So it starts, love, so it starts

Journals and journeys and mornings and nights and lovers all have to start somewhere.

That's the sometimes tough bit.

And so many things can't be said in journals or journeys or mornings or nights or lovers. But I can say a tonne, anyway: I've been a writer since the age of nine. Or, I guess, I've been a writer since conception, but it didn't dawn on me until I was nine and began writing short stories.

My genre was fiction-- only fiction, and often about cats or girls rescuing boys, until my first poem wandered into my bed as I tried to fall asleep when I was 13.

I memorized it. And told it to my grandmother, who insisted I write it down, or it could be lost forever. "I've thought of so many poems," she said.

A few years later, I fell in love with Emily Dickinson. A mistake and a blessing. A mistake because, almost ten years later, I found myself frustrated and crushed because a poetry professor didn't like me capitalizing abstract words like E.D. A blessing because I decided I had to write as many poems as she has.

According to "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson" that's 1775. I know I wrote over 1500 by the age of 19, though let's be honest: only about 25 of those are worth a closer read. And all need some revision.

I thought I was done with poetry around the age of 19. I was going to be a historical fiction writer! Then, after re-reading Douglas Adams, I was going to be a female Douglas Adams who didn't set anything in outerspace or in a detective agency.

And at about that time, I needed to take poetry in order to get my BA in writing. Drat. I tried to use my work experience from writing for the college newspaper to worm my pretty way out of that credit.

And couldn't.

"Journalism isn't the same as poetry." And then I was read a description of what a poetry class offers: criticism and revision and workshopping and the discipline of succint language.

Uhhh... duhhh.... "That's what I'm getting at the paper!" I argued.

It didn't work.

And I'm VERY glad my attempt failed. After a couple weeks, the poetry class was declared my favorite. And about a year later, I was stunned with revelation shortly after fellow students broke up into groups of three for poetry workshops for about the 28th time in my college experience: "I could do this," I thought. "I could LOVE to do this... be a poetry professor..."

And so I hunted down MFA programs for a couple months. And jumped up and down while talking about them. I had my sights narrowed on three institutions when someone at a Denver newspaper thought my resume merited picking up his phone and talking to me....

So I'm working instead of studying.

It's not just for the money or the bylines. I REALLY love that job...

"The people I went to grad school with were mostly there because they didn't like what they were doing..." I paraphrase a very good friend of mine.

I like what I'm doing; why go to grad school, particularly when the city of Denver is VIVID with poets and writers and journalists and opportunity...

Why, in one month, I spent about $500 on poetry. From poets I had actually met, even done workshops with... And ok, $175 was put into applying for the Denver Woman's Press Club, but all the rest was invested into honest-to-goodness poetry.

AHHH.

I really feel I've come into my own.

I wanted to transplant myself to Chicago, where it's clear there's a vibrant culture of poets, possibly more active than in Denver. But I don't need it. I've found what I want and need.

I'm very very lucky.

So why create a blog to boast about it, eh? Well.... many a smart writer has a blog these days. I may as well join them.