Fear to Muse: A Year of Poems and Trust

I wonder, when is a writer, poet born. Surely before words land on page. I believe I’ve been writing poems the past twenty years of my life, until now I’ve been unable to translate them into words.

Perhaps, part of living as a writer is learning to understand and appreciate the unique way writers’ experience and share life.

For me, I equate it to jazz—having a song unfold in color, texture inside as if it is the natural sound of living. Even those words fall short of explanation, but they are close. Sometimes it is a painting, and others it’s ineffable, unmouthable.

There are times when I hear a Coltrane or Parker number and find myself saying, “Yeah, that right there was inside, untouchable until now. Now I hear it and can touch it in this song.”

Poems capture my insides in the same way. Maybe not even poems, but colors, sounds, texture—the feeling of living. It all is wrapped up in varying levels of intangible yet touchable sensory details of this life.

I’m setting out this year to translate my way of living into words, specifically poems. So far at every turn I’ve had to run towards fear. I’ve made a sport of it, “Scared? Okay, then do it.”

The tally is adding up: choosing to dual-concentrate my MFA degree in Fiction/Poetry, dismantling my art studio for a writing room, challenging myself to poem daily.

Water lily at Fairmount Park; Riverside, Ca.

This will be a year of poems and trust.

Novel writing has taught me the landscape of a journey. Shaded valleys, light filled peaks, aching climbs, speeding downhill, coasting, trusting the path is always ahead, cliffs and landing—not falling.

In an odd way, my novel is the primer, the under painting of a larger art. It is so much harder for me to briefly capture and translate my current, inner life, than to record a complete cast of lives played out over years.

There must be gold there, because I believe we only fear what has the power to change us.

I’ve discovered poetry uses the same muscles as painting, for me. I must really see. I must get closer to what I’ve allowed to become intangible so that I may deeply feel. My words must be clear and strong, precise like brush strokes. But most importantly, I must engage all of me.

That requires energy, deep heart energy and courage.

While commuting into Residency this past December I brainstormed ways I could feed my heart the poetic energy it needs to better translate. I settled on daily poems. Initially, I chose haikus for their brevity and focus on nature. I value economy of words and the presence of nature in poetry, but I also value everyday living and humanity, particularly domesticity in poetry. With deeper digging in The Book of Forms, I was reminded of tankas and decided to expand my practice to include tankas and haikus, or just tankas.

Five days in and it has been a challenge. I have read through Urban Tumbleweed by Harryette Mullen a few times in the past week and am constantly amazed at her breadth, her wide gaze at the world, and her elevated language of everydayness. I wasn’t aware of UT when I decided on a daily haiku practice, but discovered it while I was finalizing my goals and it helped me settle (at least for now) on using the tanka.

Day one I found myself challenged with the brevity and the syllable limits of the form. After adjusting to those, I find myself struggling with the subjects and inherent simplicity yet complexity of tankas. Writing with sparseness is so very complicated, as is writing with spontaneity—another characteristic of tankas.

Mullen so gracefully and honestly looks at the world around her. My daily landscape changes little, as do the subjects and interests of my life. Take for example, four mornings straight the same emerald hummingbird suckles at the same lavender plant outside my kitchen window, at roughly the same time.

As if we had a standing date to each other, we’ve passed paths the first four days of the New Year doing the same thing—feeding on lavender, washing dishes.

I love the stability and consistency of my domestic life, yet I know a world unfolds while I poem dishes, meals, bees and June bugs. My life is designed with little wandering and rambling outside of our home and land.

The greatest challenge is that my specific goal is to poem the everyday, the mundane of my domestic life. A life that I have chosen, designed, and fully embrace. Often, what we want challenges us the most and so I can’t help but laugh at myself.

I’ve set out to capture the beautiful mundane of my life—and now four days of watching morning light dance on the back of a hummingbird while it feeds on lavender blossoms while I wash morning dishes I fear my life is to plain and predictable to poem. Absurd!

What if I chose to see my feathered friend as a companion, a muse, a supporter, a symbol that I am on the right path and should stay the course.

Fear often moonlights as doubt and insecurity. When we get too brave for fear, we fall into doubt and insecurity with their promises of rationality and logic. Soon intuition, the womb of creativity withers.

When fear evolves into doubt and insecurity, take notice. You may be blinded by your own light. Do not cower in the dark, or assume false bravado, but choose to learn where the fear is born so you may harness it as muse and symbol of your brightest path.

I’m still working things out, but today I’m settling into the tanka, this life I’m living, and choosing to poem the beautiful mundane. Yesterday it was ripe pineapples and red flag warnings, today it has been my womb, who knows what tomorrow will bring—I’m not there yet.

What fear(s) moonlight as doubt, insecurity for you? Can you repurpose it as a signpost that you should stay the course? Can you create a muse from your fear?

Stay the path of light!

Ki

More Info:

Want to discover a poem form of your own to challenge yourself? The Book of Forms by Lewis Turco is a great place to discover poem forms and stretch your craft.

For more about Mullen's tanka’s, read this excellent review. I highly suggest grabbing Urban Tumbleweed. The collection grew out of Mullen’s daily practice of walking. Although she has adapted the traditional form into three lines, her tankas are fresh, inquisitive, spontaneous, and accessible in the way poetry should always be. There is a modern, elevated everydayness in this collection that appeals to my desire to both live as a witness of the world, but also to myself and the things that strike me. Mullen has also written Sleeping with the Dictionary, a National Book Award Finalist. It is a glorious book that I have yet to dig into, but soon will.