Writing for survival

"...it is no longer such a lonely thing to open one's eyes."

So grateful for the many bold and courageous women writers who over the past decades have made it less lonely to open one's eyes. They don't tell us it's easy, just necessary in order to live one's real authentic life.

"It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful."

Yes, all of those things. Because to awaken consciousness means to wake up to what's really going on, to the damage that has been done, to the long road it will take to recover, to heal, to begin life anew.

I'm quoting Adrienne Rich again, this time from an essay: '"When We Dead Awaken": Writing as Re-vision,' in the volume, Arts of the Possible. These days I'm working on memoir and family history, and, in that narrative, searching for some wisdom that can shed light on this moment in our country, a story that is in many ways paradigmatic of our culture's crisis of meaning, a window through which to view how it is that we have come to this point of cultural dis-articulation and fragmentation. We seem so lost.

Words matter

I remarked the other day in my reflections on Adrienne Rich on the gift of language, this amazing ability that evolved through many species into human babble, our multiple, diverse, ways to express ourselves, communicate with our loved ones, our tribe, our culture. It holds tremendous power, language does. It holds people together and divides them up; it builds both bridges and walls.

Turn on cable pseudo-news stations these days, or listen to right-wing radio talks shows and evangelical preachers, and you get a sense of the power of language - how it can hold together tribal identity and shred a society all at the same time.

It seems these days that we hold this remarkable skill - the ability to create language full of nuance and layers of expression - in great disrespect. We treat it with so much disdain. We use it as cudgel, weapon, a destroyer rather than a connector. Listen to the politicians running for election this year. Talk about dragging this gift in the mud!

In my life as a writer, I do what all writers do, struggle with the modes of expression a language provides me to create a narrative that entices the reader to enter in and see the world from another vantage point, or to attempt to open an insight, or simply to tell a damn good story!

Adrienne Rich

There are the poets that make a difference in our lives, and the ones who change our lives. When that happens, we revere them; they become part of us. It's just that simple - and profound.

To reach this pinnacle, the heights where poetry actually changes our lives, requires more than beauty in words, metaphors, images, or the flow of a line. It takes courage. Poetry can inspire. There are verses that make me gasp in awe. But poetry that makes one 'see' the world differently, opens up new paths, new spaces in the psyche and the heart, anchors one differently in the world - that is rare and wonderful.

Adrienne Rich was that for me.

I am a terrible poet, but I have learned so much about writing from my attempts - and from reading poetry, lots of poetry. Poets have taught me about the stunning efficiency of words, about metaphor, the turn of a phrase, the resonance of an image, a line you read once and never forget. A line like this, from Rich's poem, 'Hunger:'

Until we find each other, we are alone. 

Here she is, writing about writing poetry with poetry: