I Have to Tell You About my Recent Success — Not for Me, but for You

I have just achieved a dream, and it wasn’t that hard

I am anxious to tell you this story because, two years ago, I would never have thought it would happen. Because many of you, particularly at this age, are gently setting aside your childhood dreams and sinking into old age without getting any closer to realizing them. Because the inertia of our everyday lives is a powerful force that can keep us going in the same direction ad infinitum.

I changed one little thing and the whole world opened up to me. I hope you will find some inspiration to do the same in your lives.

My poet story

I have written poetry since I was a little child. My mother read poetry to me often, from a book of collected American Poems, and I would read them to her when she asked me to read. I liked poetry. At 5 or so, I wrote a romantic love song called When the Moon and the Stars Come Out Tonight and picked it out on the piano, writing the melody line into a little notebook with staff lines. I wrote a poem about the red poppies that grew outside our grandmother’s back door, about patriotic holidays, about being sad.

As a teen, I wrote poetry about life and loss, and love. I used poetry to try to make sense of my world. I continued writing about my early married life, the losses and changes that affected me deeply as the years went by. I kept what I wrote. Somehow I knew that these little bits of writing were important and saved them for the day I would need them. I still have them in their little brown dime-store spiral-bound notebooks, and in floral journals, and on scraps of paper.

At one point, in my late 60s, while compiling a memoir about my mother, I started collecting my poetry on the computer, just so I’d have it all in one place. I began to want someone to see it and started putting the best of it into circulation. Tentatively. Half-embarrassed. I put some on Medium, showed some to family and friends enclosed in letters or cards. Some deeper part of me knew what I was doing. I was coming out of my closet, in a poetry sense.

I showed some of my poetry to a friend who was involved in the art world and happened to have an interest in poetry. She suggested I might want to join a poetry group led by a colleague of hers. I wrote down the name and set it aside for a while. Then one day, I contacted this person, looked at his website, the plan he had for teaching and supporting poets. And I decided to try it.

I don’t really want to repeat this cliché, but my life has not been the same since then. Suddenly this idea that I was a poet, an idea which had lived in a pile of old papers on the back shelf of my mind’s basement closet for nearly 70 years, became a reality. I learned to accept that I could write something that someone else enjoyed and related to. That it didn’t have to be the best poem on earth or get read at the inauguration or earn lots of money. Each poem was a gift I was given, and I could spread the gift around among my friends and family and also out into the greater community. Wow.

I learned that there were many, many specific tools I could use to improve my poetry. I practiced using them. I read poetry and books about writing. I joined the poetry group and wrote a poem every month for the group prompt. I talked to other poets and learned to give and accept helpful feedback. I learned about forms and meter and rhyme and current and historic subjects of poetry.

In the past 18 months, I have tried all different kinds of poetry writing. I’ve learned ways to fertilize my imagination with cluster writing and free writing, improved my knowledge and awareness of words by making word lists and reading the dictionary and thesaurus. I’ve begun to see poetry in everyday things and special things. I’ve started to think about metaphors and similes in my daily life and come up with unusual ways of saying the usual. Poetry has started to infuse my life with colors and smells and sounds and thoughts that had been in the background before. I’ve begun to claim them as fodder for my writing.

I took a course about publishing poetry and prepared a group of poems for sending out to publications. I scheduled time to do this. I began sending poems and learned to take rejection notices in stride. I kept going, improving, tweaking, learning whether I needed to tone down some part, or cull words, or change forms. Sometimes I needed to change voice or tone, or add a metaphor, or rethink the poem completely. I drafted and redrafted.

I had a poem published for the first time ever

Then, this week, I had a poem published for the first time. It is a good poem, and the editor of this quirky little publication called Spank the Carp liked it. It’s not instant fame or any money. But it’s a start.

Now, I’m a published poet and can add this to my list of accomplishments. It makes me happy. In fact, happy is a big understatement! I am spectacularly excited about both the first publication and the ongoing writing. I feel excited — like a kid in the proverbial candy shop — every time I sit down to write poetry. I can spend hours at it and forget the time. Talk about flow-states. This is it for me right now. I intend to continue to write poetry, refine the poems I have and send them out to publications, enter contests, and enjoy every minute of this dream come true.

