Showing posts with label self. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self. Show all posts

Monday, February 21, 2011

Finding My Voice

Scene from "The King's Speech"
In the exquisite film, "The King's Speech," there is a scene in which the therapist Lionel Logue explains how he helped shell-shocked veterans of World War I regain their voices - voices that they were afraid to use because of the trauma they had experienced. Some of his techniques consisted of breathing and vocal exercises to re-educate the muscles and nerves as to the mechanics of speech. One of his techniques meant listening with his heart as well as his ears to his clients.

I wrote a post last April about how I have been largely voiceless when it comes to poetry due to my own long term trauma. Like those shell-shocked veterans, like poor Albert thrust onto the throne as George VI, I could barely write if it involved poetry. 

And then a group of my high school classmates coalesced on Facebook. We found, some 40 years after we all began 9th grade together, that we share common bonds after all. One of us, Kate, began to post daily haikus, and eventually that lead to no less than three separate poetry groups on Facebook populated primarily by the Delaware Hayes Class of 1974.

Okay, a disclaimer. We are not talking T. S. Eliot or Emily Dickinson here. There are a lot of limericks and general high jinks. There is also a lot of fun, not to mention appreciation of one another that we couldn't have begun to have had back in our teenage years.

For me, the groups are all that and more. For me, they are a series of exercises in finding my poetic voice. They have become drills to re-educate my fingers and my sentences in the mechanics of poetry. They have become a way to get the taste of poetry back into my heart and into my words.

Writing poetry for a very small, very supportive audience makes me feel as I am starting to speak out loud again after a long silence. I may never regain my poetic voice with the same strength and vigor I would have had had I not lost it for so long. But I don't stutter anymore either. I don't  stand silent in front of the poetry microphone. Today Tonya threw out a haiku assignment of "favorite childhood memory" and before I could stop myself, I had posted four in response.

I was a little taken aback when I had finished. Did I just do that? Really?

National Poetry Month is a little less than five weeks away. I am still exercising, still writing, still building up my skills and my nerves. But I'm giving serious thought to a self-made challenge to post my poetry on this blog during the entire month. 30 days, 30 poems.

I know, it's not the start of World War II and I am not the King reassuring his people. I am only me, reassuring myself that it is okay - more than okay - to write out loud.

And that - giving myself permission to write poetry again - is more of a challenge than all the King's horses and all the king's men could ever have put back together again.

Friday, May 14, 2010

The Work of Writing

A friend and regular reader of this blog commented yesterday that I have posted only a couple of times in May.

He insisted he was going through withdrawal pangs. "Write something!"

"My Muse has deserted me," I said in response, both of us laughing.

My comment stuck in my head the rest of the evening and even touched my dreams, as I was cutting up and rearranging lines of poetry (someone else's, not mine) on oversized index cards. I woke with the feel of the scissors still in my hands.

Recently I was reminded that writing (indeed, any artistic endeavor) takes place not in the ethereal reaches of Art but instead in the very real daily world. During our recent Chasing Light… week, one of the events was a joint talk between Joseph Schwantner, the composer, and Robert Flanagan, a local writer and poet. Joe and Bob hit it off from the outset, and we were treated to two hours of free flowing talk about writing, composition, rhythm, music, poetry, and anything else that came to either of their minds.

Members of the audience occasionally asked questions and one attendee, a well-meaning individual who sometimes seems to stalk Culture with a baseball bat and a grim expression, asked Joe, "what inspires you to write music?"

"A signed contract and a check for one half of my commission," he quickly replied.

A frown crossed the woman's face, and she reframed the question.

"Well, what is the first step in the composition process for you?"

Joe said, "I have a deadline. And I sit at my desk every day and compose music in order to meet that deadline. It is the work I do."

There was a small sigh of disappointment from the questioner. I think she was hoping for a revelation from an Artist and instead got a working class response.

Composing is work. Writing is work.

Art is work.

Monday of this week, I ran into Bob on a downtown sidewalk. He showed me his latest draft of a short story he had mentioned that night. It had his penciled notations on every page.

"It's work, you see," he said, fanning through the pages. "People think you just sit down and the words fall out of the sky. But it's writing and rewriting and rewriting. It took me three drafts of this story to realize that one character was not who I thought it was at all."

That reminded me of the question from the session and Joe's comment that he was inspired to compose when a signed contract and check arrived. I alluded to it.

"Exactly!" Bob shouted. "That was a true answer."

Bob and I talked for awhile longer about writing - his, mine - before he went one direction with his drafts and I went another with my thoughts.

Those thoughts started to swing full circle before yesterday's jest about my Muse. One of the things Bob and I talked about in our encounter was the practice of capturing images and ideas in a notebook or folder for later use in writing. He reminded me that sometimes you go back and realize something that moved you so at the time has shriveled and should be discarded, and other times the most fleeting of notes takes on a glow of potential when you read it over later.

It is a habit I used to cultivate assiduously and one that I have found myself taking up again in recent months. Bob's comments encourage me to continue with my observations and my notes, and with my work of writing.

If I indeed have a Muse, She is Me.