Hug a poet in April!

Someone once said, “If you want to be a writer, the first sixty years are the hardest.”

When your writing efforts are critiqued, (the truth is, it sometimes feels more like criticism) where does that tightness in the stomach come from? Maybe from hidden memories, back in school when attempting to write something profound? Something that others thought quite ‘immature’? Because it included expressed feelings and depth?

How easy it is for a potential writer to be wounded into silence!

I just completed a weekend writing intensive. I sat in a room of folks, all challenging ourselves to be authentic, to see what was there in front of us, and to seek the words that would enliven and animate those thoughts. Overcome any resistance to stretch the mind and imagination beyond our self-imposed limits, that was the key.

So much to learn and so much writing all at once! But then it was over and the weekend suddenly seemed too short. Those new creative muscles were just being loosened up, exercised after so many years of lethargy. I can see why it is called a ‘writing intensive.’

However, it’s like taking anything in life to the next level. A great experience and sometimes there is a lot of stress to embrace. The stress comes mostly from ‘stretch,’ especially if it involves actually experiencing what one is experiencing, and then putting it onto the page.

There is a TV show where folks are given the chance to do something they normally wouldn’t do in their life….like driving a military tank or a cargo ship or whatever. Seems like I could manage that with a bit of instruction. But, writing a poem or short story? Now that was a real challenge!

We seem to live in a world where ’the only thing we can know is what we can put into words’ and we therefore have a dilemma.

What if we cannot put into words how much we love and care for another? What if we cannot express what is hurting inside our soul? What if we have an inexpressible ache when we watch other humans trying to reach out as their worlds collapse around them?

‘My soul cannot scream so I write’ someone once said.

It is all doubly difficult if the writing tendency is coming from deep inside one’s soul, like a calling. Yes, you can rationalize young folks into the need to ‘get an actual job.’ But something inevitably gets lost. To the person, and mainly to the whole community. If there is such a thing as a tempering dynamic to our crazy lives, it must come from the community of arts.

I doubt that I am one of only few who have had this longing, this urging to write and have gotten busy with life, shelving the desire for ‘another time.’ Or who has looked all too briefly at, ‘Where the heck would I find time to write?’

April is national poetry month, so it would matter a great deal if we took a little extra care to nourish any young poets we might suspect. We need them. Our communities need them. It matters.

Rich