How I Learned What I Learned

The setting is the crucible in which many a work of art has been fired.  There is a stool, a coat rack, and atop a desk, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.

This is the set direction for August Wilson’s autobiographical play, How I Learned What I Learned.  It’s a one-man show consisting of a series of reflections, anecdotes and conversations spoken by the actor playing Wilson.  The first sections are titled My Ancestors, Hill District, 1965, The Set (the main drag where life happens), Barbara Peterson and on from there concluding with one called How Do You Know, What You Know.  These sections are framed by pauses during which the actor is typing. 

Already an admirer of Wilson’s 20th century ten-play cycle set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, I was quite taken with this one when I saw it performed in 2017 at the Round House Theater in Bethesda, Maryland.  The set design was riveting—the bucket of nails, the ball of rags, the lunchbox (all of them “detritus of the Wilson canon”) strewn on an abandoned lot with a performance platform in the shape of a boxing ring (Wilson was a boxing fan).  Behind it hung a wall of paper scraps cut from 5,555 sheets of paper—a tribute to Wilson’s habit of writing his plays on legal pads, envelopes, napkins and checks, whatever came to hand.

At long last I have my hands on a copy of the script and just reread it.  I’m thinking about people, places and events that I’d include in my own one-woman play—Conneaut, Hilda Burr, Ninth Street, Shirley Cochrane, 1993, Rebecca, the nurse poets…. And my stage set?  Maybe a basement room with a plank desk, electric typewriter, the 1969 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, my old leather home care bag and, on the wall, Rachel Dickerson’s woodcut, “Wanting Memories.” This is a work in progress. The script will evolve. 

At the end of Wilson’s play, the actor pulls a poem from his pocket and reads it aloud:

We are what we are—
Are made by old things,
Come back. Clearly,
Brilliant as the sun.

The Places Where It Happened

Sitting in my deep green recliner the other day doing a bit of the life review that we’re told is an important part of aging, I began to think about the places where I have felt most inspired and productive as a writer.  The first was the basement room in our rowhouse in Washington DC. I called it Hogwallow Flats, a name I first came across while hiking in Shenandoah National Park.  I liked it.  Somehow it fit.  I’d tiled the floor brick red, filled one side of the room with bookcases, and sat either at my makeshift desk (a wooden plank over two file cabinets) next to my typewriter table or on large floor pillows near the radiator where I wrote in my journal and produced longhand drafts of essays and poems on a yellow legal pad. My first two books were conceived there, mostly in the evenings after long days at work, first in international health and then in our DC family practice clinic.  I was 31 when I began.

The second place was the leaf-green room in my third floor apartment overlooking Glover Park—a woodsy branch of Rock Creek Park that runs north and south through Washington.  It had built-in bookcases and a window seat next to a wall of windows.  Perfect.  I’d brought along my desk and typewriter from the house but not the large floor pillows.  I especially remember writing in the early morning before my work at the women’s clinic.  My next two books were birthed there.  I was 51 when I began. 

Those two places were my home for a total of 32 years.  True, two more books have come since then but perhaps not with the intensity and focus of those earlier years.  Purely by chance, after writing the first draft of this note, I happened on a quote attributed to Alice Munro in her book Too Much Happiness: 

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places. 

For me, there were these two.

My Essayists

As of today, my essayists occupy just 18 inches on a single shelf of one of my bookcases—24 books, 18 writers.  As I’ve aged, this exclusive group has been culled several times, usually because I decided that my relationship with them had ended.  I thank them for what they have given me and then send them on to other readers.  I see my essayists as interesting, insightful and inspiring friends who speak plainly on themes of importance to me.  My poets, on the other hand, occupy considerably more space and reside longer on my shelves but most often serve as mentors or spiritual guides who reach out to me from a distance.  True, there are some writers whose work appears in both camps, poetry and essay.  Still, I keep them separated on the shelves. 

Recently I took down my two books of essays by Lewis Thomas, physician, scientist and thoroughly engaging writer whose work dates from the 1970s.  I hadn’t read Lives of a Cell in some years and wondered whether it was perhaps time to part ways with Thomas.  Science has evolved.  Perhaps the essays were hopelessly dated.  But no.  He still earns his place.  Here’s just a taste: 

It begins to look, more and more disturbingly, as if the gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from all the rest of life.  Language is, like nest-building or hive-making, the universal and biologically specific activity of human beings.

And to think Thomas is only one of the old “friends” with whom I can have stimulating conversation any time I want.

