Dear Reader,
Whatever ails a person, Anne Lamott is almost always the answer. Or that’s what I told Word Raccoon this evening.
Writer’s block?
Bird by Bird.
Grieving?
Traveling Mercies. Anne: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
The ham of God essay in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.
I could go on.
I’m watching her on YouTube right now, on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin.
(This is not a poem, just random thoughts.)
I’m sitting here having just submitted another residency application and listening to Anne talk about the radical art of embracing yourself, and this woman does not have an inauthentic bone in her. If I were to spend time with a writer that I don’t know, I wish it could be her. (And not just because she’s a writer.)
From her trademark dreadlocks to her flowing voice that reminds me a bit of my Aunt Bonnie’s, from her asking the interviewer questions, she is the realest person I know. She wears a hoodie, a T-shirt under it, a cloth headband on her head. A crescent moon on a chain around her neck, and some sort of medallion, a star on a strand hiding partially beneath her shirt.
I wish she had an 800 number (are those still a thing? Of course they aren’t) for Word Raccoon to call when she just needs someone to reassure her. To hear her soothing voice.
I mean…Bird by Bird is my writing bible. Not only hee writing advice (invaluable; everyone should read it), her warmth and authenticity, her candor, changed my life.
Her permission to write shitty first drafts? Come on! For a recovering perfectionist, that was gold. Her description of writing restaurant reviews, starting at not even the beginning and writing and writing and then trimming off what wasn’t the review? Well, I just edited a poem I wrote last year and realized it had two lines of throat clearing. I thanked the lines and sent them to find a new poem to occupy.
When I lost my father, I told a friend that I needed to read Anne Lamott. My father was the first person close to me I’d lost, and I’d been told it takes about 18 months to really grieve.
I believe it now.
However, riddle me this: I tried to read Anne then, I did. But I couldn’t. So I guess I have to amend what I said to WR about Anne being the answer to everything. To many, many things, she is. And I suspect not being able to read her had more to do with where I was in my life at the time. My beliefs were shifting. I had to accept that while she was an answer, she wasn’t the answer.
This poetry packet I just submitted for the residency had several radioactive poems in it, mainly grief-adjacent poems that I needed to write, and yet looking at them now, I wonder if I seem like a sad sack. I don’t think I am, though I have lived through hard things (who hasn’t?), but I stress that I lived through them. Or maybe even I lived through them.
Again, random thoughts on what has turned out to be a gorgeous September evening. Random visitors have pulled up and carted off things from beneath the tree.
I’m glad.
The desk is not gone yet.
I will give it two days before putting it in the garage for spring cleanup.
Wait, this just in: our neighbor came back for the desk. He writes, too. Or maybe his wife is going to use it. All I know is, it has been claimed. Possibly for literature, WR.
The poems I submitted for the residency application:
No One Mentioned What Became of the Rabbits
A Handkerchief Will Do
Lardo di Colonnata
At the Page, Like Neruda
Touch the Turkey
No Lying Still for Lilies
Necromancer Duties: Pergo
Dear Reader, I wish you could read them and tell me what you think of them, where they’re strong, where they need a little touch-up paint. Dear Reader, maybe some day you will.
Word Raccoon says to hush, that it’s time to write another poem, that maybe Anne Lamott might like to join us in one. WR, I would not be at all surprised if you put her into a poem. Why not?
Drema