not feeling the hermit life for once the day was decent and i’d rather wallow
2
porch gecko spiky feet on my hands disappears into plant shadows good kitty
—march 18
3
kids shouting quarantine time or vacation?
4
sunny world waking up to more sickness
—march 19
5
wonky wibbly day snoring on the futon
6
two whole days off terrible toilet paper
7
beach closing— boat running— vulnerable people
—march 20
8
too much time sitting up early
9
midnight beaches shut down— at noon the tourists do what they like
—march 21
10
cherry blossoms falling on empty streets
—march 22
11
almost a non-day just tired waiting…
—march 23
12
crow commentary a pair of hawks, there no, there
—march 24
Notes for Week 12
When I looked at this week’s writings, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic were obvious: There were only four poems. Since I keep a near-daily journal, I decided to create some found poetry by taking words and phrases out of journal entries. Can you guess which poems are the original four, and which are found poems?
Click here for the answer.
Poems 3, 4, 10, and 12 are the ones written during this week. The rest are found poems.
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This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
pink skin from the bath my head is filled with stardust— bookworm
2
westering sun casts hard shadows on the overpass they remind me of broccoli
—march 11
3
breathing the same air as flowers
—march 12
4
this tiny piece of the universe licking my hand
(kitty)
5
i wish some things were as pretty as their names (coronavirus)
6
seed fluffs drifting over already parched grass
—march 13
7
morning sunlight and the sweet smell of oak leaves
—march 14
8
the world rushing indoors to reach outward welcome to hermit life
9
a run of insomniac nights chomping holes in my words what a pest
10
making tea while sipping coffee
—march 9
11
from nowhere the mysterious scent of soy sauce
—march 16
12
world on lockdown, everywhere green leaves
—march 9
13
old man ripping up weeds on public sidewalk
how dare that spring green break up the cement?
(quarantine)
—march 17
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
listening to a musician on music over lawn equipment
groping my way through the dark word by word
(illumination)
2
into the silence first cup of butterscotch tea and a distant seagull
—march 5
3
empty night waiting for the rain
—march 6
4
quiet Saturday daring to open my curtains
5
all that time taking care of others— i have forgotten how to be
—march 7
6
time change— wondering when I lost myself
7
pale mirror reflecting leaves —teacup
—march 8
8
a bright morning for hearing deep news
9
living a constant stream of lawn maintenance sounds
10
fluffy bath mat hot hot water first-world solutions
—march 9
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
weary eyes fighting a sleepless battle for this story
3
dark clouds— flat holes in a tangerine sky
—february 27
4
sweet lemonade sunlight pouring in the windows the novel nearly complete
5
this quiet dark broken by the shining of a book light
—february 29
6
year’s first mockingbird song open window
7
whishing traffic punctuated by the question mark of a water droplet
8
this evening is the sky made of candy or watercolors?
—march 1
9
laying out the future infinity of words
—march 2
10
hairy man across the pool reading Catch-22 on my side I write poems
—march 3
Notes for Week 9
There’s a rather bookish bent to this week’s poems, isn’t there? It wasn’t planned that way; rather, it was a happy discovery when I looked at my notebook to compile the entry. Sometimes the currents of our lives only show up in hindsight.
