Of Ghosts and Goats

July 17

So much to say, so much to say!

Firstly, apologies for going so long without writing. This past week or so has been killingly hectic, and rife with uncertainty and ineffectual flutterings and actual, hated stress. I sat down a couple of times to write journal entries, but then the phone would ring or I’d realize I was late for an appointment or something would distract me. Anyway, here I am, again. So.

My poem, "Ghost" is up at Electric Wine for the next few months (but you can go ahead and read it now). I haven’t read the rest of the issue yet, but there’s a couple authors there I trust to do good work. And if the editors chose my poem, they must have taste, nu?

As readers of my journal, you get a little scoop on that poem, a little background, which the poem doesn’t need, but which might prove interesting. Some of you know about my old girlfriend, who I recently visited in Arkansas-- the most vibrant and volcanic and talented person I’ve ever known (and the only girl I’ve ever dated who was, like, orders of magnitude more intelligent than I am). We broke up last October-- specifically, she broke up with me, for lots of reasons. I won’t go into all of that... let’s just say that it wasn’t lack of love, but problems both more profound and more practical than that. After she left me that unpleasantly beautiful afternoon, when she told me we couldn’t be together anymore, I found myself alone in my bedroom, surrounded by things she’d given me over the years, and everyday things she’d simply left at my house. Pictures she’d drawn. A kite she gave me one Valentine’s day. A silver armband, candles, stuffed toys, clothes, photographs. Her presence was everywhere, and the word I thought of was "haunted." She wasn’t a ghost, yet, in a way, she was on her way to becoming a ghost in my life. I lay there on my unmade bed, surrounded by those pieces of our time together, and the line came to me: "Swiftly humming engines of grief." Those things I treasured now had the power to hurt me-- I couldn’t bear to see them, but I couldn’t bear to pack them away, either, and so they generated sadness and loss and, with full knowledge of the strength of the word, grief

That phrase, "Swiftly humming engines of grief," is the center of the poem, in my opinion. I imagined myself trying to conjure her love back through ritual, a sort of sympathetic magic, and the poem came from that. Not immediately, but only a few days after the break up, when it was still very raw. I wept when I wrote it, and I almost crumpled it up and threw it away once it was finished-- it had become an engine of grief in its own way, you see-- but I held on to it, mostly because even then I understood that pain passes, time soothes, and I might want those words, someday. "Ghost" remains one of the most important things I’ve ever written, in terms of impact on my own life. Writing it helped me, admitting to what I wanted and facing the futility of that want, those things helped get my head back together, and eased me through that difficult transition.

And now my old lover and I are good friends, and we help each other and share respect and admiration and even love, of a different sort... but my girlfriend, the fairy princess I loved and played with for nearly two years, is nonetheless still a ghost, beyond conjuration. The poem stands. I hope you like it, and that this little glimpse into the genesis of the work doesn’t detract from its effectiveness (if, indeed, it is effective at all; I’m not really fit to judge such things about my own work).

The editors of Electric Wine put a lovely picture with the poem, too-- a better one than they realize. It’s the Chagall, Maries Au Village. The one I always think of as "The goat painting," the one featured in the film Notting Hill. My favorite line from that flick is "It’s not true love if there isn’t a goat playing the violin." My old girlfriend and I share an affection for goats (indeed, I have photos, from my trip to the ranch in Arkansas, of her milking a goat), and that painting (and the line from the movie) always makes me think of her. So whether it’s objectively appropriate for the poem or not, I can tell you that, from my subjective viewpoint, it’s absolutely perfect.

More soon!