Essential Crap

When I was a little girl I would go into the Public Library of Sarah Orne Jewitt house and sit in that small room and feel overwhelmed by all the books there were to read. In my child’s mind it held all the books in the world and the first time I step inside a “real” library I was depressed for days because I knew I could never read all those books in my lifetime. I love knowledge; to me the mind is the sexiest part of the body.

Today I am feeling overwhelmed by all the things I need to read and not enough time to do it. It’s rather irritating how making a living cuts into my poetry life but I suppose that is the way of all artists.

There has been a bit of talk in blog land lately about what I call “essential crap” the poems we need to write to get to the other poems we need to write. Rebecca Loudon said Each poem insists, each poem carries the seeds of the next poem in its mouth. and I think that was the most brilliant comment I’ve read in a long time.

When I stop judging my work as good or bad I opened it up to another possibility. I know this about Art. I know that the artist who is afraid/ judgmental tends to never make great art and the one who throws himself/herself into this a place without judgment has no limitations.