spend most of my time on Trident subs at Subbase Bangor (WA). Oh, the glories of sound-powered phones!
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Ha! I’m glad I don’t have to use them any longer. But they were wondrous things. 🙂
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Just goes to show what hard work and hidden genius reveals in a man… your work is like refined gold…
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Iron pyrite, perhaps. 🙂 I was obsessed – there were days when I rose at 7:00, started writing, and didn’t stop until after midnight. The writing was terrible, but I kept on. Couldn’t stop.
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Persistence is key. You insisted on becoming better.
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I am nothing if not persistent (at least about my obsessions).
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Haha. The writing was terrible but I kept on-quote of a true writer.
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I was probably delusional. Still am. 😬
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A must for any good writer! 😉
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I loved reading about this part of your life, Robert.
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Thanks, Brenda. It was a lifetime ago. It was yesterday. Funny how that is.
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Time has a way of doing that. I’d like to add that I love the title as well, and your writing abilities obviously extend beyond poetry.
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What’s funny about the title is nearly everyone in the class raised their hands. I wonder how many are still writing? I certainly had no expectations. And thank you for the compliment! I hope to write more prose this year, but we’ll see what happens.
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Good question. We never know what lies ahead for us. I love your poetry, and now I’m looking forward to reading more of your prose. 🙂
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I struggle at prose, but want to do more.
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The piece you’ve written appears effortless. The mark of a talented writer. Each piece we write helps improve our writing, and provides us with the practice needed to make us stronger writers. Reading this, I would never guess that you struggle with prose.
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Thank you. My problem is likely with the approach – I try to write prose as I do poetry, and it doesn’t quite work. So I’m learning to adjust.
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My first love will always be poetry. I branch out to hone my writing skills. And you’re right. It does require a different approach. You would be more aware of that fact, given how long you’ve been writing poetry.
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So very zen.
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It seems that way sometimes. Now and zen…
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I would have raised my hand, if not too introspective. But as it happened I soon ceased, for maybe most of three decades. And then, through the vehicles of wishing to write essays, just within the past year or so, it has awakened again in me. For some thoughts cannot fit within rhetorical language, I’ve noticed.
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For me, poetry is a means of exploration, of trying to put words to undefinable feelings or unexpressed thoughts. Prose doesn’t work in this way, at least not in the writing of it.
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Yes, there is that aspect, I agree. But even with the prose, I am finding myself discovering things, having to stretch words and meanings to reach towards a new idea. For both of them, the thinking is higher than the language, and the language must be cooked to reach higher. With poetry, way higher. That’s how I see it at present.
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It’s all about the exploration!
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A picture of my bookshelves would show many of those same books and the history of my heart would show the same need to write. Thanks.
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Happy to share!
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Thanks for sharing this – proves that nothing is ever lost, really – just stored away for another day.
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We just have to uncover or rediscover them.
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Who could have guessed? Who would have known? And yet, life offers and delivers the unexpected daily – and more’s the wonder for it. And bonus – for you and us – we get to read and enjoy – you create (for many more years to come we hope) and we stretch our wings and fly. And scratch the itch – thank the stars for your being bitten!
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The itch has taken over my life for a number of years. I’m glad that I finally let it.
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it can be a losing battle and proposition, so best to rest/work with it ~ and I greedily say Yes! 😅 (I enjoy your poetry)
cheers!
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Thank you!
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Marketable skills are overrated anyway. Here’s to those of us without them! (and yet we still have somehow managed to survive) (K)
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And as it turned out, some of my non-marketable skills became marketable, and helped me land a few good jobs over the years. 😬
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You are such an inspiration, Sir Robert!
Both my fiction writing professor and my major advisor in undergrad urged me not to include any of my poetry (euphemistically asserting that it “wasn’t ready”) in my writing samples for my applications to MFA programs. Needless to say, my thoroughly discouraged hand-raising resulted in my being rejected by every MFA program I applied to. However “not ready” those fledgling globs of barf I insisted on writing and calling poetry may have been, I was ready to learn, and yet was summarily denied the opportunity to do so in a setting purported to serve that very purpose…
Anyhow, look at me now! When there’s a will (or a serious affliction, as the case may be), there’s a way!
If only the same principle applied to our arthritic joints!
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We share the same affliction(s)! And yes, a bit of contrariness combined with persistence and curiosity can go a long way towards achieving “success,” the definition of which seems rather fluid in my world.
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Insolence is probably the one thing I’ve always had going for me. 😉
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The best thing! Ha. 🙃
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Very pleased that you persisted with the endeavour of poetry Bob. i hope more of these History of Okaji pieces begin to appear, they are interesting.
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It’s all in the doing! I’m satisfied with being an uncredentialed “outsider” poet. It is who I am. I still get asked on occasion if and where I teach, and where I earned my MFA, but if I’ve learned anything during my long, uneven apprenticeship, it’s that these things mean nothing to me.
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Hear, hear!
