writers, poets and friends

My friend David is a poet. He has a poet's soul and a poet's hunger and he doesn't drink which means he has more than a poet's proliferation. It's incredible. I just checked out his blog and he writes every day- every day a poem or an observation and I know that he also writes every day off line on various projects.

I love writers, (see most of my closest friends) but I hate writing. This may sound strange. I keep trying to write that novel---or short story or screenplay--- but transitioning from my first medium- poetry, to this new and prose is clumsy and difficult. Especially after such a long estrangement from both. In college my best short stories were like poems. Professors and classmates would always say one of two things about my short stories: "this could be a poem" or "this could be an excerpt from a novel." At our hooding, one of my professors introduced my as a poet. I don't know when I have ever felt so humbled. I still don't think of myself as a poet, I'm a girl who writes poems. I think it's easier to admit that other people are writers or poets, it saves me the responsability that the title implies. The responsibility to write.

I think writers differ from poets in very simple ways. Most writers are practical (yes, even the ones who write fantasy), most writers are warm and personal (at least on the page), and, more importantly, they draw you in. They tell amazing stories. Gwen is like this, Jacqui is like this, they create these characters that I cry for and live through and that is what good writing does, it creates worlds that help us live better in this one.

Most poets I've met - not that I've met many - see so much, feel so much, taste so much and smell so much that communicating reality gets hazy and inaccurate. They whisper to our intuitions- our half-remembered longings. Instead of a world of words, they immerse us in emotion. This can get frustrating sometimes because a poet rarely knows what she is actually trying to say. Like everything, it changes with who reads it, but poems can be illusive and easily twisted or misunderstood.

One of the reasons I love David's poems is they are inspiring. Not in the common sense of the word-- I am not inspired to write more or better (even though sometimes I am). More often, I am literally filled with the spirit of his words. His poems are like little refreshing dreams; sweet and soothing. I can only hope to bring that kind of comfort to my readers.

p.s. check out phonetically spelled boy, little miss gnomide and adventures in lizzieland.