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. 

There was a time when I was pleased just to get ANY poem down on paper, and that was perfect in those moments, but when I settled into my life as a full-time writer, I could feel, hear, and appreciate what my own voice was like. This is an exciting point in the writer’s journey, recognizing yourself on paper. You have a sound, a way of telling a story, and a particular pattern of using words that are recognizable, not just to yourself but to others. If you lay three poems by contemporary poets side by side, you will notice that they, like all of us, have something unique in the way they present thoughts, impressions, ideas, images. Of course, our voice can and will transform , evolve as we go forward. But like hearing a long-time friend’s voice on the phone and immediately recognizing it, our own writing will have its own sound, pace and energy. It is a fun and exciting to begin to know that aspect of ourselves as writers, just as other forms of self-discovery can be so very satisfying. 

How do we best honor both the challenge and the channel that best allows us to say what we are aiming to say. I think like most questions about writing, the answer is to keep writing and things will emerge, will be made visible, will come clear to us. As always is it the attention we give that makes it all possible. In this poem, despite the fact that she sounds like a teenage girl, I am really trying to listen to my inner poet and honor her. 

THE MUSE TALKS BACK 

AFTER WORK ON SESTINAS 

AND PERSONA POEMS 

I hate it when you tell me what to do

cramming me into those stuffy, 

ordered, rhyming lines, 

I am not a circus monkey

performing on demand. 

I have befriended my unschooled ways,

I cherish the empty paper 

and whatever falls into my head.

I like wandering around in my thoughts

calling in the lines, like wild beings,

gentling myself to sit with them

pressing my skirts around me,

ready to listen until the hearing of them 

settles my heart. 

I am your writer.

You need me. 

and I need the open pages,

no rules, no counting, no squeezing things 

into some shape designed in 1854.

Surely another soul could hunker down 

with morning coffee relishing this challenge,

but for me, this is torture and abuse.

I want those unmarked sheets 

waiting to become my morning surprise,

coming in like the wind,

roaring down the river canyon,

or arriving like artisanal waters

no drilling involved. 

Leave my writing alone!

I beg of you.

If you loved me, 

you wouldn’t make me do this. 

January 2023