Why I Read It

What is it that I read?  Zero at the Bone—Fifty Entries Against Despair* by the poet and teacher of religion and literature, Christian Wiman.

The first why:  I was curious about the structure of the book—the mélange of poetry (his own and others’), memoir, criticism and philosophical discourse.  How does that work?  Does it work?  Is it something I might try in the nebulous sometime?

The second why:  Wiman, who has rejected the Christian fundamentalism of his youth in West Texas, continues to probe the teachings of the Bible, the Christian religion, and his own faith.  I do too.  I’d previously read his book My Bright Abyss.  Might I benefit from this exploration despite the fact that I can’t always grasp his poetry, or even his prose?

The third why:  What does he have to say about poetry? 

What I discovered:  He says that a poem that is reducible to a message is not a good poem.  Poems are not wisdom machines.   So I ask myself, is there a place for accessible poetry, the kind I think I write?  I try to listen to the muse but not with the intention of manufacturing wisdom. 

What I found that I didn’t realize I’d come for (a “mere” parenthesis on page 196):  By “faith” I mean an admission that our minds cannot know our selves or the universe in any ultimate sense; or, if one is inclined to hold—as many scientists are—that the universe and our place in it are knowable even if such knowledge is in its infancy, then an admission that this position is an act of faith and indistinguishable, in metaphysical terms, from a religious gesture.

In fact, the whole of pages 196-197 in which Wiman expands on the notions of faith and science was enough to gratify both my seeker’s mind and my poet’s soul.

*Zero at the bone—a phrase from Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Snake” meaning a chilling fear

The Thread I Follow

It’s been ten years since I started Veneta’s Notebook.  March 2014.  I’ve posted 54 times—nothing to shout about when compared with other internet blogs.  Still.  Why did I start?  I’d just updated the Sage Femme Press website to a platform I could manage on my own.  I envisioned the notebook as a way to tell my (mythical) readers about my literary activities and events (rare). 

Over time a rhythm developed.  I began to post every two months.  The entries were short, maybe 200-300 words, the trend in most blogs and many periodicals in light of the online public’s short attention span.  They began to focus on my journey as a reader and writer. Even when I’m not actively writing poems or essays, I’ve remained remarkably faithful to this one discipline. 

In my posts over the years, I’ve referred to the poet William Stafford five times. He and his work never fail to inspire me.  In March of 2016 I quoted these lines from his poem, “The Way It Is”:

 There’s a thread you follow.  It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.

I realize that this notebook illuminates for me the thread I am following.  I don’t know where it will lead or whether it will be a straight path (doubtful) or a labyrinth with an intricate structure of interconnecting passages (more likely).

And what have I learned through these ruminations?  First, that my creative life is worth reflecting on, for me if for no one else.  Second, that just as was the case during the years I wrote regular columns for nursing journals, subjects never fail to present themselves. I marvel at this—over 50 years and inspiration, while sometimes tardy, never fails to arrive.

Naming Rites

A strip of paper I’d torn out from somewhere fell out of one of my books the other day as I took it off the shelf.  On it was this quote attributed to Erica Jong (no source given):  “To change one’s name is the first act of the poet and the revolutionary.”  I know that, years ago, when I chose to go by Nina rather than Veneta (my given name) in my personal life, it felt like a relief, a coming out—yes, this is who I am!  But I’ve kept Veneta as my professional name, largely because that’s how I originally established myself.  I suppose I kept the Erica Jong quote because I was still pondering the idea of names.

I’ve known of writers who publish under one or more pseudonyms—perhaps for different genres, different audiences or a yen for anonymity or intrigue.  I’ve toyed with the idea and recently went so far as to settle on a pseudonym I might adopt, then googled it to make sure it wasn’t currently in use.  It was—claimed on Facebook by a woman whose photo was so dramatically different from the persona I’d imagined for myself that I dropped the idea immediately.  Besides, what was I intending to write under that name?  I had no idea. 

While googling, I decided to try to source the Erica Jong quote by typing it into the search bar.  What came up startled me.  The quote now read, “To name oneself is the first act of the poet and the revolutionary.”  Still no original source given but Oh! there is a difference here. I realized that I have in fact named myself as poet and, differently, as a private person.  Neither is a pseudonym but both affirm my agency and, as I expressed it once in a poem, a settling down deeper into myself.

There Is War in Ukraine

There is war in Ukraine, war in Israel and Palestine.  I’ve not been inspired to write about war.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions are causing massive displacement and loss of life around the globe.  Although I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of these tragedies, they have not informed my work.

