Sharing poetry is the most painful vulnerability. That was when I realized for the first time that pursuing life of art requires the warrior sensibility. You have to keep going, no matter what other people say and what they recommend. Some advice is good and some isn’t. We all need to develop our warrior instincts and our warrior sensibilities.
Poetry is a language it takes a lifetime to learn to speak. Luckily, other people speak it! Back when I was a new mother for the first time, I advertised for poets and assembled a book of over 50 poems, representing over 40 poets from 26 states, writing about the experience of being female, and called it The Feathered Violin. We printed 450 copies and shared it widely, all around the country.
In terms of sheer daring, this may have been one of the most daring things I’ve ever done!
When I gave my stepmother a short story to read, she recommended I join a writer’s group. I laughed and said I’d belonged to COUNTLESS writer’s groups! Literally, God knows how many.
She was surprised, I guess that my bumps hadn’t been smoothed out.
It takes courage to share your passions. I saw a lot of talent in writer’s groups. They definitely showed me techniques of riveting attention grabs I hadn’t yet thought of. But every writer comes up against the problem of; how much are you going to let them change you. Usually, if you follow someone’s direction down an uncertain path, you need to be able to trust that person. And I could never quite get there.
I remember when my first serious novel was accepted for publication – “serious” as opposed to my gothic – I was so excited, and immediately shared that info with two of my writer’s groups, thinking they might want me to speak about the effort and the experience. But they showed no interest whatsoever. I couldn’t even get my local newspaper interested!
I contacted my old writing teacher and offered him a copy but he was uninterested, too. He’d moved on.
This was a shock. I couldn’t have pissed off ALL these people – in one of those groups I had been a completely accepting student. I began to think it might be like contacting a home-buying seminar and telling them you’ve bought a house. All they’ll say is, “Good for you.”
Writer’s groups are about relationships – something I suspect I’ve never been good at.
My courage was diminished: somewhat. Luckily the Warrior Ethos tells you that’s exactly the time to make a plan to keep going. Because Being Warrior isn’t about Going Along to Get Along. It’s about finding out what the truth really is, every time. Truth isn’t a fact, it’s a modality Warriors live in. Warrior passion never diminishes. It grows.
#Haiku: Wake Up I’m All Alone
#Haiku: Wake Up I’m All Alone
Spooks need Dupes: Dead need Goodbyes: Sustain Feedback loop: Frustrate Rejection.
Right before my husband and I moved East, I applied to the MFA program at Brooklyn College and to my surprise, was accepted and offered a “fellowship”. I was given a stipend and a class to teach. When they asked where I’d graduated college, I left the form blank. In my Warrior Way, such things weren’t important. Apparently , they didn’t notice this until half-way through the semester. When they confronted me on it, I said I’d been to two colleges but hadn’t graduated from anywhere. With the insouciance of youth, I didn’t think it was such a big deal. After all, they were a college! I was there to take whatever classes were required to get their silly degree. If that meant I couldn’t teach classes, that was OK by me. These prep classes – how to write an essay – were Brooklyn’s way of weeding out undergrads who couldn’t hack the demands of college courses. Traumatic for teacher AND student. I wouldn’t miss giving them. I didn’t aspire to be a teacher, I wanted to be a writer. Before my record was discovered, my teaching was given very high marks. Afterwards – not so much. But the college felt it was a VERY big deal and kicked me out. My writing teacher offered to contest their decision, but I told him not to bother. I was realizing that I probably DID need a degree, that I probably DID need to go to college and that Brooklyn WASN’T the right place for me. (I didn’t like their writing program!)
I was feeling the powerful pull of mysticism. One of the reasons I was so cavalier about universal requirements was that I felt the world they represented was an illusion. I could see the Real World invitingly glittering, unexplored, around me. I applied to undergrad at LaSalle College which also offered me a writing fellowship. Here I worked one on one with students to improve their writing and I wasn’t required to grade or even assess anyone. I took it.
Fellows
Choosing the perfect word Is about rendering the fatted thought; Blending ideas – Maximizing luck & Happenstance; Unbulking winged objects Capable of flight – Lifting you And maybe me – Out of the muck We all woke up in Just this morning.
During pursuit of my never achieved degree in Rehab Counseling (at Springfield College) I worked three years at Easter Seal. There were good things about it but it was not a happy experience. I taught Career Exploration – that was the fun part, trying to open the eyes of frightened people diagnosed as “disabled” to the possibilities out there. I knew very little about computers – just coming into vogue – and Easter Seals refused to get me training – but I passed on what little I could figure out. We worked on resumes, interviews, goal setting, and seeing yourself through the employers’ eyes.
