Checked my acct – $54!! Don’t know where it came from
but I will spend it. Sent poems to Chloe Aparo, borrow bike from
Shoulders. Ryder wants to go horseback riding, we went to see
The Tenant instead. (Cheaper). R managed to discuss it intelligently.
Trying to research the occult for Secaire. Reading bad suspense
novel – Geoffrey Turtons Devil’s Churchyard. I liked all his other
books. Dump it for Aleister Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend. $10
to live on for 2 weeks. Mom & Dad sent emergency check.
6:25 PM – Sun 3 Oct 76
Fabulous dinner party last night. Steak tartare, crab
and cheese casserole, lots of wine. R and I fall asleep in each
other’s arms. We have more sex “broken up” than when we were
dating. Got offered $3.50 an hour for 4 hr a day legal secretary!!!
Out of their minds. Trying to sell my wedding dress for $150 –
got one porno call.
Tues 5 Oct 76
4pm appt with Environmental Defense Fund. Howard
Nemerov such a relief after Auden.
Thurs 11:30 PM 7 Oct 76
Typical Tyler St evening. Lying in bed (alone) powdered
and polished from bath. Maeve and Avril out on dates. R is working,
I’m reading Quest for Theseus. Got too depressed reading
Shirley Jackson. Her life solutions: food and cigarettes – plenty
of both. Lost EDF job – as soon as they turned me down I
decide I want it! To WTTG to apply for “production asst” job –
200 people spilling into street! Didn’t bother. How write about
love if it’s impossible?
I owe Maeve money – she doesn’t like it and I don’t
like it. Tension almost unbearable waiting for my check.
R offered jobs in Pittsburgh & Detroit. (He says he
doesn’t ever want to leave though it’s the only way to make more $$.)
12:55 PM Wed 13 1976 These are the times that try
women’s souls. Desperately accepted switchboard job at Broadcasters Agency because it looks easy and I can think my own thoughts.
Replacing a girl going on maternity leave so I’m not stuck if I don’t
like it. Agent sent check told me not to cash it for a week!!! Thinking
they’re all scam artists. Reading Diane Johnson’s brilliant Lesser
Lives. Avril depressed over Mason. Maeve depressed over George.
I am buying diet pills because of sedentary job.
Switchboard – Broadcast Agency 9:15 AM – Fr. 18 Feb 77
New notebooks such a thrill. Always a fresh start:
I could almost become anyone. Worked 3 full days this week –
more $$ in the coffers. Avril coming in to Broadcasters Agency
to apply for Zelma’s old job – $8500/yr for 7 hr day. Hope she
gets it. Brought in The Voyage Out today – I WILL finish it –
bring it to its knees. Perfect example of everything usually wrong
with first novels. Don’t like her novels as much as letters and diaries.
Talk about peering through a glass darkly. Oh well. Still drinking
coffee and picking the fuzz out of my eyes. Period’s arrived with its
usual exquisite timing. Once I’ve finished Secaire (needs a final burst)
can rewrite Find Courtney. Sort of a love story there.
10:30AM Sun 20 Feb 77
R and I went on ski weekend to Massanutten.
Didn’t work. Never felt so far from him, and he realized it.
Opal & Garrett over for dinner last night – their relationship is
boring when I’m alone and don’t have R doing all the work for me.
Drank too much out of sheer boredom and because I was
depressed over R, then I get depressed over being depressed
and drink more. Clearly he’s worthless and I must be too if I can
get depressed over him. No good work on novel. Filing, cleaning,
paying bills takes up all my time and my room still looks like a filthy hole.
Hermiting seems only option (cheaper, too). Must learn to roll
with the punches.
Fantasizing about Devon because 24th is his birthday. Bad sign.
1:00PM 21 Feb 77
Dizzy from dieting. Not dancing very bad for my body.
Current weight 122. (Opal says I have the perfect body. Glad
someone appreciates it.) Ryder suggested jogging – bad mistake.
Instantly attacked by colds & flu. Instead of eating go to library on
my lunch hr to take out books. Went to see The Sentinel somewhere
in the burbs with Avril and Mason, who drove like a crazy person
(“I’m not afraid of death!”) Never again. Ghastly flick. Mason moving in
– his money is good. Another secret to be kept from landlord. A guy
at work (Keith Dalrymple) is courting me. He looks all right, though
he has receding hairline. Kind of old. Asked to read my novel. I gave
him my poems instead. He needs to hit the ground running.
