Starting with A: On Art & Anxiety
A little while back I had the idea that I’d write some
essays for myself that were autobiographical and in some ways dealt with
writing or at least creating. It wasn’t hard to come up with this idea, as it’s
basically what my blog has been since 2006. However, I wanted to give myself a
construct, something that would keep me going, push me in the right or wrong
direction, or at least keep it interesting. So, I figured it could be
alphabetical. Right off the bat I couldn’t figure out what the “A” essay should
be about. “Art” I thought. Easy. I could write about growing up around painters
and ceramicists and sculptures, or that time I was feeling pretty alright and
went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (god, I love Van Gogh). But then, the
way most things happen when trying to create something, I couldn’t control it.
The “A” essay subject reared its ugly head without warning: Anxiety.
On Friday of last week, my fourth book arrived into our
rusty mailbox here in Kentucky. I had just had breakfast with two writer pals
up the street and on a hunch ran to the mailbox before even unlocking our front
door. I sat at the kitchen table, and opened the neatly packaged bundle. There
was a nice note from the publisher and…the book. I grabbed the top one, already
determined that this would be the one I carried and read from forever, because
I’m insane and overly attached in this way. It’s gorgeous. The cover (which
features a painting by my mother) is soft with a mat finish and it has cover
flaps so it feels substantial and weighty. (The fact that it’s a bit over 100
pages always makes it feel weighty.)
I sat there, alone at the table, for a few minutes. I wanted
to savor this. I kept trying to think of all the work it took to get here to
this minute, to this book. I wanted to feel out of my skin happy. I wanted to
feel as if something had broken open and I was finally coming into my own. And then, what I thought was originally
excitement, turned quickly and perhaps inevitably into a full-blown panic
attack. Now, I am familiar with panic. If my own particular messy issues were
to sit around the table vying for attention, anxiety would take the queen’s
seat. Luckily, I know enough to identify it and sometimes quell it
before it grows into some tortuous tornado that leaves me crawling into bed and
numbing out. Instead of giving into it, I sat looking out at the trees, took
some deep breaths and tried to figure out why I felt like my heart was going to
burst out of my body.
After I calmed down a bit, walked the dog, meditated in the
living room, and posted my books on Facebook—thank you fellow writers and
fellow readers for being there, I needed you—I realized what I think it was
that was causing all the commotion inside the blood.
I wasn’t just anxious. I was
white-knuckling-for-the-take-off scared. For me, this book is the most personal
book of poems yet. It’s raw in a way that I’m not used to; I don’t mean
unfinished, I mean, “open.” Though the previous books of poems are certainly me,
and expose all parts of me within them, this one doesn’t hide under anything.
For starters, the poems never (or very rarely) change tense—the “I” in these
poems is “ME.” I remember, while I was writing some of these poems, saying to
myself, “Okay, what’s the poem you are scared to write?” and then trying to
write it. I did this over and over again. So, this book holds a lot of the
things I might not say in person to a good friend, and yet here it is in the
world where anyone could pick it up. The poet, Mark Wunderlich once said to me,
“Isn’t poetry strange? We write down all our deepest darkest secrets and then
slip them under the door because we don’t want to be in the room while someone
reads it.” This is an odd art we’ve chosen to love.
The second thing is, this book contains my first real love
poems. Writing love poems is something that I find terribly hard to do. Oh, I’m
good at desire poems, want poems, but love is harder. I’m good at wanting, not
so good at having. The fear here is that when you write a love poem there’s the
moment when you think it has ruined everything. Like saying “I love you,” the
words hold an awesome and terrifying power. What are those great lines from the
Alex Lemon poem, “Boundless”?
Soon, no one will want
unlimited
Texts because it will
be known—
This here right now,
this,
Exactly what you mean—
The last thing, and this might sound strange, but this is
the first book that I did not write for poets. I love poets, don’t get me
wrong; they are my tribe. But I wrote this book for myself, for Lucas, for my
friends, and family, and for people who don’t always read poetry let alone a single
poem. Which is perhaps another reason why I felt like there was a bald eagle on
my sternum when I first held it in my hands. This is a book that is less
concerned with artifice and obfuscation and more concerned with saying it as
truthfully as I can. This wasn’t easy for me. I like to sing my way out of a
poem, I like the dream bird to come in and muddle up the meaning. Not this
time. It’s as if every time I went to write a poem for this book, I was asking
myself if I was hiding. I didn’t want to hide. I wanted to say something that
mattered and that I wanted to say. I did not want to write poems to write
poems, I wanted to write poems to reach out and to connect. I wanted them to
feel alive. I hope they do. Like Frank O’hara said, “I don’t like rhythm,
assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your gut.”
But in doing that, going on my gut, there’s another thing I
was scared of: not seeming intelligent. This is a big one for me. And I’d say,
I think it’s a big one for a lot of women in particular. If you are writing
about what matters, does that mean you are writing about the “F word?” Yep.
Feelings. I had a boyfriend once who said that there were “thinkers” and
“feelers” and I was a feeler. (Clearly this has stuck with me, look ma, no
damage!) Inherently the word “feeling” makes me think “naïve” or “dumb.” It
makes me want to say, “Listen, I’m not good at math, alright?” And yes, I do
think society views it differently for men or male writers. I think it might be
harder for men to talk about their feelings, but when they do, we think they
are being brave (And they are! Yes! Nick Flynn’s great new book of poems is
called “My Feelings”!), but when women talk about their feelings we are being
overly emotional, needy, whiny, and it’s, get this….easy. I’m not saying any of
this is true. I’m saying this is what my brain tells me. Writing it out here is
already helping. These are my
fears. These are, actually, my feelings.
Almost a week later, my anxiety about the book is lessening
and I’m feeling a rush of excitement every time someone tweets about it or
shares a line from it on Facebook or Instagram, but I’m still aware that with
this book, I went all in. And, I’m also aware that sometimes that means you
lose big. All this said, I’m glad I did this. I’m glad I risked feeling like an
emotional fuck up if all it means is that I know I pushed myself beyond my
comfort zone. I wrote this book with the quote “Fear is only excitement without
the breath” over my desk and it’s something I have to remember now. This is what I wanted. This book. Now I
just have to be brave enough to own it.