While I worked there Easter Seals built a glamorous new building and moved all “managers” out. It was carefully explained to us that anyone actually providing services to clients was unimportant, replaceable, and would be paid as little as possible – being a manager, on the other hand, was a high-status, remunerative, important occupation.
I saw I needed a new job, pronto and used my new skills to get hired at a non-profit start-up of ex-addicts hoping to influence legislation. As the sole “office help” I enjoyed creating business practices from the ground up. I kept track of members and planned member events. Unfortunately, my boss was a very angry man (he once threw a book at me) and was usually seething about what he saw as my completely misplaced confidence and independence. After three years, we had enough work to hire an office helper; but I was not assigned to be her supervisor. This was actually fine with me because I was busy managing a family and writing on the side. You hire a poet at your peril, and I don’t think I could conceal my distaste for office politics. Office Helper observed this dynamic and began immediately planning to take my job. This only worked briefly – once I was pushed out she lasted a month.
I was determined to keep up the good relationships I’d forged, but it turned out to be impossible. Their world was just not my world. In the meantime I had one child in college and another finishing high school – I thought I might make it on a part-time job and on paper I certainly had the skills. The weird interplay with my ex-boss – officially fatherly yet boiling with suppressed sexual rage – gave me an idea for a novel.
Seawracked
He lost her Spoke too soon As men are wont Words freighted by an inner logic Fell to earth and lay Prey to busy bristle-footed worms Tidily dismantle Subject, verb & predicate; Sucked out sense and left The elegiac bones to rot Amid kelp-wigged rock & glass-rope sponge Cheek by jowl with Long dead fishermen’s wives Punished now for ill-set dough and Worse-set hair Mouths agape in imitation of The badly sutured wounds of childbirth Secrets told; corpses left to nourish Nature’s counting-house One season only; sharing space With shattered petrels Feathers spewed like pillow-stuffing In passing frenzy of love-struck boy s- Strewn among the shavings of these once great ships Built by hearts & backs of men Who loved their daughters far too well – Losing them to sailors Crueler than the great sea-god himself; He who stirs our sleep these nights With grief-crazed cries of loons Casting on the waters for their Far-flung children Lost forever now As we are lost as He lost her.
I loved writing, I wanted to be a writer, so it certainly seemed that I should come up with a writing solution for my financial problems.
“Gothic” novels were popular when I was in my 20’s; historical romances featuring aspirational heroines from the wrong side of the tracks who catch the eye of a moneyed, powerful man. I was a big reader of Victorian and Romantic literature which is loaded with fascinating true stories. Take Thomas Love Peacock, friend of Shelley and author of Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle; a member of the landed gentry who saw a village girl sewing in a window and adopted her into his family for the rest of both their lives. Seemed like there was a story there! I also was a fan of ghost stories, especially Edith Wharton’s lovely After, where you see the ghost but only realize it afterwards. How about a ghost that adapted to the viewer? I had great fun writing this novel during a long, snowed in winter in Maine, sent queries to agents alphabetically and picked the first one who liked Devlyn and wanted to represent it (her name began with “C”.) I continued receiving rejections from lackadaisical agents long after the book was actually published, such is the state of the literary world.
She sold the book relatively fast. I took the train from Washington DC to New York city and was taken out to lunch by my editor, who seemed likeable enough. She said I was so pretty, maybe they should make it a series. The money they offered wasn’t anything you could live on, but the print run was over 100,000 copies! That had to mean something.
Then the publisher was sold. My editor was fired. My second editor and I did not hit it off. She seemed to dislike gothics and be embarrassed by them, she wanted to represent “memoirs.” I was stunned. Memoirs by definition are nonfiction. If she didn’t like fiction, what was she doing in this job?
Not much, as it turned out. She was out, and I was offered a third editor, whose specialty was Westerns. I kid you not. Aren’t all “genres” really the same?
I attempted to cultivate other editors. I attempted to cultivate other publishers. It was depressing how often sex appeared to be part of the deal. I was used to making my own choices in that area and I was not remotely turned on by any of these guys. Eeeeew, followed by “Ick.”
I got a new agent. My Warrior ingenuity was playing out but soon, it would be “played out.” Because I was an artist. A key feature of Being a Warrior is not becoming a mercenary. Because that’s something different. I had things I wanted to write for me. I couldn’t explain what they were, because the only way to find out was to write them.
#Haiku: Devlyn
Ghosts mirror Fear, says brave Thea; this killer’s Motive laid bare – “Revenge”.
