On Becoming a Poet

I did not start out saying "Today, I will become a poet." On the contrary, here I find myself a poet and have to reconstruct my path to this point. True, I've always like writing. Was editor of my high school newspaper. But I got side tracked by real life. The Corporate thing.

Coming out of school, like many young women my age in the mid-seventies of the last century, I didn't have the foggiest notion of what I wanted to do. When I entered college, all the Seniors were sporting engagement rings and going after M.R.S. degrees. I thought I'd probably do the same.

But in the 4 years I was in school, the world changed dramatically. Women began entering the workforce in droves. Women's lib was at its height and, frankly, I had to make a living like the next gal.

I got a degree in communications (well, for reasons I won't go into here, really one in Education with a concentration in communications) so that I could go into PR...a job that requires writing. An idealistic young woman, I wanted to do non-profit P.R. But no one would hire me without experience. And besides, "non-profit," it turns out, is non-profit for everyone, including employees.

As a native Cincinnatian, there was one major employer in town for which everyone aspired to work: Procter and Gamble. The great Soap Factory. My grades were good, I had shown some leadership ability in college and I interviewed well enough to get a job in promotion...not quite non-profit and not quite P.R., but close enough.

And so was born a 24 year career in business. Yes, I wrote, but it was expository writing and creativity was limited to figuring out what words would make an idea sell to upper management. Not exactly poetry.

It wasn't until I took an early retirement package in 2001 to care for my elderly, dying parents that other worlds opened up. P&G had been a more than full time job...and during my years there, I was also a young mother of two and a wife. No time for creative endeavors on the side. I am no longer so young, am still a mother of two kids, who are more grown up and am still a wife.

After my parents died two things happened. First, I felt freed of parental expectations for success and decorum. Suddenly, I could be anyone I wanted to be. The world was my oyster. Second, I rediscovered my love for writing.

I was in pain over the loss of my parents and poetry was cathartic. What I wrote was intimate and not anything I would share with anyone but my husband or best friend (BFF). But I did find I enjoyed playing with words in the very tight, very short-short stories that are poems.

I began to read modern poets: Jane Kenyon, Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lucille Clifton. I noticed that their poetry made observations of the world. Each little story contained a vignette or a moral or an "aha" moment. I began to emulate this model and to write a different kind of poetry. This poetry I could share with the world.

Well, the world is a big place to start with, so I began by finding a writing group, Women Writing for (a) Change, where I could share my poetry in a small and supportive group. I then ventured out to my church's poetry group (yes, my Episcopal church has a group that meets once a month or so to share poetry -- one's own and famous poets').

Finally, over four years or so, I developed a body of work. I was nearing 60 or so poems about which I felt pretty good. I started to think about publishing.

Of course, I had no idea how to go about this. All I was told is "poetry doesn't sell." A maxim in the book-selling world, apparently.

I was unfazed. I went to the poetry section of my local bookseller and began looking at publishers who had printed books that were on the shelves. I started sending them my work. Especially if they had a web address.

BINGO...I got a hit. Woven Word Press in Boulder, CO loved my poetry and offered to publish me.

The rest, as they say is history. And, I suppose, I am now officially a poet.

At least that's what I put down on forms (like my daughter's college matriculation questionaires) that ask for an occupation.

It feels good. It all feels very, very good.

Try it, you might like it, too!

I'll leave you with a poem about the process of becoming a poet:

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Don’t quit your day job
the little voice on her left shoulder says.

Stay a waitress, pink uniform and apron
fitting a trim figure, easy to keep
with the walking and hefting of orders
for customer’s tips -- her favorite, the
regular who left her twenty and told
her to go buy a condominium.

Don’t quit your day job,
the insistent voice nags, nags, nags.

Be a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief.
Daddy says get on the payroll at the plant,
what with the benefits and all. Or go to school
to be a nurse, slapping the cold steel scalpel
into the doctor’s deft and waiting hand.

Don’t quit your day job,
the little voices cries,
afraid of consequences
unthinkable, unspoken.

Don’t quit your day job, abandoning
the security of teaching at a school
with thirty to a class and a policy
manual the size of a small atoll.

Don’t quit your day job,
to be a poet,
doing the minuet with words
sifting through junk for the perfect phrase
to make the reader’s gut zing ,
or to be an artist,
transforming everyday forms
with perspective, moving her audience to tears.

Don’t quit your day job
for dreams heavy with hope,
a Vegas dose of risk and the
temptation to do what you love.

Don’t quit your day job?
Hah. Watch me.


Blessings,

Anni