When I was in graduate school working on a collection of poems, so many images from the era of my bucolic youth, isolation, cherry blossoms and the scent of woodsmoke on wool scarves surfaced. Plus, I was writing on the shores of Lake Superior after years of living abroad and it felt like I was returning to my youth, all birch beech forest, buffered by a cold deep lake and so much quiet. One night a fellow poet and I were out at a Sports Bar, drunk on cheap pitchered beer and watched other people play pool, when he said, "Your youth is just too poetic pretty, just too....pretty. You really shouldn't write poems about it, it's too cliche Emily."
I wish I could tell you I had some quick reply, some retort along the lines of "not every poet is wounded by Saginaw and loss and just so you know, being sensitive isn't the only prerequisite for writing verse. I can say this because my name IS Emily." But I didn't. I think I tried to say something funny and act like it didn't bother me. But I've carried the comment for years like some shoe box labelled "photographs" of my past I only look at alone.
Ironically, I am drawn to the "uglier" moments in writing--the neglected dogs of Detroit, ice cream stands outside of Auschwitz, dust bowled towns in Eastern Montana where a handwritten sign from some fourth grader scribbled, "say no to meth," men crying at bus stops while you just say sorry in their language, gas stations in Nevada filled with keno machines where people the color of ash sit with so much hope under neon. But when I see these moments, I hear Yeats in my head, "the terrible beauty is born." And wonder what delight can be risked in seeing these scenes not as merely ugly, but terribly beautiful. An irony that gets you closer to some truth.
After that night in the Sports Bar in Ishpeming, I took my fellow writer friend's word to heart and tried for weeks to write of anorexia, men who smelled of bad meat and beat their wives behind the thin walls in Poland, our family Collie being overrun with maggots and the man in a Budapest train station with no arms or legs, placed on a piece of wet worn cardboard with just an empty bowl. I tried for ugly. And sitting in my thesis director's office after reading my attempt to write about my beyond thin roommate eat handfuls of sugar naked in a kitchen, he looked at me and calmly said, "Emily, you have to love something to write about it, you have to find what you love about anorexia to write it well. You must love this world, really love it so much to write poems. Even at its ugliest, it is still love."
And I believe him. I still do even after all these years of my book being short-listed for publication, my fumbling attempts after years of rejection, I believe love is at the root of writing poems. I also believe him because for the past few years I have not written a single poem, not even a haiku. Until recently. It might have more to do with my obsessive interest in reading every web page and blog on divorce, reading late night articles on "starting over in your thirties", "joys of not having a family", "10 reasons why being single is rewarding" and too many articles loosely titled, "finding yourself after grief" written by a woman in L.A. who is a life coach with perfect bleached teeth and realizing the life coach speaks in steps, adages and programs. Speaks in terms of liner reason. I do not. I understand metaphor, stories and color. It has taken me awhile to see the towering collection of non-fiction books next to my bed might have curbed my motivation to write poems. It could also be, I didn't really love anything. In other words, I had lost my essence in the mail.
Divorce isn't just about changing your name, your address and your route home after work--divorce is about divorcing yourself from yourself. In the terms of foundation, divorce is the great demolition of your spirit. Despite it's popularity and frequency, let's face it, people understand the complexities of death more than divorce, we all die and yet some of us can remain married. And given I live in a small town, I was able to develop a new level of empathy for the Scarlet Letter and wear my own cursived lettered D around town. Sure, this might all sound melodramatic, but this is what I know, even the ugliest divorces still have beauty, somewhere. Or as Jack Gilbert said in his seminal poem, A Brief For The Defense
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give that that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
And like my thesis director, I believe the old poet's words to be true. Most people get to have families and build homes in their lives trajectory of maturation, for those of us lucky enough to get divorced, we get to really learn what it means to risk delight, to loose everything you thought you knew about yourself and figure out what lies beyond. We get to sniff out our essence. Before I go any farther, let me make something clear, I do not, I repeat I do not recommend divorce to anyone as a means to go deeper into yourself. We all know there is no label on a marriage certificate listing the possible affects, side effects and symptoms brought on by divorce. But if you find yourself with a bad case of loss and hopelessness, you have options. You can choose to either stay with others coined the un-evolved in some modern limboed hell complaining how life treated you poorly and how the locomotive actually ran you down. Or, you get to figure out what you really value and want for yourself. Let me also say, option B, is a very long and slow process with a lot less glory, fun and people to hang out with. Option B is usually pretty solitary and lonely.
But thankfully for me, I had a very solitary beginning. Back in the days of waiting for my dad to come home after spending hours in the woods exploring, I didn't know any different. I didn't know other people had playmates and buddies all day. I didn't miss what I didn't ever have. And here lies the crux of divorce, you once had someone to eat dinner with on a Wednesday, you once shared a tent with someone during a snow storm, you once had inside jokes and above all, you once had the belief in love. But when you had something once, thankfully, you will know how to have it again. Or in the terms of food, once you've eaten fresh calamari from the shores of a Greek island, you will remember what fresh calamari tastes like--you can hold the essence of its beauty in your mind and try to recreate it, travel for it, revere it and really know something sublime exists. You can believe there is still love after love. There is still music despite everything. There are still poems.
Speaking of, after all these years, here's a new one.
Finding Lubricant After the Divorce
given mostly by your mother,
you mistake the tube for silver polish.
The gel paled to faint pink,
labeled, I. D. Moments has no smell,
no sugary musk sticks to the air. Unlike
the geraniums, red-filled confident scents
your apartment with bold color,
the same shade of lipstick
you no longer risk to wear.
You count months born from the divorce
baby you carry, careful not to over-feed
or nurse in public. You hide it like some teen
who lives with an aunt for awhile. Grows fat
and quiet in another town. Returns with just new hair.
Thankfully, there is no essence to loss, no perfume
to linger on an old shirt, sheets and underwear.
