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:
O at the Edges 
isn’t it interesting, how life unfolds?
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It certainly hasn’t unfolded as I thought it would. 🙂
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The things we could tell our younger selves…(k)
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My younger self probably wouldn’t believe those things. I never could have fathomed that poetry would give me so much.
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I never had a clue…it’s all been a surprise. There are themes, however.
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I took a creative writing course in 1972? I had been writing occasionally for 4 or 5 or 6 years. We met in Roberts living room (so many poets called Robert!), each brought what we’d written that week. What I brought was usually wild and crazy stuff. Most people reading it would look at me and say- what were you stoned on this time? Some of the other people’s offerings were okay or good or embarrassingly bad. What stands out the most in my memory was how he always found something positive to say about everything! I’m still working on that…
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I lean to the positive when considering other people’s writing, but am quick to proclaim that my own stinks when it does, as I don’t worry about hurting my own feelings. 🙂
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I was in grad school at the time, Bob, and that song had great meaning for me. Such longing — and I was young enough then to believe that sort of communion between two people might exist for more than a few fleeting (and likely illusory) moments. But I haven’t learned anything in the interim to change my feelings about Annie: What a face! What pipes!
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I was fresh out of the Navy, with no job prospects. That song hit me like a storm…
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At best (at any point in our timeline) we only think we know what we are capable of, searching for, called to do. This is a better world for your poetry – keep writing, please!
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Interesting! To see life move is amazing!
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