Guest Post from Joanne M. Clarkson

Fate afforded me the opportunity to write for this Blog.  More precisely, “The Fates,” and an old hotel.  My manuscript by this auspicious title won Bright Hill Press’ annual contest and will be published in late spring 2017.  I wrote to Bloodroot’s editors to obtain permission to reprint my poem, “Hotel ZZZ,” which had appeared in Bloodroot 2014.   They then invited me to blog something about my poetry writing/reading process and my upcoming collection.

Most often I write to answer questions, to make sense of something mysterious or incomprehensible to me.  Formulating the question using the best language is an answer in itself.  Because I worked for years as a Hospice RN, lots of my work deals with the why of suffering and death.  I found the Greek myth of the Fates, the Three Sisters who spin, measure and sever  the thread of life, apt when contemplating the what’s up with this? of living and dying.

Not all the poems in the book are about death.  Many more address different aspects of life, affirmations of life.  A good example is my hotel poem. 

In 2013, my husband spoke at a conference and they put us up in a quaint hotel that was a remodeled very old grade school.  We were in the Math Room, never my best subject.  I always travel with fresh notebooks – yes, I write on paper first, in my Catholic schoolgirl cursive – and then polish and transition my words into technology.  That night I thought I could actually feel the people in other rooms.  I wondered what brought them here and what we all might have in common.  My poem was born from one moment of united dream.

In the highest sense, I see all poetry as dreams-in-common.  I believe strongly in a chain of inspiration.  Poetry is a different form of thought: life through the linguistic lens of beauty or despair.  And certain sounds and combinations of sound facilitate this.  That is why immersing ourselves in the canon of poetic expression is essential to being a poet at all.

I have a ritual when I write. I start by looking out the window and thanking the day by finding something individual and extraordinary.  Like a cloud shape, a nameless bird, wind in the branches, an empty swing.  Then I read a poem sometimes at random and often from a collection I am working through.   Recently at a friend’s book sale, I bought The Poets Laureate Anthology (W.W. Norton, 2010).   I thought I had a pretty good acquaintance with famous American poets of the past 70 years.  I was awe-struck by what I uncovered in this volume. Fate, right?

I realized I had never really known greats like Stanley Kunitz, Joseph Brodsky and Mona Van Duyn.  I went to the library and checked out more by these amazing writers.  In return, each gave me a poem of my own.  I am now working on Louise Gluck.  One of the other bloggers mentioned her.  My absolute favorite book right now is her Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) which won the National Book Award.

Another aspect of “The Fates” is my attempt to both understand and honor my maternal grandmother, Esther.  She was a psychic and a seamstress, a Fate in her way. She came to America with her sisters expecting to find love and riches.  Instead she found hard work.  Her older sister learned to read cards from Gypsies in an alley behind their boarding house.  Grandma became very good at it and read cards for extra money all her life.  But her ability to predict events in people’s lives seemed to afford more torment than pleasure.    

In a way, poets are ‘mediums.’  We get into our ‘poetry place’ and write what our Muse dictates, what society shouts, what suffering whimpers, the fervent spark of joy.  Emotion passes through us and becomes – a fortunate word.

I am very excited about Bloodroot’s new online format and direction.  I am forever grateful to people who have the courage to invest their time, finances and spirit into promoting what they honor as most true.  What could be truer than words forged in passion?  Although I believe Fate is real, I believe even more strongly in Will.  We can create!  Thank you Bloodroot editors, supporters, readers and writers.  You make me proud to be a poet.