On Not Being a Poet

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Phoebe 10734 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2012%2F02%2F08%2Fon-not-being-a-poet%2FOn+Not+Being+a+Poet2012-02-09+00%3A13%3A15Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F%3Fp%3D1073

I call the above Twilight Self-portrait with Bags Under My Eyes. Yes, I am a tired Phoebe.

I was just talking to Sean over IMs about poetry, of all things. He asked me for some recommendations, and I began to wax excited about Richard Siken. Then I thought: maybe I should post one of my old poems on my blog. After all, they’re not going publish themselves, and I stopped sending them out long ago.

Combing back through those old document folders is always a little strange, a little difficult. So much of what I wrote back in graduate school now looks half-baked to me, as if I had neither the patience nor the stamina to see any of my concepts through to fruition. Some of it is bad–derivative, mostly of poems I’d already written. And I can’t bear the thought of those seeing the light of day, even on my blog.

But oh, a few of those poems . . .

Look, I’m a better YA sci-fi novelist than I ever was a poet. I find the act of writing fiction to be more fun, more challenging, and more fulfilling. The perks–an audience of passionate, engaged readers (for one)–can’t be beat.

But I can’t deny that there was a time that I loved poetry, and a time when I worked very hard at it. For four years, I dutifully sent out poems to literary magazines, yet still got next to nowhere with it. I felt like I was treading water, so I gave up. Most of what I wrote back then will never see the light of day.

And maybe that’s good. Many of my poems were sort of . . . fetal. Juvenilia, is the only way I can look at them. But a few of them were good. Very good. They weren’t always the ones that were held in high esteem either by editors or by those I encountered in graduate school, but I read them now and feel a little shiver. “Hey, that’s a poem!” I think. And I feel reluctant to post it here because, man, it feels like it belongs in a magazine somewhere or something.

I don’t really know what to do with these poems. In some ways, my life has been an experience of winnowing broad passions down to narrower ones, and while my core art is better for it, the aftermath is that talents lie fallow, artwork ignored. When I was in eighth grade, I sat in my guidance counselor’s office, weeping because I couldn’t take Creative Writing, Music and Art. I choose art. It was the right choice for me then, but I hardly ever paint nowadays. So I can’t help but look at this stuff–this work, my life’s work!–and, sighing, throw my hands in the air.

One thing hasn’t changed from the days of poetry: I still do have a flair for melodrama.