Tues. 22 Feb 77
Mason trying to talk A into moving to Calif with him. Uh oh.
Maeve also wants to move out because I’m critical of her
“dating” her married boss (they have sex in the supply closet).
She believes his tiredest lines. “Drop him – he’s outrageous
and destructive,” I say. I’m one to talk. Will use her room for
my study. Try to live without roommates. Sent Devon a long
grey silk scarf for his birthday.
3:40 PM Wed 23 Feb 77
Keith Dalrymple amazingly told me he loves my
poems. Wow. Having good literary taste definitely works with me!
Having a drink with him tonight. Had to struggle to keep myself
from hurling cash at a gorgeous $50 suit in going-out-of-business
dress shop on Dupont Circle. Slogging through Mrs Dalloway –
it’s her best book. But all this blind struggle not my thing. Require
some consciousness. I guess we were reptiles in those days just turning amphibious.
Thurs. 24 Feb 77
Can’t seem to write poetry anymore. Cocktail bar buffet
with Keith (Avril calls him a “dim bulb”. We are very critical of each
other’s honeys.) He’s a Woolf novel – smooth glossy surface,
violence and trauma beneath. He is intelligent – quoted Frost –
38 yrs old – divorced (was married 15 years!!!) I sat swilling
Scotch and giving him the hairy eyeball – do I have the strength
for this? He blanched when I ordered escargots chablisienne.
Wouldn’t even kiss him. I demand exceptionality and refuse to settle for less. Whatever else you can say about Ryder, he’s definitely one of a kind. I am in a unique position compared to other women writers. Given the chance to rise above sexual
strictures. Bought an exquisite pair of very high-heeled boots. I tower over Ryder – in more ways than one. Heheheh.
The Firefly lights our dark with his luciferous magic. In some species it’s only the male, but in others both genders use this cool heat to signal to each other and we are all beneficiaries of their romantic opera.
And it’s a complete drama with every plot twist you can think of; some fireflies impersonate desire only to attract and then kill the hopeful lover. Other fireflies deliberately use a poor impersonation to warn away competing lovers and decimate the field.
If attacked, fireflies use “reflex bleeding” to literally poison predators with their blood. This last fact generates warnings never to feed fireflies to your hungry pet reptile! What are we to make of this mix of beauty, falsity and carnivorous intent? Fireflies may be beautiful impostors, but they are never to be envied. They exist only to mate, lay eggs and die. Some fireflies live lives without nourishment. They never even get the chance to dine.
We are all attracted by fantasy. We each have or think we have – a list of “musts” and “deal-breakers.” Danger waits when we meet someone who actually matches all our specifications! Probably they are lying. Maybe you are, too. Possibly you didn’t even realize it until this moment.
Maybe you want one thing on the page and another In Real Life. Maybe you want one thing in the dark and another in the light. Maybe you don’t know yourself very well! Lust hardens, love softens; how solve that essential inner/outer conflict? We need to melt – together – into a glorious plasticity that allows us to undertake the “experiment” of entering the life, desires, viewpoint of another.
But this is only “safe” when goodwill and honorable attentions are present. If someone’s looking for a hostage, a slave, a mimic or even worse – prey – they will falsely claim anything to entice us. How can we tell the difference?
Sometimes their presentation is TOO “good”. A “pediatric oncologist” who “volunteers at an animal shelter?” Really? Is the attraction a “problem-free” relationship without any of that scary sandpaper of conflict that molds our rough edges to fit together more harmoniously? Or is this attraction just “high-status” and “bragging rights”?
As your grandmother warned, any salesman trying to hustle you into an instant decision is up to no good. Predators try to convince the young that by taking time to choose and trust we are ruining the experience! Don’t buy it! You’re getting smarter, and stronger by the minute! You’re within your rights –you owe it to yourself – to demand that deeds match words, and that intentions line up with performance.
Allow yourself time to discover, evolve and revel. Live!