Difficult to become a warrior without resources. It’s probably not impossible, but it seems to require more psychic strength –or perhaps just the ability to engage a team – than I’ve ever had. On the other hand, I’ve always been able to make the most of whatever resources came my way. It’s the gift I’d like most to pass on to my children, because it helps you persist in the slog and outwit your pursuers.
I can’t tell you how many job interviews I’ve had where I realized they wanted me to come across as more ruthless, and I just couldn’t do it, even for the purposes of Shapeshifting Performance Art and Fun Impersonations, both of which I was familiar with using on a daily basis and enjoyed. But this was survival we were talking about, the magic metamorphosis of confusion into livelihood. My interest in personal transformation led me to studying a degree in Rehab Counseling and this particular interviewer seemed to want me to express a desire to punish my clients. Maybe that was when I realized I was in the wrong business. I wanted to teach these people how to become warriors.
How To Become a Warrior
In heaven the victors Celebrate with their rivals Not taking it personally But loving. Forgiving. “You thought WHAT? I was wrong!” You went WHERE? It’s so nuts!” How we’ll laugh while Scars dissolve; Iridescent plumage Shivers off our beautiful selves Unconditionally Eternally Mysteriously Revealed.
Becoming a warrior is rough. The only thing harder than becoming a warrior is NOT becoming one. Then you’re subject to the wild vagaries of circumstance. What you must do Is fight your way up to the controls and try to steer this thing in a safe direction. You won’t be able to do that without assembling a team, and teams rely on cooperation.
My mother died of breast cancer when she was 70 years old – and my father lost his mind. This was a complete surprise to everyone. My father had always been the strongest, smartest, wiliest person in the room. He was especially good at Reality. As the captain of our ship he piloted us through storms, foreign borders, bizarre customs officials and threatening cops and robbers. He once jumped overboard with a knife in his teeth to cut our propeller free. He untangled anchor chains, rescued a man at sea, founded successful businesses, managed money and liberated cash from international banks. He didn’t believe in God, he was scientifically educated and intellectually up-to-date.
My mother’s death was no surprise – she’d been dying for five years, up until the time the hospital sent her home and said they could do nothing for her. After the body bag left, my father’s first impulse was to kill himself by swimming as far out to sea as he could go. He was rescued by my brother-in-law, but he was still talking crazy. A helicopter took him to a hospital on the mainland where he was diagnosed with grief psychosis and briefly institutionalized while various medications were tried.
I took him out for lunch one day and he asked to stop at the Kwik Check for a newspaper, running in by himself. In the car I went into a slow panic – what if he bought razor blades? Luckily, he didn’t, but that was the way we all had to think as I strategized with my three sisters. We took turns with him. We could see the medication – Thorazine – had debilitating side effects, so checked him into the Philadelphia Mood Clinic to see if they could do a better job. They could, using primarily talk therapy.
Here my father fixated on getting married again, and as soon as he was out of the clinic he was stalking a variety of women, all of whom turned him down. Finally, he hooked up with an old friend of the family who was coming out of a bad divorce where her husband wanted Someone Else. She needed a Someone Else to shake in his face.
She certainly was familiar – having attended all the same churches and schools that we had. But she was not like my mother at all – flat-footed where my mother was imaginative, plain where my mother was beautiful, astringent where my mother was warm. But my father certainly calmed down. Creepily, he put her in charge of everything. He began referring to her as “your mother”. None of us were invited to the wedding. Newly married, they went on a tour of all our houses where he carefully explained to us that we wouldn’t be getting anything in the will, because he’d already done plenty, plus he’d made our stepmother leave her job so she could tour the world with him and he had to take care of her.
My husband said, Great! I’ll take it from here! One of my sisters said, “It’s his money, he can do what he wants with it.” Another was so depressed – “He’s abandoning us AGAIN” – she couldn’t speak. The third sister said, “We’re helpless, we can’t stop him.”
I said, I was taught to speak truth to power. I was taught that resistance is not only not futile but mandatory. Guess who taught me that? My conscientious objector father, who went to Kentucky State Prison for his pacifist beliefs.
I wrote him a letter in which I said half of that money was Mom’s and she felt an obligation to and love for her grandchildren and daughters. I threw in every moral rationale I could think of. Incredibly – considering the way he’d distanced himself from us – it worked. He said he would leave us a small amount at his death and put the bulk of the money in a trust that would revert to us on our stepmother’s death. He didn’t leave us as much as he promised, but the trust idea is a good one. Someday it might even come to pass.
ON BEING DISINHERITED
These are the tasks To be performed Without feeling; The snipping the Slashing The shredding The with-holding, the Bundling into bunches. You play the remote ogre And I’ll be the crying child.
