We lost power last night and with the lost power, I lost my post for this blog. Mostly, the post was about how I'm worrying instead of writing and that many of my best poems have come from when I've directed my worry to paper. My over-active imagination is both a blessing and curse, when I'm writing it comes in quite handy, but when I'm thinking about what's wrong with me and my vision, it immediately goes to the worst possible reason.
So, I'm trying not to walk that road, which is hard for me as thinking the worst is something I'm quite skilled at as I've been practicing it since childhood.
I've always been impressed at people who don't think the worst. I always wondered if these people didn't have fairy tales read to them as a child. I know if something bad could happen, it would in the magical world of fairy tales: grandmothers eaten by wolves, children were abandoned in the woods only to find a candy house that a witch inhabits, poison apples arriving to your doorstep. And I always wanted to hear more of these—read another! Just as I had a love/hate relationship with the TV show Flipper, how I loved that dolphin, but had to turn the TV off every time he became caught in a net (which was probably every show).
I think my life as a reader has shown me how it’s not the man with the gun who is the murderer, but the sweet woman in the white dress who knits in the background. The twists and turns are never expected, you turn a page and your world is turned upside down. Maybe today I will return to the page to see what worry can do for a new poem. Maybe I'll allow myself to wander the road the worst case scenerios and to see if worry can be converted to art.
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In other news, my poem “You Ask Why I Write About Death and Poetry” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by 32 Poems, which is quite exciting.
And my poem “Funeral Perfume” is in the new edition of Red Mountain Review. A beautiful journal I recommend you submit to.
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Quote of the Day--
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
- Jane Kenyon, “Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks”