BED & BREAKFAST
“That wing of course is closed” said Magda whose venomous green eyeshadow matched her voice; “I’d have that lanced if I were you” thinks Reni Who never says exactly what she thinks. “Wrong word: wing” Thinks Andreas “to use about a house tethered toad-like to the lawn”. But Andreas never says what he thinks either. It’s too late now. At dinner, they quarrel about Ezra Pound; Pretending to agree. Squeaky bedsprings bastardize this sad romance; Hopeless beds mandate sex is standing up. ( This butler may be deaf and dumb, But knew the best way out: He was in for the tip of a lifetime.) At breakfast the debate about Plath Turns violent; the biggest danger Of murdering yourself with a kitchen appliance is: They’re everywhere. Refreshing holiday, says Reni. We should do it more often says Andreas. Truth never spoken once. Mission accomplished.
Solitude is required for reflection, and reflection is required for growth. Growth is required for choosing a soulmate, because the choice cannot be haphazard but the result of self-knowledge.
Solitude is not loneliness; it is the Art of Being Alone. Wise Ones have told us that ultimately each of us is only alone; we are born alone and we die alone. Plainly, this cannot be true. We are as social a species as the ants and termites. But just as one could argue that every worthwhile achievement has been a collaboration, one could also argue that every worthwhile idea was conceived in solitude.
I prefer to think of our “mental, emotional and spiritual pores” having both an “on” and “off” position. There is outflow, there is in-flow and there is no flow. All are necessary to the health of the human being and all are necessary to the maximization of human potential. Depth psychology merely systematizes the layers of human consciousness and sub-consciousness whose existence dreams have always demonstrated.
Meditation and mindfulness seek to capture the exact moment when the soul experiences itself. This is not possible without regular periods of scheduled and enforced solitude. In-breath must equal outbreath until suddenly the lips of the psyche part and, as in a “magic eye” painting; the familiar world dramatically shifts to reveal under-worlds and over-worlds of multiple meanings and intense possibilities.
Self-Sufficiency: How panicked are we by the idea of being “alone”? Even those of us who are introverts are sustained by a complex net of relationships, any adjustment to which could drive us back to infancy. Are we alone even within our relationships? Are we alone on our planet? In the universe? It is surprising how much this fear can be seen lurking behind our consciously assumed states of mental “good cheer”.
Most of us work in collaborative ventures; nothing we do would be worthwhile without, at the very least, someone to assess or appreciate. It is time to take stock of our internal personal resources; those that owe nothing to the support of others.
Opportunity; Much of what we think during the day is in fact a dialogue. It is salutary to ask ourselves: who are we talking to? Is this person imaginary, dead, alive? Are they helpful – or cruel? It’s common knowledge that we speak more insultingly to ourselves than we might to anyone we know! Time for a “voices” upgrade. These are part of ourselves talking to each other; possibly parts of ourselves we could do without.
And is that the best way to accomplish our set goals? Now’s the time to understand that, given education and culture, we can never be “alone” in the sense of bereft of help. We have countless models we’ve been choosing from childhood up. Who are they? Do we need upgrade them, or just name them and learn to deploy them more effectively? Some of us are surrounded by a mix of celebrities (Humphrey Bogart in “Play it Again, Sam”) some of us by the loving dead (Granma and Grandpa) others by cultural icons (for me Shelley, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson) some of us by imaginary friends or even angels.
What’s working for us and what isn’t? After all, we furnish our own brains. Let’s decorate by design.
Danger! An important component of the confidence we desire to cultivate is freedom and self-determination. We all know how unsettling a date’s visible desperation can be. We instinctively back away as from a sinking ship whose whirlpool threatens to suck us in. In other words, the best way to gain a soulmate is to be able – visibly! -to live without one. This sounds nonsensical; but look at it this way, you ARE living without one. Is your desire to change your life based on the indisputable fact that your life is a mess? If so, we have to turn our attention to THAT first thing, otherwise we are the sinking ship no one wants to get near, much less, on.
Challenge! To increase our chances of finding the best person who is right for us right now AND in our future, we have to GIVE ourselves a future. No other person can be our “future.” We need to have a vision of a future we are working towards. That is what we want to hear about our date, and that is what they will want to hear about us. It’s time to become your own best friend, the one who really cares about you and gives such good advice
HEDGEHOG CROSSING ROAD
Spines erect as swords She waits To tilt the windmills rushing by Machined from hell to trap Her tiny weight of soul and fur.