How can you make this happen in your life?

There were several factors involved in my story that might be present in your life, too.

I realized that someday was now. At the advanced age of 70, I was ready to go for it. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time to pretend it would happen someday. Some day was here and now.

I still had all the poetry I had ever written. I had saved it because I cared about it and thought it was important somehow. I could use that as a start. There were themes, about the meaning of life, about nature, about my relationships, that I had been thinking and writing about over the years. I could use these for raw material and glean them for ideas about my thought. These were words that I had put together at various times through all the stages of my life. In my own original voice. And some of them were worth using or reusing. I bet you have some of these things in your mind’s back closet. Things you’ve thought hard about and care deeply about.

I had an education, back 50 or so years ago, in philosophy and English literature. I knew a lot about writing, about using language carefully and presenting an idea both from my writing at school, my personal writing, and my professional writing as a social worker. How were you educated? What resources can you bring to your dream?

I had tons of life experience. I had owned three different kinds of businesses: as a piano teacher, a caterer, and a therapist. I had done all kinds of jobs from telephone operator to lunch car waitress. I had learned to play the drums and had the nerve to perform with a rock band, a country band, a community theatre group. In every one of my 70 years, I learned useful, and interesting as well as weird and useless things that I could talk about. Think about all you have done and look for what you might use in fulfilling your dream.

I had a friend who knew someone. I had a friend, Argy Nestor, who is an art educator (and a wacky wonderful friend as well). She had a colleague, the poet Brian Evans-Jones, who was starting an online poetry group. My friend suggested I check out the group to see if it would be interesting to me. I did, and it was. Brian turned out to be a fantastic teacher. He knows poetry and the world of publication well. He is honest about what he doesn’t know. But most importantly, he knows how to connect to a student — to go where the person is. He is a great communicator and gives the kindest, gentlest, and most incisive feedback. He seems to be able to identify the problem and suggest a remedy every time. Who do you know that has a connection with your dream? Or who can refer you to someone or something that could be helpful in moving it forward? Ask for help or advice or a referral.

I took one simple bit of action. The simple thing that I did was to go online and look at the proposal for this group. It looked achievable. I wasn’t expecting that I would be good right off. I just wanted to try. So I signed up for the group. This simple act allowed what was latent to come to life. I said, yes, I do want to write poetry. I’ll try this.

I had enough money to afford to join a monthly group and the wisdom to see that it was important to spend the money on my dream. I know that not everyone could afford to do this. But many of us could make choices that support our dreams instead of spending our money the way we do now.

I had gained a lot of confidence and willingness to make mistakes and look foolish. Just by being this age, I had overcome a lot of personal obstacles. Writing a poem and sharing it with people? I can do that! So what if I look silly or make a fool of myself? It’s not like it's the first time or anything.

What about you? Are you letting fears and anxieties keep you from doing what you dream of doing? Think about a time you have done something brave. How did you get past the mental blocks at that time? Sometimes anxiety is the root cause of procrastinating and avoiding getting around to doing something you would love to do. Fight that anxiety and try to overcome your inner objections.

Think about your dream. What would it be like if you could make it happen? Can you imagine how it will feel when you achieve it? How it will feel to tell yourself, “I did it. I followed my dream and reached it.”

From my point of view, it feels damned good.

What dream is hidden away in the back of your mind’s basement closet?

Answer this question first. It could be anything. Did you want to play drums? Decorate cakes, become a horsewoman, grow orchids, write a novel or learn a Beethoven piano sonata? Whatever it is, imagine yourself doing it. How important is it to you? Is there some version of this dream that you can see yourself doing right now?

Why not try to get started living your dream? You’ll most likely improve as you learn. That’s how it usually goes as you practice, get feedback, make corrections. This is the process of learning something new.

If not, you may enjoy it anyway. At least it won’t still be on the back shelf of your basement closet. Bring it out. Look at it in the bright light. Is this dream important to you? Can you picture yourself actually doing it, even in a small way? What small action could you take now to start making it real?

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