While I was in Chicago last week, JAKE, which I wrote about here, published my poems, VIOLIN and When I Retire. Thanks again to Poetry Editor Heather Ann F. Pullido and everyone else involved in getting these out into the world via JAKE.
“VIOLIN” is an acrostic poem that expresses my frustration at my limited musical abilities. I would like to have said more, but as my opening line, “Violin is like Fight Club,” implies, it is hard for me to talk about violin, let alone write poems about it. I would like to be able to write a brilliant evocation of what it feels like to be just good enough to turn out something really beautiful once in a while but not good enough to do it consistently, but when I came to write the poem, I condensed instead of elaborating. Who am I to annoy people with my privileged, first-world problems? Not to mention, the full tale, which is all wrapped up with my family drama, requires a novel. Finally, as I believe I imply in the poem, examining the subject is almost as painful for me as failing to execute up to my standards on the violin. At least I put something about it out there. I don’t hate the work.
The other poem, “When I Retire,” is an anxiety daydream. On the one hand, leaving the South and having the freedom to spend my days however I like and enjoy life with my husband in retirement all seem like good things, but whether because of Puritan guilt, impostor syndrome, or knowledge of my true shortcomings, I am afraid that I will not make the best use of all these gifts and end up shallow, alienated, and lost. I am very happily looking forward to retirement with my controlled and controlling frontal cortex, but when I let that go, the lurking doubts come to light. I credit this self-satirizing poem to them.
Likewise, I am happy to see these poems up in Jake, but I’m not sure I’ve conveyed that with all this depressing gloom. By all means, check out the other work in Jake as well. It is clever and concise and high energy.
Word Music 