She fears not. He who protects the sparrows Comforts her. The air is sharp With winter not With false regret –
She lifts her head to gauge The moment ripe for flight Unaltered in her captaincy of self. She’ll reach eternity or the pond
Assess your potential to connect. We wake alone, but we are on the path of Attachment. Ask yourself; do you seek balanced, indestructible attachment, synchronous, not disharmonic relationship; a connection that is symbiotic, not exploitative. If the answer is Yes, you are on the path of Paradise.
How can we achieve these goals? First, we must understand and accept our Self, our Ego, with all its quirks and flaws, needs and yearnings, limits and possibilities. Then we must understand the Other; the Lover. We must attune ourselves to the structure of their yearning to begin to construct our duet, our dance. After that we must negotiate the rapids of relationship with each other and with the outside world. Danger! Excitement! Ecstasy! Despair…Compassion. Union.
We are caterpillars, you and I, attempting to learn the language of butterflies. We are unprepossessing creatures, daily absorbed in infantile needs of eating and excreting, but we have a firm promise of a future in which we stretch our gorgeous wings.
DR HYSLOP Here you go, Virginia. This will make you more comfortable.
VIRGINIA I don’t want a hypo! Your drugs are making me ill. Help! Help! Get away from me! Life has destroyed me, I am silenced. I have no stings left.
DR HYSLOP Virginia, you must rest. You’ve had a tiring journey but everything’s fine now. After a good sleep and a fine dinner, you’ll be right as rain.
VIRGINIA When I close my eyes I’m attacked and assaulted!
(She tries to thrash but he injects her. He pulls up a chair as she begins to subside. LEONARD sits uneasily)
DR HYSLOP Your wife’s constitution’s very strong. It’s all that exercise, I’m afraid. Young women of the present day indulge in gymnastic exercises that sadly retard their mammary development. It only makes it worse for her. Now what’s the cause of this current fuss? I could hear her screaming all the way upstairs. The staff was alarmed, I assure you. It’s very bad for them. Loosening the bonds of self-control always results in sexual license among the lower orders.
LEONARD Hostile fantasies about Sir George.
DR HYSLOP Don’t encourage her by listening. You can never argue a madman out of his madness, and you will succumb to madness if you try. This degradation is so common among artists, I assure you, especially the moderns. “Imagist” authors use disjointed gibberish the way madmen rave and think themselves quite clever.
LEONARD Virginia’s mind is free and remarkably fearless. I treasure that. She thinks the chloral is causing her hallucinations.
DR HYSLOP Sadly, it’s the lack of good blood, I fear, responsible for these behaviors.
LEONARD Sir, do you refer to my Jewish ancestry?
DR HYSLOP Not at all, though I think you will admit mixed marriages constitute a special danger. It is the sad mental history of the Stephens family to which I refer – uncle and sister institutionalized with cerebral exaltation and morbid excitement, agnosticism, heresy and even self-murder. Now you find yourself married to a young girl who is comfortable speaking obscenities! It’s all dung and semen among the avant garde. Britain has become a dumping ground of late for the terminally unfit. You were wise to come to me. Did you visit Colby Court as I suggested?
LEONARD It’s … awful. I can’t imagine Virginia there.
DR HYSLOP Do you know, once they have settled down they are happy in their own way. Virginia is testing you. I assure you Colby Court is the finest of its kind. It can be uncomfortable to view our loved ones in extremis, and once mental disease takes hold many family members cease to pay calls. It is better thus. I understand Virginia’s sister, for example, is never visited by any family member.
LEONARD What a tragedy! I couldn’t bear it. You should have seen the beautiful Miss Stephen who agreed to marry me, scintillating with charm and wit.
DR HYSLOP (comforting him)
Fruit of the poisonous tree.
LEONARD But isn’t Sir George, her brother, then also poisoned fruit?
DR HYSLOP Half-brother, my good sir. Not at all. The Duckworths are quite a different line. Obviously, no effort was made to acquaint you with the family lineage before your marriage. It is my belief that the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act and the failure to reform the marriage laws has caused much needless harm. I’m relieved you came to me for advice about propagation. In my view it would be most unwise.