Why do partitioned pieces Melt before they touch? You fear to give; I am helpless to receive. Suppose we changed places. Would that explain Your fear of me?
After the bank took our house, we moved into one of the vacant condos in their project. My mother-in-law sued us with a federal injunction that accused us of damaging her tax credits.
Throughout this horrible state of affairs my husband kept hoping his mother would come to her senses. I consulted a divorce attorney but realized that I didn’t want a different husband, I wanted a different life. I wanted to return to the past, when we were happy and everything was possible.
At this time, my own family sold our summer place in Maine and I gained a sudden influx of cash. I decided to use it to get my husband away from his mother and into a new life. There was certainly the possibility that he would feel obligated to choose her, because of his “sunk costs” or just feel emotionally unable to leave his situation.
Through the nine years of our marriage we had found joy and release visiting his family summer place, StormFall, in the Berkshires, and it seemed to make sense to choose somewhere near there. Hartford was the nearest big city and Connecticut seemed halcyon and clean; almost a paradise in comparison with Philadelphia. The children were six and two at the time; as soon as I received my psychology degree from LaSalle U we took off to explore the Hartford suburbs. Manchester, “Silk City”; “The City Of Village Charm” seemed just perfect. I bought a cute little new townhouse and enrolled the kids in school. It took Toss only a few months to join me. He hired a lawyer to extract him from his partnership and he found a wonderful job writing for the Connecticut Lawyer. He stayed there twenty-three years! We were a happy family again.
NEW HOUSE
The pregnant car disgorges Us. It’s winter. We beat our gills as light As hummingbirds. In a town of green schools and Greener parks this New built house Gapes and swells To draw us in. There’s a science room and A writing room and A TV room and Rooms for children. We sleep aloft for safety High above the thorny osiers Unseen by the demon’s angry outriders; Cherishing a safe word She’ll never guess; it’s Love.
What is the difference between an old soul and a new soul? So many times, I saw the people around me choose suffering. I made a lot of idiotic choices in my life, but I never chose suffering. I graduated from suffering to sadness, and now I’m trying to graduate to compassion.
Wisdom means seeing suffering coming and trying to get out of its way. It’s not always possible, and sometimes we just have to blast through it.
A lot of my poems and stories are about ghosts. Ghosts describe the edge between the comprehensible and the impossible, between sadness and suffering, between guilt and gratitude.
The deaths of pets are always traumatic for children, and I could even participate in the sadness of roadkill. I once tried to carry our cat Beautiful out to the road to see a dead cat, but, being an old soul, she did not want to come.
When our family moved to Africa, I was eleven and had to leave our dog Four-Eyes, behind. I was haunted by his eyes for years and years. Every time I read the book The Cat That Went to Heaven I was in floods of tears.
I asked a wise old man if animals went to heaven and he said, “Think how disappointed St. Francis would be if they don’t.” With a gush of relief I realized he was right – that wouldn’t be heaven for St. Francis. Or me.
STICKS
My dog Went on fetching sticks Long after it was dead. We’d find them on the stoop Arranged in patterns. Monk would sigh and say Poor old Four-Eyes Missing us. Still Playing people games
High school for me was a religious boarding school whose faculty asserted their monopoly on truth. I considered myself an honorable person and despised lies. So when asked straightforward questions, I told the truth and accepted my punishment. However, I gradually discovered that they reserved the right to lie to us and in fact, considered that “parental” and pedagogical. Was there any point telling “the truth” to such people? Apparently, truth was a scarce resource that I, at age 14, possessed. The hypocrisy was huge. My father loved the Society of Friends because creed was optional, attendance at meeting was voluntary and silent. No one spoke unless moved by the Holy Spirit. But at our school, religious attendance (we even had Vespers!) was mandatory and our captive audience was lectured from the Facing Bench (where the Important People sit.)
In such a world, is truth possible? Is it even findable? Above all, is it communicable? I was naturally artistic, a bent which was discouraged because it was “self-indulgent”. And poetry (it’s poetry if the poet says it is) is the most self-indulgent of all. So that’s what I chose.
PREPPY
Corseted with verbs The French teacher sweeps The cherry blossoms from the tennis court As she would like to sweep The cherries, squelching them soundly Beneath soccer-spiked shoes
While the headmistress Cello-breasted Polishes graffiti carved upon her coffin In Chaucerian High English And the girls – Nun-white, nun-blue
Soar above hockey fields like Foul-mouthed angels, anticipated ecstasy locked In narrow hope chests ripened on Amphetamines Free Love Bad dreams.
Alysse Aallyn 