The lyric speaker

My writing struggle has always been writing from the self. My own gaze feels ordinary and plain and unworthy of the depth needed to make a piece of value.

Like everything I would have to say is vapid.

Part of the struggle was finding my voice, and I did eventually land on a topic that I could pour passion into. While it is not all I am, my chosen identity in my writing is woman/mother/wife, sometimes daughter (the latter I'll be touching on in my next post about personal history which ought to dovetail nicely.)

I've had my nose in Helen Vendler's Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (which, as a quick aside, is a gorgeous text to accompany any writer,) and have been going through chapter 7- Poetry and Social Identity in prep for this post (I have the second edition.)

She writes,

"Poetry is one of the great means in which one identity reaches out to another, tries to explain itself to another, brings up images to clarify itself, finds a diction that speaks its mind, and finds a stylized form to enact its appeal. There is a danger that a reader will take the identity in a lyric as more simple than it is [...]"

I think what daunts me most is that the strongest voices, the most powerful, speak with a voice that an entire culture also agrees with and identifies with. Next to this notion, my own voice feels weak and mouse-like and without merit. The "danger" that Vendler speaks of is my real fear, here, and I think it's quite valid.

So those are my thoughts this morning, and in conjunction with them is the fact that our new neighbors happened to spot me in my husbands giant rubber boots wearing tights and a shawl, feeding the birds in our yard chunks of stale homemade bread. Oh, yes and standing next to this years Christmas tree which is sitting on the patio. I think this morning earned me at least six Crazy Cat Lady gold merits.