poet or trans or both, pt 2
This week has been a large week for my Queer Poet thing. I’m not so sure this is a great thing.
It started last week when a Visiting Poet told me I needed to surrender to my pronouns, or maybe make up new ones, and we all just stared at him.
Then I read Ely Shipley’s lovely book Boy with Flowers and thought about what he’s said about being trans and being a poet (he doesn’t want to be labeled, but at the same time he wants to write poems about being trans, and so I find myself kindof bogged in the conundrum sometimes).
Then last night in poetry class I talked about Ely and his book and we got into a thing about labels. Do I think they’re useful? I don’t know. I think they CAN be. I think that if you are just coming out, or just starting to transition, or coming to terms with being the only _____ in your neighborhood, and you’re damn certain you won’t find much (or any) representation of yourself on TV, then yes — being able to go to the bookstore, or on the interwebs, and find a writer who speaks for some part of your experience… That is invaluable.
But I am more kinds of poet than just trans, I think. I write about love, and loss, and goats, and Chincoteague… And yes, my experience as a trans person does have some impact on all of that, but sometimes it’s a very tiny impact. But then I circle back to the teenage girl I once was, who would have sold her feet to find non-scary examples of someone who had successfully done what she wanted to do more than anything, and who was able to write about ponies or herons as a result.
The reality of it is that I don’t know what kind of poet I am, or even whether I’m supposed to be a poet at all. This week has been hard — the writing has come slowly, and not very successfully, and everything else is weighing on me too — and now, on another Friday with another bad cup of coffee (if I can’t make a decent cup of coffee, how the hell am I supposed to make a decent poem?), I barely know who I am at all.
I’ll throw a couple more poems up on the poem page later today, though.
Pax.
It’s that cough — you need to get rid of that cough and then you will feel much more like the poet you are. Every time you coughed on Thursday night I shuddered because it sounded so painful.
As far as the labels, ugh, I just didn’t want to get into that conversation in class because it’s so circular and ancient. Don’t you think that back in Biblical days people were discussing whether they wanted to be a Canaanite psalm-writer or a Samaritan prophet or a polygamous shepherd verse-writer… or just a psalm-writer, just a prophet, just a verse-writer? The thing is, you are what you are. I am Heather, you are faunboy, W.B. Yeats was W.B. Yeats… and people will still put us into categories whether we want to be there or not. Basically, it all comes down to (1) other people’s insecurities and (2) advertising. In regards to what would have helped you when you were a teenager, I hear that and understand it. So when you have a book, you need to get an interview with a publication or website that a kid who’s going through similar anguish will read, and then [whatever pronoun or not] will be able to find your work and feel reassured. Spreading the word is the key. And you better never say that you can’t write poems again, because I love your poems and feel energized by your writing.
There, I have written a short book.
What kind of poet are you? A human one. Silly visiting poet. (I had a lot of those in my program too, actually.)
By the way, would it please you to learn that the kitty in the picture was, in fact, named Pickles? Jenny-Linsky is asleep all over my laundry.
definitely a human one! it turns out that I am not as solid as I thought I would be at being a Type. Who knew?!
And yes, I am delighted to know that the picture cat is Pickles, and that you have a Jenny Linsky cat too. This brings me all kinds of contentment.
Loving your blog, by the way. May I link to it from this faunboy blog?