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
overpass wall stretching white and clean past my front door online a neighbor froths about the graffiti
5
reluctantly contemplating showers— not wanting to miss the sun
6
stale tea, worry not thou art still drinkable
—february 23
7
if human eyes needed no rest I would devour all the world’s stories
8
neighbor’s sneeze louder than mine worn-out weather stripping
9
the jittery impatience of having things to do and not doing them
—february 24
10
dark oaks wave their fingers at wispy sky
11
silent afternoon the faintly shining streets a surprise
—february 25
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
disappointed in the mildew on my beach chair it was clean five months ago
2
Wednesday morning exploring one of life’s mysteries— the origin of the dripping sound
—february 12
3
overcast i turn pages idly in my mind
4
listening to windblown leaves thoughts of the sea
5
can’t tell if I’m getting better keep writing
6
inner clouds i crave the comfort of noodles
—february 13
7
gray skies spitting rain electric violin in the parking lot
—february 14
8
some days the sun just shines
—february 15
9
cat picking at the door peeling paint I also wish to be let out
10
sunny breeze carrying around this “no” on my back
11
second-guessing every word that comes out of my heart
12
green-eyed cat finds a hole in one sleeve
—february 17
13
one week was as long as a mountain’s shadow
14
how i wish i could hurry recovery
15
deep fog a personal wall even on a sunny day
—february 18
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
wild conures call while i wipe the glass tabletop clean awaiting company— freshly arrived poems
—february 51You may have noticed this poem originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in last week’s TWIP. Apparently, I can’t keep track of my start and end dates. 😆
2
to bed too late and headachey up too early headachey life can be …you know
3
high surf advisory all boat tours canceled lonely whitecaps
4
overtrimmed hedges tremble against the wall— sunflood
—february 6
5
i am nothing but a mandala
—february 8
6
feverish from hard work losing the thread of the story
7
those cloudy days when 10 words come out as 100
8
reading of pure countryside air the wail of sirens
9
“I lost my cannonball” he says while I contemplate The Comedy of Errors— Sunday evening
—february 9
10
slanted sunlight in air conditioned air the heavy weight of not feeling why I sit here
11
i never understood the appeal of pajamas i would rather live day in, day out wearing wings
—february 10
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
cloud-covered sky there are worse things to have than two types of lavender Earl Grey
2
eavesdropping on a conversation about victimization I begin to feel victimized
—january 29
3
eating kids’ cereal while the cat roams around another day in Paradise
—january 30
4
dark outside already but some days are the middles of stories
—january 31
5
for once, quiet except for the sirens and the snoring
6
I remember when the world was smaller connections delighted us before we took for granted our swollen follower counts
7
dinner with friends followed up by the Platonic ideal of glazed donuts: Krispy Kreme
—february 1
8
evening darkness hovers at the windowpane the cat traps me in my chair
—february 2
9
late night beneath the fuzzy echoes of shrill conversation I question whether the stomping was better
10
writing the date on ten poems in a row I still fail to remember what day it is
—february 3
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
In my head, I’m a fantasy writer. A fantasy novelist, specifically, with aspirations to the short story. Somewhere in there lurks the identity of a journalist, too, or at least a writer of useful nonfiction articles and, just possibly, personal essays. If you’ve recently come across me, though, you could very readily be forgiven for thinking I’m primarily a sort of middling-decentish poet. From an outside view, all I’ve been writing is poetry.
So if I’m supposed to be writing this other stuff, what gives with all the poems? If I’m a novelist, why is everything I visibly produce not just poetry, but micropoetry? (That’s arguably the extreme opposite end of the scale, if one exists, from novels.) Why the heck have I literally submitted and posted nothing but poems for all of 2020 so far, when my head is stuffed with longer stories?
The answer is foreshadowed in a tweet from the middle of last year:
It’s odd how changing a crucial piece of your identity can feel like starting over again with how you communicate. Nonfiction writing feels weirdly awkward now — like relearning to walk after a major physical change. Not sure when I’ll be ready for the public again … 😉
Except that it’s not just nonfiction, as it turns out. All of my writing has become a sort of 3-D puzzle that I need to piece back together around the changed shape of my self. I am, as I am wont to say, in transition.
Still? you might ask; or maybe I’m just asking myself that. I do feel like I should be past the awkward figuring-it-out stage already. But that’s not fair of me, really. On average, it takes a year and a half to process a major life change, positive or negative.1According to the research of psychologist James Pennebaker. He wrote in his book Opening Up that about half of the people he studied followed a pattern of post-traumatic growth that took about eighteen months. It included 4-6 months of intense emotion, then a plateau period of about a year in which life moved on, after which the life change or trauma was assimilated. It hasn’t even been six months for me, and I’m still not ready to talk publicly about last year’s big change — in part because it had a couple of decades of negative momentum behind it, and also because there’s still a lot of social stigma, misunderstanding, and pain tied up in it.
Plus, that’s not the only change I’m dealing with. A lot of things have happened in the past few years that I’m now processing: symbolic deaths and rebirths, literal deaths that have changed my day-to-day life or provoked me to examine my reactions and the reasons behind them, and there have been big life changes in my support network, too.
Progress isn’t always tidy
Wait, some of you might be thinking. You’re still processing stuff from a few years ago? Why?
