B Misty Wycoff

I THINK PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF POETRY

Sat, 11 Dec 2021 15:34:01 -0800

I think people are afraid of poetry. Yep. Lots of people shrink and inwardly quiver at the thought of being asked to read or understand poetry. I see it and hear it all of the time. The stepping back from the conversation if poetry shows up, the instant denials and disclaimers that it is “not my thing”. Fear dressing as disinterest.

The odd thing to me, is that poetry is actually about bringing us into focus, bringing us closer to an image or perception. It is often a big magnifying glass held up to the world to show us things that we might miss. Show us things that belong together that we might not have thought of as being connected.

Here is a little secret. I get nervous too, and I am a poet! Some poetry is complex and layered and loaded with obscure literary, biblical, Shakespearean or cultural allusions. I don’t always have the patience to sit with these apparent puzzles. That is ok. Maybe another morning or month or year that will happen, but I don’t have to do it today just because someone else thinks it is a masterpiece.

I won’t love all poets. I won’t love all poetry. But some will slay me, touch me, change me, enchant me, please me in surprising ways.

I do remember the first time I heard a Shakespearean play. The words were recognizable. It was in the English language but it was different in a way that I couldn’t figure out. I was in my teens and sitting in a movie theater watching a production of Romeo and Juliet on the big screen, but while I listened, I felt like I understood nothing. The cadence and the archaic word usage threw me, made me feel frustrated and a little dumb. But I was there on a class trip so I wasn’t free to just jump up and walk out. Oddly after a few minutes I was able to “get” more of what was being said. It was like listening to a foreign language and...Read More

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 08:12:08 -0700

WHO AM I AS A POET

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 20:07:52 -0700

Someone asked me recently what kind of poet I am, why I write, and how I engage with the community. I have always written creatively but have spent most of my career, decades in fact, deep in the mysteries of Jungian therapy, mythology, and addiction recovery in a clinical private practice.

In 2019, seven years retired from my full-time life in psychology, and leaving my position as Docent/Public Speaker for the Friends of the Elephant Seal, I curated a poetry event locally in San Luis Obispo, that included 8 poets, music, photography and video, welcoming over 200 people. The core value in the presentation was invitational. I shared the words of Mary Oliver who said, “Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.” I asked the audience to honor their creative instincts with the writing of one single line each day as a way to break a barrier and enter the zone of writer.

Each of us takes our personal lives, the diversity of our experience and brings them forward into our writing. When we are able to do that, whether by trying to write a sestina, mirroring patterns of the Bard or simply trying to see into our own past, we are able to witness our collective lives and our personal history from a new...Read More

THE MUSE TALKS BACK

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 10:28:21 -0800

One of my critiquing partners recently challenged me to write a poem in a very formulaic style called a Sestina. Seven stanzas, very exacting rhyming pattern with the end word repeating and shifting down a line in each new stanza. I really had to struggle with it, I felt mad and frustrated and something inside of me started talking to me. About a month later I was sent a notice for a submission possibility to a magazine for a Persona poem. This is a not a rhyming scheme, but more about writing from a particular perspective, or another person, or an animal or a different aspect of our own personality, or many other options. This was easier but in attempting to write to those particular criteria, the following poem emerged. It is in fact a Persona poem.

What I want to talk about is how strongly I reacted to the new designs on my poetic self. I think it is quite interesting to try other forms of writing. It presses against your borders, widens your view, and challenges the ruts we sometimes enter when writing. The other side of this argument is about exploring your own voice, your own style and what works best for you.

Much has been said about how to be a writer.

Here is a short list of books about it. These span ideas from daily tips or general philosophies about being a writer. There are ideas of stepping completely away from the written word as way to begin, or as a mode to find more meaning and healing in your life. There are Buddhist practices, and then the whole alchemy of grabbing an idea before it heads out into the universe for somebody else to write it down. These are all great pieces and each wil provide many portals for your entry inside the writer's room.

The Artist’s Way - Julia Cameron

Deep Writing - Eric Maisel

Writing Down the Bones - Natalie Goldberg

The Writing Life - Anne Dillard

The Weekend Novelist - Robert Ray

LOVING THE STUMBLES

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:48:15 -0800

I have had a few conversations lately with my poet friends exploring this idea of writing “bad” poetry. We cannot help it. To get to the good ones, we must be willing to flub, over complicate an idea with too many words or images, try to make the trite into something profound; in other words, write a not great poem. The more I write, the easier and more aggressive my editing has become. This is good. But sometimes all the editing, shaving words, restating, changing the thrust, the order, the voice, the ending, still results in a poem that just barely hangs onto its seat.

For me, if a piece makes it to the printer, and therefore becomes a part of my master book, I will keep it, I will even include it in lists of things to be published. I sometimes cringe a bit when I see them in print later on, but I take myself by the ear and walk myself down the hall for talking to. I think of my pieces like people think of their children. It is the same when writing those annual Holiday letters; we are wont to exclude those less shining examples of things that have happened in our families. Just for future reference, I would love it if you would all leave them in, rather than scrubbing them, burnishing them up into something shinier than they actually were. I can relate more and they are...Read More

OILING THE DOOR

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 08:38:14 -0800

We are so hard on ourselves. Perfectionism. Judgement. Bullying. If you have a wiggling interest in being more creative, these are the familiars, the words with which we do battle. We defeat ourselves even before the first bell rings. “It’s not good enough.” “Who do you think you are?” “They will laugh at you.” Some repressed artist, stressed mommy, or your big brother, planted those litanies in you and it is time to yank them up.

Ideas long ignored will disappear. Remember that day you envisioned that plot twist, or novel, or had a great line for a poem? Is it still there? Probably not. Think of it as a friend who regularly asks you to lunch, while you keep refusing. They will, of course, eventually stop. Elizabeth Gilbert has written an interesting book about this phenomenon. Big Magic recounts the serendipity, and elusiveness of the creative life. It is a good read. What I know is that we cannot...Read More

NIGHT SOUP

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 13:23:29 -0800

Sometimes in the simplest acts we are allowed to let ourselves play with imagery. On this particular January night in 2019, I was walking with my dog after dark. The night sky where I live is quite clear in Winter. Light pollution is minimal as there are no big cities nearby. When the moon is on the other side of the earth after sunset, one can easily see the constellations. When leaning backwards looking up for the touchstone of sky shapes, the Big Dipper, I felt the curve in my back and the fluidity of the Navy blue firmament. Then came the poem. Click the button below to be taken to Through the Windshield, my podcast to hear me reading it.

Night Soup

Walking in the night.

I could not find the dipper.

I leaned as far back as I could

curving my body into a ladle.

And I found myself

scooping up the dark sky.

bailing out a deep cup of midnight,

Spooning the hard blue all over my head.

I could not see the dipper,

but she was pouring out her soup

all over my shivering...Read More