Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
Do you believe in synchronicity? We’ve been writing about gatekeepers, and this card appeared in my mail along with a deck of tarot-type cards I’d ordered: “The gatekeepers are gone. You are the one who will open the door to your dreams.”
The Fast Company article says creative folks need three kinds of creative circles — a scene, a network and a community. No matter how you label your support system, I believe in what he has to say. I do think relationships balance out the solitary, internal work we’re called to do.
I’m after an experience. Not a recounting of an experience, but an exploration that just isn’t possible when I’m my clumsy mortal self stumbling around being an asshole (we’re all assholes), never having the right words.
When I find a phrase, an image or line that shows me something new, I believe in transformation — of the moment, of the object, of the self. And when I put them together into a finished poem, the whole world starts to make sense.
When a poet can pull off intimacy and distance at once, the poems stand out as something truly remarkable. Sad Math by Sarah Freligh is full of poems like that. As Sandra Meek says in a blurb at the book’s beginning, these poems are “nervy and frank, hilarious and heartbreaking.”
I wake up and make oatmeal. I take my Subaru for its oil change. I go with my boyfriend to Bennington on an unseasonably warm February Saturday. We browse galleries and bookstores. We eat and drink at a local brewery where Marilyn Monroe watches us sideways from her perch atop an old upright piano. Things are perfectly normal.
Apparently, I’m obsessed with the grocery store (I wrote about it last time, too). I am as surprised as you are. I actually hate stores in real life. I avoid them ’til they’re absolutely necessary.