More than an accident

You've got to be crazy to intentionally choose to make your life harder, right? I can barely think straight as it is. I don't have enough time to write. Money is tight. Why in the world would I want to have a child?

I'd like to think that if the choice were made for me, that if the test, unexpectedly, came out positive, that I would rise to the occasion. Like Plath, I would just hang tight to the strap as the train took me straight to Motherhood. I try to convince my husband that babies don't come out asking for twenty bucks and to borrow the car. Remember, I say, there's nine whole months to prepare. That's like a lifetime.

I'm attracted to the excitement of suddenly discovering that everything has changed. I imagine it's like the moment a poem takes a sharp right turn into the unknown -- the muse is on cruise control. But so little of life, or writing, is like that. Most of it is crappy drafts, rejection, and hard work.

So, why would I go out and choose to make life harder? As a poet it's my job to be disatisfied with the way things are, to see possibility in the ordinary, to demand more from language than information. Sometimes I stumble into meaning. Sometimes I have an ephiphany and it all comes into focus. But mostly, meaning is something that has to be made each day, like a bed. It can be a disappointing and dangerous task to look at the world and ask it to be more.

Poets get labeled often as being too sensitive. We're a fragile bunch. We jump off bridges or drink ourselves to death. We're selfish and wear berets. Not the type you'd consider the ideal parent. But I believe it takes guts, a hard head, and an iron and intellectual gaze to insist that the human experience is more than a series of fortunate accidents.