In conversation with...
I was reminded today of why I write. At the mailbox.
Not because some fabulous acceptance arrived, or a check. I got a letter.
One of the best things about writing is that it brings us into a conversation with the people we most want to talk to. Our poems and our stories are a dialogue.
I remember once... my friend Keith Driver explained to me that he felt like he was having a conversation with Stevens. I nodded and pretended to understand what he meant by that, though at the time I honestly didn't. I wasn't reading enough, or thinking enough, to be participating in such a conversation. If Keith and Stevens were chatting over cocktails at a party, I was (at that age) the very drunk girl slumped in a corner behind a potted palm.
But now I get it. I'm listening now. To all kinds of writers. I'm talking to them, and hearing them respond to me in their work.
Sometimes, you get lucky, and you have a conversation with a writer you really really admire, and that writer is still alive, and the conversation slips from the page, from the world of words-- and into the world of things and people.
A few months back, this happened to me when I went to hear Lyn Hejinian read at Emory. Lyn is one of those people who really IS, as a person, the IS that she IS as a poet. A little girl at play, wise old woman, storyteller, physicist, painter, crazy-lady... to hear her and talk with her is one of the best experiences you can have.
After the reading, I got up the nerve to send Lyn my chapbook, and some other poems. She's been writing a cycle of dream poems for a long time, and I too have some dream--poems, and I wanted to share them with her.
Today I got a letter. An actual piece of paper, a small gift. One of those letters that makes you feel real, makes you feel like the person you hope you actually are. Lyn read my poems and responded to them, and I think understood me through them. In a sense, she finished the conversation that began when I first read her poems 6 years ago.
It felt like it was time to put on my coat and leave the party, having accomplished more than a person ever hopes to accomplish at a party.
Not because some fabulous acceptance arrived, or a check. I got a letter.
One of the best things about writing is that it brings us into a conversation with the people we most want to talk to. Our poems and our stories are a dialogue.
I remember once... my friend Keith Driver explained to me that he felt like he was having a conversation with Stevens. I nodded and pretended to understand what he meant by that, though at the time I honestly didn't. I wasn't reading enough, or thinking enough, to be participating in such a conversation. If Keith and Stevens were chatting over cocktails at a party, I was (at that age) the very drunk girl slumped in a corner behind a potted palm.
But now I get it. I'm listening now. To all kinds of writers. I'm talking to them, and hearing them respond to me in their work.
Sometimes, you get lucky, and you have a conversation with a writer you really really admire, and that writer is still alive, and the conversation slips from the page, from the world of words-- and into the world of things and people.
A few months back, this happened to me when I went to hear Lyn Hejinian read at Emory. Lyn is one of those people who really IS, as a person, the IS that she IS as a poet. A little girl at play, wise old woman, storyteller, physicist, painter, crazy-lady... to hear her and talk with her is one of the best experiences you can have.
After the reading, I got up the nerve to send Lyn my chapbook, and some other poems. She's been writing a cycle of dream poems for a long time, and I too have some dream--poems, and I wanted to share them with her.
Today I got a letter. An actual piece of paper, a small gift. One of those letters that makes you feel real, makes you feel like the person you hope you actually are. Lyn read my poems and responded to them, and I think understood me through them. In a sense, she finished the conversation that began when I first read her poems 6 years ago.
It felt like it was time to put on my coat and leave the party, having accomplished more than a person ever hopes to accomplish at a party.
7 Comments:
Wonderful. And a wonderful post.
Lyn was exceptionally accessible and kind to me when I spoke to her after a reading at Bridge St. Books almost 10 years ago. I was doing an independent study on her with Carolyn Forche, and she gave me her email address and went out of her way to mail me copies of her at-the-time-uncollected essays. I was too in awe of her work to ever send her any of my own, but I think I still have that slip of paper she wrote her (I'm sure defunct by now) email address on.
She read you well.
Kudos to you for "garnering" such a comment; however, do we poets never learn? Didn't WW piss off the entire writing world when he pulled stunts like this? Did you happen to ASK said poet if she minded your posting their compliments? And while your discussion of dialogues between poets -- dead or alive -- is a nice one, to then follow that observation with a compliment seems, well... slimy?
All right. I think that this is a fair comment, and that perhaps I shouldn't have posted. I'll delete.
Don't you dare delete this post. First, please tell me where, in the following quote, you post her compliments:
Lyn read my poems and responded to them, and I think understood me through them. In a sense, she finished the conversation that began when I first read her poems 6 years ago.
Second, please reference for me the law stating that posting a personal experience or dialogue wth another writer on a personal blog is slimy. Slimy. Give me an effing break.
No, I think the anon. poster (though I never understand why people don't cliam their comments)was right. This post included a quote from the letter that-- while not quite a compliment-- was, I think, something I included cause it gave me a warm tingly. The kind of thing that would have been fine to read to a friend one-on-one but didn't really belong here... I don't think it was "wrong" to post it, but it was self-serving, and I took that part of the post out...
Fair...I must have arrived after taking out said quote. My apologies to anonymous poster and congrats on a conversation continued.
It was me, Jesse Waters, who wrote that post; since I don't have a blog, or do much blogging, I have to log in as anon., though I thought I did sign it, as I have others.
And looking back at my comment, it does seem sort of harsh, for which I'll apologize. I didn't mean to seem so accusatory, just a bit didactic; having put my foot in my mouth when this has happened to me, I guess I felt an old wound itching, perhaps?
JBW
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