A SHIFT OF KNOWING
Publishing Myself
“If I had known when my first book of poems was published with Harper & Row (The Juice, 1972) that twenty years would pass and I would not be able to find a publisher for a second book, I would have considered myself a failure as a writer. At least I think I would have. I'm not entirely sure what 1972 Coleman would have said. He would never have believed it could happen that way, so confident he was. He badly wanted a second book out, and what he intensely wanted he mostly got. He sent various collections around five or six times a year, all those years. No luck. Long disappointments are a blessing. It feels very fine at fifty-five to be publishing my own damn self. I dearly love the details of putting a book physically together. Typeface, cover, layout, proofing, all a great delight.
The hazard of self-publishing is self-indulgence, the absence of editors to say what not to include, pieces here that in two weeks, or two years, I'll regret. If I were to publish my first book again, it would have only three poems in it. No matter. Twenty years of literary rejections have brought the keys to the granary: I am in this to connect with mystery, to walk around and observe my life, to find ways of playing with what washes through, lichen shelves ringing the dead tupelo, and I don't know why else. What I felt at twenty, or thirty-five, about writing was whatever those feelings were. This now, less manic, more patient and sober, empty and clearer, more delighted with the limitations of words. Son-Friend, the taste of truth and beauty cannot be held in language, nor any unglued, tongue-in-groove, worried surd.
I heard such a voiceless tone from Allan Kaplan, who also published a book of poems with Harper in 1972. This was ten years later. He was one of a group from a meditation ashram visiting my teacher, the sufi sheikh Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in Philadelphia. "How can you keep writing poems when you know this?" Allan asked me. I didn't have an answer then, or now. I used to love to chop vegetables in Bawa's room, sitting at great rolled out sheets of wax paper on the floor. Words, carrot woids, add them to the communal pot, stand around talking together with our begging bowls in line, eat the nourishment, and move through the door the other way.”
From Come Celebrate with Me - a VOICES memorial tribute to Lucille Clifton - - Edited by Michael S. Glaser - Coleman Barks pg. 123 - 124
Invitation: “Long disappointments are a blessing…”
More about Lucille Clifton and her work (Link). More about Coleman Barks and his work at this link and this link, too.
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"What I felt at twenty, or thirty-five, about writing was whatever those feelings were. This now, less manic, more patient and sober, empty and clearer, more delighted with the limitations of words." Coleman Banks.
I appreciate the candor and perspective that Coleman Banks offers about age, writing and publishing.
Peacefully sitting with Pat, camping in Maine. Pat is the blessing worth waiting for…. Disappointments of relationships where I tried to fix in order to have love. But here in this moment, I need do nothing to know love and be received for exactly who I am.