crystal-clear

My title: a quote from a fellow writer. It’s true. My best poetry comes when I am angry, sad, discontent, melancholy. Except for the love poems. Those I can write in content and happiness. But I can’t write them too often, lest they become commonplace.

I’m reading H.D. in my Modern Poets class. She writes with ferocity and is said to have been in love with extreme weather; her poems are full of storms and waves. She was one of those who are too much for this world. Even nature couldn’t contain her. She didn’t kill herself–she wasn’t one of those–but had trouble finding lasting love, and her identity suffered the toll of World War 2. She was plagued by violence. She was beautiful.

I’m always going to be a little closer to the ground than H.D. I am well-contented with the autumn wind shaking the maple leaves outside the window just now. I don’t wish for earthquakes. I plan to be happy for a good long time. H.D. wouldn’t have understood, would have called me naive. So be it. I will probably never write as she did–as often or as well. It’s hard to write when you’re happy.

But I will teach others about her. It’s important to invite people like H.D. into one’s mental living room. She forces us to look up. She asks us to deviate once in a while. We might be better off as human beings if we talked to the weather like she did. O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. What is around us? H.D. makes us see what is, and what could be.

If I could meet H.D. at 26, my age, I would want to sit her down with a piece of pie and a cup of tea and make sure she got a good night’s sleep. I wish she could have been happier.

But maybe,

perhaps,

then,

she would not have written.

Violet, your grasp is frail on the edge of the sand-hill, but you catch the light–frost, a star edges with its fire.