Dear Poet,
I’m a poet/editor who’s desperately trying to find a job that fits my interests here in Madison. I’m struggling hardcore to say the least. Any advice for a writer who’s feeling more than a little lost?
Signed,
Searching
Dear Searching:
I'm sure that you've done the practical steps such as looking for like-minded spirits in the community, applying for jobs, hitting the bookstores, coffee shops, and bars to look for environments that you fit in socially and spiritually, attending readings, etc.: the professional networking kind of thing. I'm sure you've done this, because that stuff is what can bring us to this state of frustration, too. I'm glad you wrote; it's a good distraction from my worries about a critter who's trying to burrow its way into the foundation of the house.
Yesterday the ground next to the basement wall was piled to one side, rubble and pebbles in a mound, and there's a little path leading down to the cement beneath the kitchen. I stared at it for a while. I don't know how to convince this creature to go elsewhere. He's just doing what he naturally wants to do. It's hot and he's trying to find a space for his body and maybe even his family. I placed as much of the rubble back, to see if he would disturb it again. Later that day, it was again piled up to the side, a sign that he's interested in staying. Turning to your letter helps me avoid this chipmunk or gopher. But your question also touches me.
Seeking a job that fits your interests, and feeling, as a poet, a bit lost in that seeking: I understand both, and the frustration for me is that it should be easier, because it is so right for us to be where we feel we should be. Our passion, investment of love, our interest and energy—it would not be a just world, a fair world, if we were not to find our space. Why must it be so hard, for so long? This feeling comes to me when I read the passage in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," when the men cannot wrap their minds around the unjustness of their circumstance. If they are going to be drowned, the narrator thinks, why was he allowed to get this far, too keep going at it, to work this hard? The waves continue and the land is far away. It's a challenge to accept the arbitrary and unjust world. "The Open Boat" is about real survival, but the feeling is not far off: it should be easier, it should not be so difficult, we should not feel so many doors closed when we work so hard. The bird in that short story flies around them and away, emphasizing human limits once again. Now I'm thinking about how writers have an overall fascination with birds, how we envy of them, and our use (some would say overuse) of them as metaphor. Well, fine. They are perfect for metaphor in so many ways. Bede in Historia Ecclesiastica employs the sparrow's flight as metaphor for our passage through life: the bird flies into the room from the outside, from darkness into the bright light for a moment, and then out again into the dark. I love picturing that elegant, dreadful, curving path through the air. And then of course we envy that birds sing when they breathe, we envy the ease of their poetic voice, we envy the ability to make gorgeous arcs when they fly. It all looks easier from this distance, easy, elegant. It occurs to me now, as I'm writing you, how laborious it might be for them. Up close it must be wearying to keep on like that each day. But otherwise there is no food, no life. And, perhaps, no purpose.
I should take solace in knowing that what is natural, what feels necessary, is often more struggle than not, that even to arrive at something must feel less like arrival and more a continuing effort to become. Is there any way for us to take solace knowing that we are doing what is natural? Riding a horse the other day up the tiniest hill, I could suddenly feel every muscle and tendon of the animal engage, doing the hard work of going on. So I guess the struggle, which can feel like a roadblock, is the opposite: the struggle is a sign that we are moving forward. That chipmunk ruining my foundation is doing what is natural to him, and he won't give up at all, and now that I think of it, it can't be easy for him either. It must be exhausting. I am sorry to have frustrated him. I am almost ashamed to have thought that birds were only elegant creatures with pinions delicate as silence. The grind is real and onward. We are in the lighted house for now and our flight is exhausting. I suppose I just didn't know that flying would feel like this. In reaching out to me you've helped a lot, to let me know that others are like me. Ellen Bass can help us both.
Relax
by Ellen Bass
Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the dryer.
Your husband will sleep with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice–one white, one black–scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry. So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.
From Like a Beggar, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2015. Reprinted by permission of the author.