So I Said "Yes"

Yesterday I was privileged to be included in a PoetryFest on Sanibel Island.  During the reception, a woman approached me and said, "I really liked your poem. Is it true?" I hesitated, since I had read two poems, and asked her, "You mean about the geese?" She nodded. I was unsure how to answer.  So I said, "Yes."

 I've been thinking about this ever since.

For a writer, what is true? Do we say, "A poem reveals and conceals"? Do we say, "It is true metaphorically"? Do we describe the instant of the inspiration? Do we say this happened, but this was expanded and expounded upon, because it is a poem?  Do we say "What is true is what is true for you?" Do we say, "Even fiction comes from somewhere within us, so it must somehow be us?"  Do we remind the curious of the quote by Red Smith? "Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

So I say, "Yes!" If what we write somehow touches the writer or the reader, it is true, or truth... for at least one of us or one of them.

When I was in high school, I had one semester of Creative Writing. I only remember one thing the teacher said. "Good writing is when someone reads something and thinks, 'Yes, that's it.' "

In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
     Thomas Carllyle

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
     Robert Frost

The  true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.
     Alain Robbe-Grillet

I'm glad I just said, "Yes," to the woman. The philosophy of it all doesn't matter. If we can write, or if we can read,  or if we can feel -- this is how we connect with one another. This is how we know we are not alone.

Every Life Is A Story

Writers sometimes read others' work and think, "I wish I had written that," or "If only I could write like that."

Blue Iris, the title poem of a book of poetry and essays by Mary Oliver, is an example of one of those wishful moments of mine. It begins rather simply and, if it were a story, we might say it has a surprise ending. But, as I think about it a moment, poems are stories.  Our lives are stories. And if every life is a story, perhaps every life can be a poem.

Blue Iris

by Mary Oliver

Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?

Can't fly, can't run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

     "What's that you're doing?"

the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

"What's that you're doing?" whispers the wind, pausing

in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.

It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.

"Doesn't it?" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing

distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,

the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.