Get back to poetry

It was from the Bellevue Literary Review for the first poem I wrote after over a decade of poemlessness. It would have been nice if it were an acceptance, but I have hardly earned success in this realm, at least not in my return to this genre. I will keep writing, keep submitting, and follow Ruth G’s able lead and be dogged.

I have to say that it feels oddly satisfying to have some small external proof of my progress, albeit in the form of rejection.

I wasn’t ready before, but now, with some short stories out of me, my voice out in front of me instead of holed up inside, I may just be able to start again. For a long time I was afraid of the words that would come flowing out, of the truth they might represent, or that they might be ugly or, worse yet, insipid. For a long time I thought perhaps I had nothing to write about. I was convinced that, since I had stopped listening to my inner poet, the voice had grown so quiet, so meek, that I would no longer be able to hear the words bubbling up in me. So now we’ll see. Now that, after 10 years of no images, no words except the trade jargon of my work, I am listening again, and hearing. Maybe writing is what comes next.

A sweet friend of mine took me on a picinic yesterday to celebrate my birthday, and alongside the wine and cheese I sat on the blanket, read Sharon Olds, Walt Whitman, Mark Doty. Communing with these old friends, basking in language, emotion, I felt the pull of home. I guess that’s something.