So Sweet, So Tender

I have a slight obsession with the concept of poets (usually male,) reading poems about their girlfriends, significant others, or wives to audiences in which their girlfriends, significant others, or wives are a part of. So many times we imagine a female poet being the one who writes about her personal life and the romantic, personal persons in it (guilty as charged), but there's something so sweet and incredibly tender and endearing about how when a man reads a poem about his girlfriend/S.O/wife, he never looks at her, never acknowledges her, never puts her on the spot, and yet, you can see the understanding pass silently between the two.

These two poems come from two different poetry readings I sat in on. The first one comes from a reading given by Galway Kinnell at the Burlington Book Festival, and the second was a reading by one of my professors at Champlain College, Warren Baker. Both were poems about their wives when they were younger, and I'll admit to watching their wives like hawks after I realized who the poems being read were about. Like seasoned poker players, neither woman had any sort of tell that they felt any sort of way about it.

I think I would dance on my seat.

The Pulitzer and His Prize

She sits like any other member of the audience,

Periodically fidgeting to get more comfortable in the folding theater seat,

As his voice slides over her,

Touching everyone else as well,

And she shares him equally.

Unlike other audience members,

She never looks at her watch.

Later,

As they walk through the dark,

Arm-in-arm,

She leans into him and sighs.

"I've always loved

When you read the one

About me."

Literary Couples

She sits,

Front row,

As he reads

Aloud

About watching her sleep.

So intimate,

So sweet;

What it's like

For all these strangers

To hear how he feels about her,

I always wonder about.

She sits,

Front row,

Silently,

Not moving,

And I can't help but wonder,

With longing

If I will ever sit,

Front row,

Silently,

Maybe moving,

But just a little bit,

And listen to a man

Speak about what it's like

To watch me sleep.

XOXO

The Secret Lies Inbetween The Lines

I would not call myself a poet. Instead, I am she of the glib social commentary on men and women and the wry personal remarks on societal views. More "Cosmo" than "The New Yorker." Carrie Bradshaw to, say, Anais Nin. A gossip columnist; a shoe mongerer; an advice-giver. No great shakes to change the literary world. The level just ain't there yet, but I have time.

I am not discounting what I do well. Far from the case. I am living a dream that many never get the chance to even encounter: at a (relatively) young age, I have first found my niche, then found my voice, then found some way to get it out there. I am read, which is the most powerful thing that can happen for a writer, even more so then getting paid. There is validation in reader's comments; not in dollars and cents. As I am finding out, "what I do" pays far better, with more regularity, and has a much larger target audience who is actually interested in reading than what it is I do here on "Jux". However, this doesn't mean I should give up on "Jux," just days old. This doesn't mean I should quit my moonlighting job. This doesn't mean that what I do here has any less value than what I do on SATCG. If anything, if SATCG is my fun and my bread and butter, "Jux" is my release. "Jux" is where I get to showcase the human me: the me that struggles. The me sans bravado. The me who is still cautious of reading in public. The me who won't bare all. The me I am behind closed doors when I can shut my SATCG persona off. It's a me you may never see. Or maybe you do. One side isn't "better" than the other-- you must have two halves to make a whole, after all. Mine just happen to be deeply disparate.

But as is the case with anything you don't know much about or can't claim to be yourself, poetry fascinates me.

I love poetry because you'll never know what it's really about, even if you think you do. It's like looking at shadows and trying to guess form-- just a suggestion, buried and hidden under simile, metaphor, line breaks, and verse.

By all accounts, a secret, that only the writer knows.

Whitman and Yeats and Shakespeare and William Blake and Frost and Maya Angelou and Ntozake Shange and Ginsberg and Basho and Rumi. Rumi!

Rumi!
"The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober will worry about things go badly.

Rule-keepers run on foot along the surface.
Lovers move like lightning and wind.
No contest."

Rumi who wrote,
"When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
Marry, at once, quickly,
For God's sake!

Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching
Will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,
Has landed on your shoulder,
And become yours."

Rumi who said, "All the learning in books stays put, on the shelf. Poetry, the dear-- words and images of song, comes down over me like mountain water."

Now, there was a man who understood.

Who do you think understands it that way?

XOXO