I Can Get There By Myself
I was a little cracked out in Tully’s Coffee Shop last week. Jacked up. Eyes popping out. I could’ve humped a light post in the traffic circle on Pacific Avenue. I’d had my first thesis meeting. And it didn’t suck. In fact, it was wholely successful. At one point my advisor said, “This is a poem.” I’d written a poem and it only took me 9 months and my whole life.
From here on out, this mangy book represents a post about "THESIS"
You should know that my advisor does not give grand compliments. He rarely gives any compliments. During workshops last year it wasn’t unexpected for me to get a poem back from him with single word comments: “What?” in black ink, ‘”Why?” in the margin, “Because?” underlined. So for him to tell me, “This is a poem” was somewhere between “You are not an idiot” and “Thank you for your effort as a human being.” Really it was an important moment in my graduate career as it signified my first tangible improvement as a writer, in terms of editing. And so much of what we do as writers is unquantifiable.
Writers know that solid edits are not easy to come by. A Fiction writer told me she was jealous of poets, because when poets sat down to edit they changed a word, removed a comma, enjambed a line and called it a day whereas when she sat down to edit, she had 12-15 pages of material to mold. At the time, I thought she was right but the more I mulled it over, the more I recalled reading the slush pile for Willow Springs and how wrong word choices in a poem or misplaced commas were the ticket to the reject bin.
I’ve seen husks of Great American Poems and I’ve rejected them. Voice, narration, impressive syntactical decisions all amount to nothing if it doesn’t come together in the end and as the poet, we have to make those calls. I had the tendency to fall in love with the worse lines of my poems and then try (unsuccessfully) to write around them. The evolution out of that was slow, in fact it took a summer to work on a couple of poems. But after my first thesis meeting, I was happy to discover, I could let loved lines go and make smarter decisions in favor of what the poem needed instead of what I wanted. Sometimes what I want to say is not what the poem wants to say; this is editing. I didn’t know until my advisor said “This is a poem” that I could get there by myself.
I’m a lover of workshops. I love the moment of anticipation before I read my poem aloud in workshop and the relief of my portion of workshop being over. I love hearing arguments in favor or against the ideas in my poems. So deciding not to take a workshop this quarter felt like deciding not to get funnel cake at the fair or not jumping in puddles when I’m wearing rain boots. Why would I deprive myself of such pleasure? Because! there are rewards that come with self-deprivation. If we can push a poem, if we can find its center, if we can remove the ego and the intentions and look at it and how it stands at the moment of editing, then, we can make good edits. (All by ourselves)
Tags: Thesis, Tully's Coffee Shop
Fantastic post, Monet!! Perfect thoughts on poetic craft.
Thanks Jen!
Letting the loved lines go is the hardest part.
4th paragraph made me want to sing.
You can’t always get what you want! But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need!
YEAH! I sing and write sometimes but then I write what I’m saying…
Lovely post. & true. And I’m sure you’ll have many more opportunities to hear CH tell you you have indeed written a poem as the year goes on.
*fingers crossed*
Killing our darlings is the hardest thing to learn as writers.
Great post. I feel inspired.
Write on!
Monet, this is brilliant! “Sometimes what I want to say is not what the poem wants to say; this is editing.” This is what I’ve been trying to tell myself, but I haven’t managed to say it as concisely as you do here. I heart you and I can’t wait to read more of your new work.
I can’t wait to share again! I miss reading your work too!
Wonderful post, my friend. It is a difficult thing to do…teaching ourselves to listen to the “Voice That is Great Within Us” when most of our culture and society tells us to muffle or muzzle it, just color inside the lines, etc. It reminds me of Hass’s essay where he said, “…what attracts some people to poetry, to writing generally, and it is probably what repels them…is to be conscious.” I miss you in Workshop, your words, your voice, the way you listen. Shhhhh, did you hear that?
I really dug what Longinus thought about intelligence and emotion: that the great writers can express both. We might need to do some rogue workshopping soon!
“I could let loved lines go and make smarter decisions in favor of what the poem needed instead of what I wanted.”
Still hurts to kill your babies though…
Yes. It hurts real bad. But I like to think we can find new homes for them, in lesser or greater poems, where they belong.
I love when you allude to a conversation and I know exactly who it was with and when it occurred. Does that mean we should spend more time apart?
Wonderful post :)
GREAT X’s INFINITY:)
I know CH well and what a compliment he gave you. Congratulations on that and on your glorious independence.
I was thinking about you as I tried to reconfigure my poetry manuscript. Your blog title became a sort of mantra when I wanted to give up on it all.