PoetLife

Some poets can't go a day without writing, and a week is monstrous. These poets tend to be monstrous themselves, when not writing.

I am not one of these writers.About twice a year I go weeks, perhaps even a month or two, without producing a single thing. Maybe even not writing. The thing is... I just get tapped, mentally drained, nothing left to give. I call it recuperation. Writing is mentally and emotionally exhaustive... at least for me. After the end of a period of mass production (because normally when I'm writing I write a lot), there's just not a lot left in me for much of anything. Like, really. Anything. Usually I sit around watching spectacularly bad tv, which I enjoy immensely. Usually I don't read. Usually when I finally have the energy to read again, it indicated writing was around the corner.

But then there was grad school... 2 years of wild productivity, reading, writing, everything. And then a thesis. 2.5 years passed and January rolled around and I could write no more. And I didn't write anything more. Except a quickie chapbook in March. A one off. And then NapoWrimo... which was really just an exercise in futility. Realistically, I say I havent' been writing since January. That's going on 7 months. Above and beyond my usual points of recuperation. And I was starting to feel bad, like I might never get it back.

But I've been reading, for pleasure, for a while now. And recently dipped my toes back in to reading poetry. And I wrote something today.Whether it's good or worth bothering with doesn't matter. It was the impulse to write and I took it. And it's possible it might stick this time. And it's possible it might not.


A sample:

                                     "The ache of corn starch.
Dreaming of clean lines—I enter the breach and
reconceive the whole. The whole thing is burning down.
Everyone is burning down.

But your wilderness.

It keeps growing."