There is paralysis in the United States Congress and deep political divides among our citizens.  I’ve written nothing about it.

We are plagued by racism, poverty, addiction, the influx of immigrants.  Many poets, novelists, essayists and artists address these issues in their work.  Not a line from me, at least in recent years.

Disparities in health care, education, housing, employment.  Nothing.

The last poem I completed was about a sunflower.

My last free write ended with
Just look at this page
Inky squiggles that evidence thought
Wonder-full

What thought was that?  Clearly, my imagination has not been fueled by the things that trouble me most.  Should it be? I wonder.

Dark Matter

“Much of life is the narrative equivalent of dark matter,” writes Parul Sehgal in her New Yorker essay “Tell No Tales.”  Aha!  I say to myself, it’s just like the genome, just like the universe.  So much of importance is inaccessible to us. 

And so I continue the reflection I began in July’s notebook entry which suggested that the written word is what remains.  From what we remember, we shape the narrative of our lives, we create our story.  The unstoried self, on the other hand, is lost to us.  And yet, and yet….Writing the poem “Winter Count,” I attempted to cull a single memorable event from each year of my life from age 14 to 54 that would mark the passage of time. I wondered if I could do it—my memory is not as keen as some people’s.  But as I immersed myself in the past some of that dark matter came to light.  I was surprised at what I could remember. I enjoyed shaping the arc of a significant span of my life in this way.

In my field, health care, we have come to value patients’ own stories, not just the ritualized history that we set down in the medical record, because they provide context and insight that may be useful in guiding diagnosis and treatment.  These days story is used as a means to enlighten us about all manner of things:  immigration, war, climate change, politics, relationships, travel and so on.  Still, the question Sehgal poses in her essay remains:  “What is it that story does not allow us to see?” 

The Written Word Remains

My husband Allen has been working on his autobiography “for the family.”  And just recently I received links to the online version of memoirs my brothers John and Tim have written in response to weekly email prompts from a company called Storyworth that publishes your collection of reminiscences along with photos you provide in “a beautiful keepsake book.” 

Reading these has sent me on a nostalgia trip of my own.  Though I don’t envision writing an autobiography, I have written a lot over the course of my life.  The other day, I started reading at random in one of the small notebooks I’ve kept on and off for the last 30 years.  In one of them, I found a clipping I’d pasted in from a 2001 essay by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post.  In it, he observes that “so much of life passes us by, unappreciated…Then gradually time leaches away the remaining vivaciousness, until we are left with only the faintest of outlines and just a few brightly colored moments, the ones that will flutter through our dying minds.”  He confesses that he hardly remembers anything about the city where he spent four years in graduate school or the classes he took, then goes on to quote the novelist James Salter:  “There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.”

I don’t have the entire Dirda essay, just the last couple of paragraphs on yellowing newsprint, but I’ve been reflecting on the idea of the written word as what remains of our lives. Much of my experience and interior life are embedded (though often disguised or told slant) in the poems, essays and songs I’ve written.  I’m very glad to have these along with the various notebooks, sketchbooks, file folders and yellow pads that have accompanied me through the years.  What will happen to them after my death I have no idea, but I feel confident that some of my published work will survive at least for a while.  More importantly, my writings help me remember and appreciate some of the “brightly colored moments” of my life.

An Honest Solo

A jazz musician I know is speaking admiringly about another player’s solo:  “They’re always honest,” he says.  I’m taken with this observation.  What does it mean exactly?  What is honesty in art?

 I should offer some context here.  Traditional or straight-ahead jazz is improvised music within a structure of phrases and chord changes.  First comes the “head”—the tune as written.  Then the “front man” (or woman) and each “sideman” (or woman) solos, using their artistry, skill and imagination to offer a fresh take, a creative improvisation that adheres to the structure and references the tune.  The performance closes out with a repeat of the tune as written.

 An honest solo, as I’ve come to understand it, means speaking your truth through the medium of your instrument, telling your own story while avoiding imitation and cliché.  It’s not self-serving.  Sometimes, when moved by a solo, a listener will call out, “Tell it, tell it,” an affirmation that encourages the soloist to go deeper.

 I love jazz and find so much in it that influences my writing.  I, too, want my work to be an honest solo.  I want to take up my instrument—my pen—listen for the truth I’ve been given and express it with all the skill and artistry I possess—clean, uncensored, guileless. While I honor the conventions of the art, the story is my own.