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Loved this look back, Bob. I was in journalism grad school at the time, finding, like you, what turned out to be my calling. Lucky us. Also, what a beauty the young Annie Lennox was! I had forgotten how open and lovely her face, though I have never ceased appreciating her voice. So thanks for the video, as well, of a song that I also strongly associate with that time.
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Lucky us, indeed! I’m not sure why, but that song was the first one that sprang to mind when I thought of that year. Ah, Annie Lennox! Such an interesting face, and what a voice!
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Well done, I have dabbled with poetry or my version of spontaneous verse for 40 years. Congratulations of where you have got to
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Thank you, Michael. It’s been an interesting trip thus far.
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Interesting to hear that in your sample only about a quarter of the class was interested, perhaps even in writing poetry. Did you/do you have any idea why that might be?
In my school years (somewhat longer ago) people in two undergraduate poetry writing courses I attended wanted to write poetry, but few wanted to read it. Class critique writing/participation was sparse, and few seemed to be into reading poetry or thinking about it. My working assumption was that they were in the classes for the self-expression, or out of some sense that the coursework wasn’t onerous.
Glad you persisted anyway!
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I think most of the class enrolled to earn an easy elective credit. And yes, few wanted to read poetry.
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This somehow makes me think of a line of yours, from “How to Write a Poem”, which has stuck with me: “Deny ambition.” I try to be forgiving of myself as a work in progress, and I’m glad that some of the endeavors I abandoned half a lifetime ago are things I can circle back to now and may actually be properly learned this time around. But that’s about the only thing I can recommend about getting older. Your hip and my eyes… ugh. 🙂
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The blind optimism of youth has somehow stayed with me, at least as far as writing goes. 🙂
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Oh Bob. Great song and great courage. I raise my hand to both!
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No courage. Just persistence. But yes, great song. Hadn’t heard it in years.
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Pingback: Thirty-Five Years Later, I Raise My Hand — O at the Edges – RAY K'LO ARTS
Once we were young and nowhere to go, now our time is old but we have the story to be told. The words singing in the air, it’s up we go and to let us know.
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That sums it up!
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Solid work! Had my attention throughout.
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Thanks very much.
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I picture a young Bob scraping barnacles to this tune 🙂
I love this song, takes me back to being a kid listening to the radio in the car.
This was a real pleasure to read, thanks, and I am glad you continued to write poetry.
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Thanks, Mek. My barnacle-scraping days precede this song by six or seven years, and would have been accompanied by Bad Company’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love.”
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Oh god. That’s hilarious. What a soundtrack.
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My life’s soundtrack is eclectic, to say the least.
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I’m sure the barnacles look back on that time fondly 😂
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That was one of the smelliest jobs I’ve held!
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I like how you took the higher ground in your response haha.
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I smelled like dead fish for half of that summer!
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I LOVED reading this. Thankyou
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Thanks very much!
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Inspirational story
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Thank you, Derrick.
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I loved learning this about you, Robert – that 35 years ago you came to poetry because you wanted to enrich your fictional writing! The impulse, the need, the dream to write….it takes us places.
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I still dream of writing a novel, but don’t know that I’ll ever get around to doing it. But who knows?
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I’d read it. How about those short stories you’d hoped poetry would improve?
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Discarded long ago. They were lousy.
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I find that hard to believe…
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Believe me. They were.
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I have just started a blog here on WordPress. I know nothing about blogging. I couldn’t even keep a diary going a kid. I started browsing posts really looking for help on how to add an about me page. But your title caught my attention. 35 years later, I raise my hand. Made me think about being in school. I was shy. In elementary I would raise my hand to answer questions, but by Jr. High and High School I didn’t want to raise my hand or answer questions even if I knew the answer. Then I saw the song. I liked that song as a lid. And it is raining right now, outside as I type this. 🙂 I hated writing assignments in school and helping my daughters with their writing assignments also. And now I want to do a blog. And someday I’d like to do a YouTube channel. If your going to dream, dream big. Sorry for Rambln on so. Good evening.
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Thank you for commenting! I should probably review my About page, as I wrote it when I first started blogging and wasn’t sure what I was doing. 🙂 After four years, I’m still not sure what I’m doing, but I do it anyway…
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Such an inspiring piece! Thank you for the encouraging words. Enthusiasm + persistence (and more than a little talent) make a winning combination.
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I truly believe in persistence!
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You raised your hand then.
Invisibly hidden even from yourself.
Today you declare the poet.
Thank you also for appreciating some of my declaration on https:/nothingcluelesslost.com
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All things in good time, visible or not.
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Reblogged this on KCJones.
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Thank you for reblogging.
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Your name sounds Japanese. I write poetry myself but incorporate whatever poetry I write into my books as song lyrics (my books so far are about a rock band that eventually accepts Jesus Christ). I also like writing haikus forsome reason–
“OmegaBooks is my
way into the writing world.
Hope you read them soon.”
Ah soo desu nee… 😉
Thanks for liking my post on why OmegaBooks is the home to the world’s most unique fiction.
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The name is indeed Japanese. I enjoyed your post – good luck with your endeavor!
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