Tara Donovan's Untitled is one of my favorites too. It's so light and fluffy and yet made of such simple materials. When you describe it as a bunch of cups glued together it doesn't sound appealing, but the mass and volume and grace of it belies the stuff it's constructed from. And that challenges me as a viewer but also delights me.
Finding time to write while parenting and teaching has often ben hard. And there have definitely been seasons when I didn't write much. But I think I always wrote *some*, even if it was just a few lines scribbled in a notebook or on an envelope. Because being a poet is only partly about putting words on paper. Being a poet is about noticing the world and loving it. And it's about noticing words and loving them. And it's about being driven to try to make words capture what it is I notice and love about the world.
And I love how you've expressed that in terms of looking up. Which is a metaphor. And you've given it shape and form:
Hi Melanie, I finally got a picture of Donovan’s piece so I can put it in the Substack. For years I didn’t write, and I think it had to do with all the meds I was on. After I went off of them when I was 40 much of my creativity and desire to read came back. I was about 43 maybe when I started to write free verse poems, and I didn’t publish a poem until 2023 and later that year I joined the MFA and learned how to write in meter. The season of writing has come a bit late, but I am doing the best I can.
You are right, so much of being a poet is about paying attention. It is the season for collecting the stuff for our poems. We need to gather the material, then we can build.
I like what you have written very much. To observe is to look closely; to look closely is to pay attention; to pay attention is to meditate; and to meditate is to pray...
And about creativity and the demands of domesticity: sometimes your children have to become the focus of your creative life. I speak from experience. They have to be the poetry that you are too tired or busy to write down.
Thank you for the comment, Francis. I agree. I am definitely spending a lot of my creativity on raising my kids. However, the writing isn’t so much a goal as a mental health need. It is like how some people view exercise. The deliverable at the end of the effort though is meaningful, and I want it to be good. This has been a difficult time of discernment for me.
I can’t wait for your posts on being creative while keeping priorities in line. As a homeschool mom, carving out time for writing can be tough. I try to fit in time during an afternoon rest time, but I get frustrated that time goes by faster when I am writing. Then there are days when we all need to get groceries and then the writing time disappears. I have spent two days working on a Substack post when I can, but it still isn’t done and I think I may need to rewrite most of it anyway. I have all of these projects that I am working on in various stages and yet at the end of the day, all of those things are secondary in my life.
Jennifer, I can’t believe it took me this long to reply to comments on my Substack! I think this is a prime example of not being able to find the time or having other priorities come up in life. I think what you describe is very much like what other mothers have faced. What I have heard is that there are seasons of one’s life, and they just have to be honored. There are a number of writers who decide not to have children because they want to write (Ann Pachett comes to mind).
Being a busy mom makes the little time that we have to write even more cherished. I have drafted some of my best poems in the car line at the elementary school to pick up my kids. Deadlines, urgency, and compression of time do something to the writer, and perhaps we have to work within those limits? Maybe it’s not a bug but a feature, as my programming friends say. It’s frustrating, but I think all the failure to achieve the creative goals trains us to understand how to maximize the small blocks of time we have.
A beautiful reminder!!
Thank you!
Tara Donovan's Untitled is one of my favorites too. It's so light and fluffy and yet made of such simple materials. When you describe it as a bunch of cups glued together it doesn't sound appealing, but the mass and volume and grace of it belies the stuff it's constructed from. And that challenges me as a viewer but also delights me.
Finding time to write while parenting and teaching has often ben hard. And there have definitely been seasons when I didn't write much. But I think I always wrote *some*, even if it was just a few lines scribbled in a notebook or on an envelope. Because being a poet is only partly about putting words on paper. Being a poet is about noticing the world and loving it. And it's about noticing words and loving them. And it's about being driven to try to make words capture what it is I notice and love about the world.
And I love how you've expressed that in terms of looking up. Which is a metaphor. And you've given it shape and form:
Look up! And see clouds
of cups, windows in
the ceiling, art in
the air! Look up
at the flowers that make
a roof and a roof
adorned with flowers. See
saints shining, crosses
floating, hearts
glowing. Then look
down and see you
are looking up after all
every puddle a mirror
every mirror a world holding
sky and trees etched
in transitory water
on an asphalt frame.
Hi Melanie, I finally got a picture of Donovan’s piece so I can put it in the Substack. For years I didn’t write, and I think it had to do with all the meds I was on. After I went off of them when I was 40 much of my creativity and desire to read came back. I was about 43 maybe when I started to write free verse poems, and I didn’t publish a poem until 2023 and later that year I joined the MFA and learned how to write in meter. The season of writing has come a bit late, but I am doing the best I can.
You are right, so much of being a poet is about paying attention. It is the season for collecting the stuff for our poems. We need to gather the material, then we can build.
And lovely poem!
I like what you have written very much. To observe is to look closely; to look closely is to pay attention; to pay attention is to meditate; and to meditate is to pray...
And about creativity and the demands of domesticity: sometimes your children have to become the focus of your creative life. I speak from experience. They have to be the poetry that you are too tired or busy to write down.
Thank you for the comment, Francis. I agree. I am definitely spending a lot of my creativity on raising my kids. However, the writing isn’t so much a goal as a mental health need. It is like how some people view exercise. The deliverable at the end of the effort though is meaningful, and I want it to be good. This has been a difficult time of discernment for me.
I can’t wait for your posts on being creative while keeping priorities in line. As a homeschool mom, carving out time for writing can be tough. I try to fit in time during an afternoon rest time, but I get frustrated that time goes by faster when I am writing. Then there are days when we all need to get groceries and then the writing time disappears. I have spent two days working on a Substack post when I can, but it still isn’t done and I think I may need to rewrite most of it anyway. I have all of these projects that I am working on in various stages and yet at the end of the day, all of those things are secondary in my life.
Jennifer, I can’t believe it took me this long to reply to comments on my Substack! I think this is a prime example of not being able to find the time or having other priorities come up in life. I think what you describe is very much like what other mothers have faced. What I have heard is that there are seasons of one’s life, and they just have to be honored. There are a number of writers who decide not to have children because they want to write (Ann Pachett comes to mind).
Being a busy mom makes the little time that we have to write even more cherished. I have drafted some of my best poems in the car line at the elementary school to pick up my kids. Deadlines, urgency, and compression of time do something to the writer, and perhaps we have to work within those limits? Maybe it’s not a bug but a feature, as my programming friends say. It’s frustrating, but I think all the failure to achieve the creative goals trains us to understand how to maximize the small blocks of time we have.