LEONARD Dr. Savage says childbirth would be the best thing for her.
DR HYSLOP He was her attending physician and look at the state she’s in. Dr. Savage’s methods are sadly outdated, I regret to say.
LEONARD I don’t want children but Virginia think she does.
DR HYSLOP She’ll get over it. The question really is whether she should be certified. You do realize that your wife’s attempt at suicide mandates her certification for the protection of landlords, staff – anyone she encounters is at peril.
LEONARD We can’t do that. Once she is certified divorce is impossible. Roger Fry is chained to his mad wife forever.
DR HYSLOP You needn’t divorce, you have grounds for a nullity. Do you contemplate divorce?
LEONARD Not yet at any rate. But the honeymoon – it was ghastly.
DR HYSLOP Coitus was completed, I assume? Or not?
LEONARD Hard to say. On our wedding night Virginia became so excited, dashing about the room I admit I became quite angry shouting at her to lie down. I’m afraid she wet the bed. We’ve tried a few times since but under the circumstances my manhood is severely impaired.
DR HYSLOP I assume you had all the usual experiences of a man of the world?
LEONARD Oh, yes. In Ceylon it was all concubines and courtesans. I was very lucky not to contract the syph.
DR HYSLOP Yes, these hazards are much more common abroad. Your general health is quite good? Apart from the tremor, I mean.
LEONARD Jews are a hardy race. We can survive anything.
DR HYSLOP It might be that this young woman is simply too effete for coitus and must remain a natural spinster.
LEONARD I threw over my career for this marriage. It was a big step.
DR HYSLOP Civil service, I believe?
LEONARD I was administrator of Hambantota.
DR HYSLOP Bully for you! Britain’s colonizing, civilizing impulse is the glory of the world.
LEONARD Well, I found it a difficult, dangerous and dirty job.
DR HYSLOP So is caring for the terminally insane. My advice is that once Virginia is calmer you attempt to explain to her that if Dalingridge Hall were not open to her there is nowhere she can go without certification. Convince her that absolute fidelity to our dictates is her only hope of healing her poor brain. Keep your chin up, young fellow. Best not to think about yourself so much. Spend as much time as you can manage in the open air.
LEONARD I need a job. I must establish a writing career.
DR HYSLOP Return to the Civil Service, is my advice.
LEONARD The climate in Ceylon would kill Virginia.
DR HYSLOP You should discuss certification, annulment and divorce with a specialist solicitor. I can recommend a few names. All this brooding gets one into a funk, don’t you see? Cultivate a sense of proportion.
If This Card Chooses You – You are torpid. What’s happening when nothing’s happening? Your dreams should remain lively. Do you dream of endless sleep? Deep snows? Hibernation? Do you identify with the drowsy bear and the sleepy sloth?
Now’s the Time – This is the sacred moment before a burst of Warrior Creativity. You are gathering your forces. Compare it to a pregnancy. Things are happening, but so slowly and deeply you are not aware of them, with the result that you may feel confused and frustrated. Instead, revel in this burgeoning becoming in the midst of sleepy peace.
Warriors Can Hibernate Sometimes a plan isn’t ready. Sometimes you’re not ready. Timing is everything. It’s a long wait sometimes, as anyone who’s ever been through eighteen years of schooling or a seemingly endless winter can tell you. But it comes faster if you turn your attention to other things.
Waiting for Peak –– We cultivate our dreams without pushing or extracting them. We curate our sensations. Spin through pictures of animals – what jumps out? Who is speaking to you? What are they saying? What are you afraid of and why? Make notes and collect images. A collage creates a deeper, more resonant picture. Sometimes it’s all in the eyes.
Warrior Danger – In sleep we are entirely vulnerable and we have cultural and historic reason to fear that state. Guard yourself with supportive beings, with sleep music, with healing rituals. The triple-locked doors, the blackout-curtained windows, the silenced devices protect us in our chosen nest. Don a bracelet of “worry beads”, summon your happiest memories and tell them by touch, eyes closed, one by one. Send every ounce of your remembered love and joy out into the universe with a command to come back to you a hundred times. A thousand times so that your love can spill over and be shared with all you touch, near and far.
