Monday, September 6, 2010

Poetry from Long Ago

In the fall of 1984, my youngest child started school, and I wrote a volume of poetry. ‘Twas a major life passage for me. Intent on the pursuit of serious writing, I bought a ream of paper and a box of 9 X 12 envelopes and outfitted space on the narrow balcony of our little house in the woods. With an old electric typewriter from a friend, I settled in at my desk, a dressing table sans mirror, for the disciplined writing life. I knew enough to write about what I knew, and one product of those four months before my re-entry into the labor market was Spinning with the Spiders, poems about being a full-time mother and homemaker.

The title poem (below), first-written, has remained my favorite and was also well-received in open reading at a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago, seeming to have broad appeal on the basis of the futility of our efforts. That futility is the obvious theme of “Holy House,” (for the rest of the poems, click here) and its popularity amazed me. By audience request, I performed it several times at that same conference. During a session with a teacher of poetry at another workshop, however, “Holy House” was panned entirely, and I was admonished that inanimate objects cannot take on animate qualities, such as a rug being tired. That teacher seemed to be in no mood for light verse.

Spinning with the Spiders is definitely light verse, a glint in my eye and my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. Yet there is substance, I insist. At the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, I studied with Jane Mead and offered “Pristine Christine” as my poem for group critique. Teacher and participants fairly well dismissed it as insubstantial at first, but then asked me to say it again—and again—and again. The resulting discussion was rich with insight for me, and affirmation, too, complete with suggestions for improvement.

Anyway, the poems were fun to write and are fun, still, for me to hear. I’ve committed them to memory and enjoy reciting them while driving or waiting or—doing housework, of course!

Spinning with the Spiders

Spiders spin splendid webs at my house

and I am the cleaning lady

who doesn’t much like cleaning

but does it anyway,

when she can, when she must,

when the dust and spider webs

seem hazardous to health

and floors are gritty to the touch of naked soles;

and if a friend dropped in, especially Pristine Christine,

embarrassment would get me;

and it’s amazing how many spiders

there are in the world

and how many of them live at my house

and how speedy those spiders are,

and they spin and I spin my wheels

because I don’t much like cleaning;

but, on one special, gray morning

I swept the cobwebs from my eyes

and from my house

and the next day

the smirking spiders

had re-spun every one.

Copyright © 2010 Cristy C. Fossum. Create in Me Enterprises, 1215 Beaufort St., Columbia, South Carolina 29201. May not be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

A Quiet Place to Write


I have a quiet place to write. This has not always been true. Last fall, new people moved into one side of the duplex next door. Sorry to say, their six-month tenure was a time of insecurity and stress on our street. And noise.

I had extended my hand in welcome as the new tenants were moving their furniture. A few days later, I think it was Christmas Day, they had an altercation with family members. Obscene language was shouted and screamed from front porch to the car in the driveway for several minutes. Startling. Offensive. Scary.

Soon, the other neighbors and I had the appropriate police contact number on our speed dial and were hitting it frequently, at all times of the day and night, because of similar incidents disturbing our peace. I heard drug deals gone bad outside my dining room window and encountered the troubled tenants in various conditions altered by drugs and alcohol. Items began disappearing from outside people’s houses. I hesitated to have my grandchildren come and visit.

We banded together, working with our neighborhood organization and the law enforcement officer assigned to our area. We persisted in our efforts until the tenants were evicted. Once again, our street was pleasant and safe. And quiet.

This restoration of peace coincided with my return to writing as a full-time job on July 1. For the year previous, I had taught special education at a cyber high school, Provost Academy South Carolina. That was a year with a steep learning curve for me and challenges unique from all my other experiences in public education. ‘Twas a great adventure, but my major disappointment was that the professional demands were not compatible with serious writing. Evenings, weekends and summer break were largely taken up with school commitments. The progress I had hoped to make on book three of my Sunday by Sunday series was impossible. I was pleased, therefore, not to renew my contract so that I could pursue my passion.

And so, I write now, not only with quiet around me but also within. What a lucky duck I am to have this opportunity! Deeply grateful, I am determined to reach my goal, always, I hope, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The agony and ecstasy of the writing life are, well, agonizing and ecstatic at times, though mostly in between those two extremes—in other words, lifelike. So, here I be in my office, at least five days a week, hard at work composing and revising, serene and thankful, despite the challenges. Yeehaw!