That happens, sometimes, when you’ve been in emotional debt. That’s what I’m calling it when you put off dealing with emotional issues you know are important, because sheer survival is your first priority. It’s kind of like using a credit card to pay bills and buy groceries when you have no other way to do it — you know it’s not ideal, but the electricity needs to stay on and you need to keep eating if you want to stay around to improve the situation. Putting things off isn’t always irresponsible — sometimes it’s a necessary survival mechanism, because when your daily life is already a constant struggle, you might literally lack the resources to deal with one more stressful thing.
After last year, thankfully, I do finally have the resources to process the backlog of life changes, but I still don’t have a lot of extra processing power to spare. The only way out of the muddle, though, is forward.
Poetry is a multi-tasker
So the reason I’m putting out so much poetry right now is that I want to keep writing through my wonkiness — and I am.
I’m writing quite a lot, actually, not just poetry, but stories that matter (to me, at least), and real articles, too. But the only stuff that’s coming out clearly(ish), the only stuff that’s making it to presentable form, is poems.
Somehow, poetry can slip out through the gunked-up machinery of my creative brain even while my inner workings are being disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled, maybe partly because it’s small enough to wiggle through. Larger works (even ones like this blog post) are way harder to produce now than they once were, because they touch more places in my identity that are under (re)construction.
The difficult works, of course, are the ones I’m really drawn to — the stories that matter most but which were interrupted by inner turmoil, the tales I was trying to tell while things were coming apart inside and around me. Those stories will take more time to get out into the world, but they’ll be worth the work, and I’m doing it — behind the scenes, for now.
And writing poems also serves another purpose. It isn’t just a way to keep my writing hand moving. It’s a creative act that, itself, helps clarify my inner world. To quote a piece of advice that Japanese poet Fujiwara no Teika received from his father, “Poetry […] is something that proceeds from the heart and is understood in the self.” And in writing it, one better understands the self.
Partly, I’m writing all this poetry because it’s good practice: practice listening to myself, translating inner to outer and vice versa, shaping and reshaping words and images and feelings. I’m writing it because working in bite-sized chunks makes it easier to leap past excuses and fears and imperfections. It makes the whole writing process into an accessible, rapidly repeatable microcosm, a ritual I can use to stabilize and strengthen my identity, day by day: In tiny increments, I can write, edit, complete, send out, and share my words and my world.
The sharing part matters especially. When you’re reconstructing a healthier identity, connections matter. The community we exist within matters, and after all, words were meant to be shared, across time, space, culture, and consciousness.
Slow growth is still growth
So if all that comes out for the next whole year is poetry, then so be it. It’s rebuilding my foundation. Someday again there will be multilayered stories about magic, about family, about fighting for what matters and fighting over what doesn’t, about death and love and life and fear, about the good and the terrible, and the intricate areas of gray. There will again be stories about people negotiating the boundaries and complexities of identity and culture and society and relationships.
Those stories will be fictional, but they will also be real, in that the soul inside them will be real; and the heart in them will be stronger, keener, and truer thanks to the unseen work I’m doing now.
For now, I am a poet — and may I ever be. I am also a storyteller, a magicworker, a guide (if a gawky one), a helping hand, an eccentric viewpoint, and hopefully a whisper of inspiration, even if those things largely happen behind the curtain for a while.
I write and share my poetry because poetry is both kind and illuminating, things I need now in my time of transition; and I write it because the more often I trust the words that come, whatever they are, the sooner and the better all the other stories in me will flow free again.
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evening tea washing the dust from my mind then, work
—january 23
2
early birthday dinner Buddha’s delight and a root beer float not bad
—january 24
3
birthday eve morning bleary-eyed from a long night of the neighbors’ remodeling
4
crisp afternoon talking on about nothing sun dripping through the live oak
5
lunar new year stuffed with chocolate chip muffins I throw the cat a sock
—january 25
6
as usual upstairs: stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp 3 a.m.
7
birthday wish: don’t walk on my ceiling all night crazy neighbor
—january 26
8
mint green tea the scent of clear sunlight and potential
—january 27
9
lunch-hour traffic the shadows of the trees stand still
—january 28
This Week in Poetry is an experiment in journaling through poetry, and sharing micro-moments of my life and writings, every week for a whole year. Thanks for coming along for part of the journey.
Heyo! If you liked this, you might also like my newsletter, where I’ll announce new blog posts and share fun things just for subscribers.