Warrior Opportunity – You are creating yourself. The fetus of this pregnancy is YOU. In every dreamy hibernation second you are rebuilding yourself, adding visions, promoting fresh understandings and positive interpretations. Life offers us the chances of joy and misery – use your conscious awareness to accept these tools and allow dream-time and prep-time to penetrate ever deeper into your subconscious, (sometimes called the “preconscious”) to the unconscious, and down down down, deepest of all, to the collective unconscious where we recall in our bones and teeth and cells everything that has ever happened to every living thing as if it happened to us. This is the source of all imagination and creativity, accessible to you in the dream state.
Be Patient. A Watched Pot Never Boils. The mouse is a whole lot likelier to come out of the mouse-hole if the cat isn’t waiting on the other side. Free your mind to imagine what it feels like to be everyone, anyone, in your constructed scenarios.
Over-thinking is bad for your brain – Ever heard the expression “Sleep on it!” The only time you shouldn’t sleep on it is in the heat of battle, and the clever warrior AVOIDS battles. ALWAYS sleep on it! Ask your dreams to send insight, bubbling up from the pre-conscious. Participate in artistic pursuits, allowing metaphor and symbol to work it’s magic in your subconscious. Do something completely different. Refresh yourself.
Models & Mentors – “To lose patience is to lose the battle.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Grow in patience when you meet great wrongs and they will be powerless to vex your mind” – Leonardo da Vinci
“Patience is not simply the ability to wait but how we behave when we are waiting” – Joyce Meyer
“Patience and Time do more than strength and passion” – Jean de la Fontaine
#Haiku: Ghosts
Ghosts Enable, unmask All our Dormant selves We could not Would not Be.
When This Card Chooses You – YOU ARE AN ARTIST ! You possess the warrior power of making Something out of Nothing. Think. Feel. Look at the tactile world around you and reach out your hands.
Warriors and Artists immortalize themselves. Sometimes their works are so intriguingly beautiful that we are drawn in and our critical senses – our fear – is tranquillized while we allow the artist to work magic upon us. Artists aspire to be magicians of the mind and soul.
Warrior Challenge – You create something unforgettable because you do not want to be forgotten. You want to open hearts, minds and brains just as yours were first opened, long ago, when you looked upon this amazing world for the first time and felt the power & potential of what you saw. Warriors feel the same thing. We march to a different drummer we feel inside ourselves. We are inner, not outer directed.
Warrior Danger – There is possibility here for such overweening pride that you place your own psyche above Creation in importance. If you seek to divert worship of creation to yourself your own soul will harden unto death, and your creative powers will be extinguished.
Warrior Opportunity – Join the goddess in creating something entirely new that the world will not want to live without. The joy of sharing, the rapture of being known, the ecstasy of expression, of gratitude of being understood, will be yours.
Are you an artist because you say you are or because they say you are? Well, are you a warrior because you say you are or because they say you are? I think it should be obvious that is TOTALLY NOT UP TO THEM. You MUST decide you are a warrior, you have to FEEL like a warrior and they can NEVER “tell” you what you are. It’s exactly that way for artists, too. It’s a temperament, a way of viewing the world, and because it’s in harmony with Creation all around us, it’s enormously satisfying. Really gets those alpha waves going. The warrior in you needs to protect your creativity. It is always under threat.
Hustle Culture – Art can’t hustle but the merchandisers and the monetizers hasten to tell you: “Close enough – let’s get this thing to market.” But you need to find out what’s there – why this subject, these tools are drawing you. You need to think, to explore, to experiment, to start the process of 10,000 “failures” Edison said are the steps to success.
The Creative Warrior – If you’re not a creative warrior, you’re someone else’s warrior and that’s a living death. Strategize. Speculate. Get out that Training Journal. Dream. Speak to your soul. Allow it to shine.
Models & Mentors – “Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” – Albert Einstein
“Creativity can’t get used up. The more you use the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
“Creativity is just connecting things.” – Steve Jobs
“There is no innovation, no creativity, without failure.” – Brené Brown
“What’s so fascinating about life is the constant creativity of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra
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!
Alysse Aallyn 