Well! It’s been a minute, and I am finding that hard to believe. It feels like it was only yesterday I was sending my last post out, but apparently it’s been THREE, yes THREE, months. Time is an accordion. Yesterday was Monday. Tomorrow is Monday. It is January of 2021. I don’t know. Thank you for sticking around.
For those of you who don’t already know this, I returned to school this year to finally finish my B.A. I was, prior to this run, a four-time dropout with nothing to show for it. Part of my work through my return has been reframing how I see coming back in my thirties—not as an oops, how embarrassing, let’s just get through this thing quickly and quietly and hope no one asks, but as a reflection of a perfectly reasonable alternative way forward, a way through that works for me. This is good. And honestly, I’m having an incredible time doing research I just cannot wait to finally share with y’all.
I wrote a piece for one of my courses called “A Poet’s Practice.” I’d like to share it with you today. But first, a couple updates.
One, I am now doing a referral program here on Substack. That means if you refer friends, you’ll get access to my paid subscriber benefits, including my audio collaboration with
. The more, the merrier—please tell your friends.Two, I am going to be working much more diligently at posting regularly. Things are a bit hectic as I near graduation, but I hope to be sharing something with y’all biweekly. Let me know what you’d like more of—poems? Prose? Essays? Prompts? Let’s chat and get this thing back on track :)
Read on for some reflections on my practice as a poet. Sending you all love, warmth, and goodness.
-t
A Poet’s Practice
I live in contradiction. I am the queer, Jewish daughter of a pastor. A loquacious, autistic writer who was without words to describe my own world until I received my diagnosis at 33. I seek stillness constantly, with a yearning that buzzes, hums like static, shudders like labor pain. I ache for simplicity, for quiet, for calm. I find myself existing ever in tension.
Tension is a distinctly human experience, as far as we know. Poetry is, for me, the language of making peace with it. I am moved to write a poem by dread and tenacity, tiny grey squirrels in the jaws of neighborhood cats, their mothers hungry at our feeder the next day. I am moved by the busy, quiet lives of solitary bees, how carefully they take from the earth, how generously they give back. I am moved by our 106-year-old floors, scarred and creaking, lovely, foreboding. By my son waking in the night, crying until I drag my heavy, glad body from sleep to hold him. By nature’s divinity, and its mortality. And yours. And mine.
If I am a poet, I am most a poet in this space. Leaning against my wife as we fall asleep, praising her closeness; pressing tortillas in a cluttered kitchen; delighting to celebrate our child’s second birthday, knowing we won’t be there for his eightieth. There will always be a leaving, won’t there? I planted climbing roses, and I sometimes wonder who will tend to them when I forsake this house for another. If they’ll even bother. Even so, for the holidays, I asked for new pruning gloves. This is my home today. I should bless it with kindness, water, care. I bless my life, then, with poetry.
Poetry is not just art. Unless you go looking, however, the conversation seldom goes beyond that. I think that’s a shame. We are seeing the arts devalued in very tangible ways lately, with humanities budgets cut around the country, scholarship opportunities for students of the arts waning, English departments dwindling, as though poetry was a luxury used up by generations past.
But poetry contains worlds of value. It is so much more than wordplay, descriptions and insights, clever turns of phrase used as social media marketing. Poetry, if really examined, is discovered to be language, syntax and cadence, phonetics and rhythm. It is also history, situated firmly in its moment. It is justice movements and picket lines. It, like history, can be cruel and complicated. Poetry is music, balance, communication. It is folklore and storytelling. If a poet writes about the natural world, it is science. It is tides and pollination, stars and bone.
Poetry is also an education in being. It requires attention, articulation. Equally, it requires knowing how and when to be quiet.
.
.
(To leave space for a breath.)
.
.
Poetry is craft, and it is instinct. As Mary Oliver wrote, “Everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school… Something that is essential can’t be taught; it can only be given, or earned, or formulated in a manner too mysterious to be picked apart and redesigned for the next person.” And yet, she said, “Whatever can’t be taught, there is a great deal that can, and must, be learned.” Poetry is openness and revision and curiosity. It is tenacity, because these things come to each of us imperfectly. It is a sharp and dedicated presence to the moment, and it is a lifelong commitment to staying soft to this world, however terrible it may at times be.
When we approach a poem, whether as its reader or its writer, whether it is a natural outpouring or a difficult exercise, it may offer us any or all of this. What an invaluable teacher.
I have been writing poetry professionally for nine years now. For all the startling changes these years have brought, my love for poetry is steady. It has only enrooted, expanded, grown tall and full. Now I am eager to evolve, to be challenged as a writer, to become more skillful with language (and with silence, too). I write often, read often, and am aiming to further my education as a poet. As someone who considers this my vocation, I am very deliberate about my development.
But as someone who considers poetry my heart-work, I tend to my growth most seriously, with tenderness and patience. I’m not one for journaling, really, and I’ve never been much of a storyteller. Poetry is my language. It is legacy. These are the words I will leave behind.
I think of my son. I imagine that eightieth birthday, his old-man face beaming and wrinkled, surrounded by people he loves. I hope I make it there somehow, though I know my body will have gone back to the earth. Perhaps in a book on his shelf, words on his tongue. Perhaps as a poem tucked snug in his memory, just waiting to drag its heavy, glad body from sleep to hold him.
Loved this! So beautiful Torri! Many many congratulations on going back to college! ❤️