Who wants to be a poet, anyway?

The delay is that – well – since writing is so much of what I do, now, it’s neither escapist nor explanatory nor therapeutic/exploratory to write about, all the time. But it returns, now.

*other poets may disagree. That’s fine. This is my experience. I'm envious, perhaps, and/or admiring of - in awe of - those who are so dedicated to this as I am to no one thing.

The first poem I remember is from second grade.

Poem that I wrote.

I was a better poet then than for the approximately ten years after that –

because I didn’t know, yet, what poetry was. What poetry was “supposed” to be. What “sounded like” poetry.

From seven to seventeen, there was subversion, inversion, and perhaps glimpses of things that had merit! maybe! that said something! maybe! But it “sounded like ‘poetry’” – which is, really, not good at all.

Even poetry that conforms to rules – i.e., Shakespearean sonnets in strict iambic pentameter, for one – is good if it’s so natural that you don’t know for awhile that that’s what you’re reading (unless it is, obviously, Shakespeare). The rhymes, the rhythm are not forced. They’re what exists – and what happens to be in that form. And then you look and realize it’s three quatrains, ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, and a couplet – GG. Ten syllables to the line in iambs. Trying that – doing that – is hard, and often sounds heavy-handed and sing-songy with inverted structure to get the right rhyme at the end. I think everyone goes through that phase. (and maybe it becomes something amazing and there is the real poetry. Not for me, not now).

But at seven I was a poet.

To be a poet is not a choice.

Who would choose this? It’s a lonely vocation. You sit, alone (or alone in a crowded room, as we crave the (prototypical?) background noise of cafés. Street and people-watchers, listeners, we are). You spend an inordinate amount of time in a difficult headspace that most people don’t have to inhabit so often. You – if you’re really going to write – are connected as much as possible to everything, and you’re always listening, and open.

It’s dangerous.

Nselang, Cameroun - you can't capture the greens of the forest in a photograph - can't - This isn't a great photo, but that's irrelevant for this point -
and you can't capture everything with words, but we try

The Imposter

17 August 2011

For several reasons, I wrote this approximately 3 weeks ago, but I haven't been able to post it until now. To be read in the context of mid-to-late August. I'll write soon about the up-to-present. And how I saw the writer from "Stahnding Room Only" (February) again last week.


After a job interview, my new boss suggested I check out St. John the Divine. “Have you been there?” “No .” “It’s the largest cathedral in North America.”

I walked up Amsterdam to 110th . I like cathedrals – it’s a place to commune, to be quiet. I like the stone and cold, windows and dark light. In Paris, it’s Notre Dame (however clichéd) and everywhere else. Here, it’s…

            I went in, similar feeling, similar, except not nearly as cold. Quiet. Leaving, I walked up the street to discover more of my new New York. Next to the cathedral, there is a hospital. Pause. Ridiculous – no – nothing to do there – to see whom?

Pause, but there's a small pull and I walk towards the main entrance. It’s unfamiliar (but I’ve worked in 7). It’s private (never done that) and there’s a guard at the desk.

The title is a lie.

(to follow)

There is literally nothing that did not happen today.

I spoke with a friend in Cameroun.

I found out that the research article section I wrote is, in fact, good, even with the inclusion of some writerliness.

I went to a county hospital, participated in infectious disease rounds; spoke with HIV doctors and people working in public health in Africa and people teaching about narrative medicine.

And then I went to a poetry reading with a new poet friend and we went out with one of the readers and all her writer friends after.

Dizzy.

I was in three of my major communities – Peace Corps/Cameroon/public health, medicine, and poetry.

And only in the third did I feel intimidated and like an outsider with little to say or knowledge of how to interact.

I carried a white coat to the poetry reading in my doctor bag. I wore Cameroonian clothes. I had my med student ID. Just in case. It’s next to the MFA student one. I wrote new poems on the subway. I’m better at that than reading in transit.

At the hospital, not-quite-just-a-visitor and not-quite-a-student, I asked, “should I masquerade?”