Writing as Therapy

So, since I was in college, I have been writing, and some of the crap is pretty good.  I learned so much about writing when I began teaching Creative Writing, and as I reflect that was the best time that I had as a teacher: when I was able to work with students and watch them write and see them grow and sometimes see students who didn't know they could write leearn to express themselves through writing.  Most of my writing is steeped in the experiences that I had growing up, which is of course the first rle of writing: "Write what you know."  There is a delicate balance between writing what you know and writing universally.  the challenge as a writer is to take those things that are common and translate them to relate to everybody, so that when someone reads about my Granny, he or she is reading about their grandmother; when someone reads about my daddy, she sees the strain and struggle between herself and her father.  That is the trick to writing, I think! from time to time, I will share some of my writing here.  Feel free to offer feedback-- even if you think it sucks!  At any rate, here is a poem that I wrote recently after I pondered why I have really begun to take to country music, and I really realized that I had been living in a country song most of my life-- on a serious note, they tell a story, and these stories I hope come through my writing.  On this poem, I thought about the biggest events that shaped my ife, and they all boiled down to my mama and daddy,a nd I really see them reflecting on them to be like Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash- my mama standing by her man, and my daddy singing the Fulsom Prison Blues, though daddy didn't go to prison.  So, here is the poem that I etched out to remember mama and daddy:

Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette

those summer nights when a rustle

of breeze was a thirty second relief from

the heat of the day— The air at midnight as thick as

noon’s—fireflies’ light mingles with the harsh

glow of my daddy’s Marlboro, its brightness rising

and falling with each breath—



there he sits, mad as hell again, long arms, black hair and eyes that

melt into the darkness—old t-shirt, blue jeans and

black leather shoes—he slouched in that old lawn chair

reminds me of a harsh Johnny Cash song—my daddy walking

that line between sin and glory and between love and hate,

he puffs on his cigarette as if it’s his last before a firing squad

and sucks on his one bad tooth, as he watches the night, lord knows

what thoughts swirl in his mind.



My mama watches from the window, the coldness in her thunders

and rivals the summer’s heat. She watches my daddy, slouched in that

chair. She sees the end creeping and circling like that

ring of smoke above his head. She sees the raindrops that fall—

he oblivious to them, and she hoping this will be the next baptism that will

save their souls—it’s the myth that she dreamed—a generation bore.



There they are this history between them and reality bigger than the

sky that he contemplates and that she prays to and that the smoke

from the tip of that cigarette fades into--he walks in that ring of fire,

and she summons her strength to stand there by her man one more time.