Category: My Poetry

Knowing and Taming The Enemies

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Fiction, Intervals, My Poetry, Poetry, Writing and Not Writing, Your Poetry8 Comments

One of the most frustrating things for a writer is not writing.  In my case, I sometimes sit down at my desk or in one of my favorite chairs with good intentions, but the phone rings or I remember the clothes in the dryer or I decide to check out The Weather Channel … in other words, nothing happens.   Why not?

For me, the reasons vary, and it depends on what I am trying to write.

I somehow ritually rid myself of the fear of putting down a terrible poem.  In my world, I no longer write terrible poems – they are “drafts.”  My friend Scott Douglass once said to me, “I have yet to meet the perfect poem.”  Scott meets a great many poems, not only as a poet himself, but also as an editor and publisher, so I found his statement to be quite comforting.  I still do. Continue reading “Knowing and Taming The Enemies” →

In Pursuit of a Renaissance

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Intervals, My Poetry, Poetry, Writing and Not WritingLeave a comment

sunrise at the lakeIt is that time of year when I feel renewed (or feel that I should feel renewed!).  I always liked this time of year and going back to school; I always liked the opportunity to learn something new.  It’s little wonder, then, that when autumn comes and I watch as my daughter prepares for her new routine, I begin to prepare for mine.

After the productive June I experienced while on my extended retreat, I succumbed to “real life” once I came home, and have felt a bit of a let down because of it.  The disciplines I had established changed, to say the least, although, thankfully, they did not disappear completely.  I have still managed a pretty good schedule with exercise and writing (and reading), but it has been more haphazard here than it was down there.  I have many more obligations here than at my June getaway … naturally, the demands and responsibilities here at home are what make going there a “retreat.” Continue reading “In Pursuit of a Renaissance” →

Wrapping up “Project June,” still obsessing about sleep.

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Fiction, My Poetry, Poetry, Your Poetry1 Comment

142016In my last post, I pondered whether the absence of creating poetry while on my almost month-long writing retreat might be contributing to my inability to sleep.  My dear friend and fellow poet, Ann, was absolutely right when she wrote in a comment to that post that it sounded as if it was time to write a poem.  She also hit upon the fact that editing and revising are not the same as creating, and I can admit that a good portion of my time here has been devoted to the revision process … which is, as Ann pointed out, emotionally somewhat removed from the project.

A couple of weeks ago, while not sleeping, I came across a program on the Discovery Health channel about dreaming.  It was while watching this program that I got the title for that poem it was time to write.   When I got the first draft of this poem written last week, having to tinker with it was a nice respite from wrestling with revising the snaking prose that had already laid claim to its territory.

The last couple of weeks, I have utterly given in to my natural body clock, staying up until 3:00 or 4:00 and sleeping until 10:00 or 11:00 (when I could sleep at all).  I resent this condition in myself.  However, there’s nothing to be done for it, and since I have been completely on my own here, why not give in?  And yet, there is tension even in that “harmless” surrender.  Thus the poem.  Here is a stanza from the poem, which is still a draft, and is entitled Six Years of Dreaming.  On that Discovery Health channel program, it was said that the average person will spend six years of their lives dreaming.  Stanza 3:

Sleep has come to do an intervention
bringing with him
common sense, conventional wisdom
intuition … history.  All the self-righteous
and smug know-it-alls.
Naturally, I am repulsed.

It is still a draft, but I like the doing of it … and I slept great last night.  Tomorrow I head home, back to my family and, therefore, back to more reasonable and loving expectations.

Running Away

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Fiction, Intervals, My Poetry, Poetry, Writing and Not Writing, Your Poetry1 Comment

shellCurrently, running away might be exactly what I could be accused of doing.  I am at our small beach house where I have been most of this month.  I have been coming here every year for the past 4 summers, during the month of June, in order to write and recharge.

Some years have been more successful than others in the area of writing, but usually I have been able to rest well, even if I have not been able to write well while here.  This year, oddly, I have not been able to rest quite as well.  One factor has been the weather.  We have had storms rolling in at night and these tempests have managed to intrude on my rest in two ways.  The first way is the most obvious: if I am sleeping, and if the storm is close enough, it wakes me.  The second way is both more appealing and less preferable at the same time:  the storm comes before I am asleep and so I open the blinds or go out onto the porch and become a spectator.  The thrill of watching a good storm, frankly, makes it difficult to settle down enough to later go to sleep.  I simply don’t want to sleep afterwards.

However, for me to blame my inability to rest completely on these acts of God is not the whole story.  Continue reading “Running Away” →

Down Time

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Intervals, My Poetry, Writing and Not Writing2 Comments

img_1205Yesterday, I took to my bed and stayed there.  Today, I was ready to throw off the mantle of exhaustion, walk out into the sunshine and accomplish something…anything.  Sadly, there is no sunshine today, so I am not out … I am in.  Inside this house, inside the mundane, in my “to do” list … in, in, in.

April is, perhaps, for me one of the most challenging months of the year.  My father died in April of 1990.  Just as the daffodils bloom and my tulips, the ones that were not supposed to be perennial in this climate, are about to open … just as the dogwoods are painting their color and fragility onto the sky’s canvas, just as nature is greening itself and getting its “lush” on, I am thinking of death.  Well, this is Lent.  Spring.  The dualities I am pondering are more complicated and mysterious than I can describe here.  My body, more than my mind, grieves (by shutting down) the loss of a man I loved and, at times, hated; a man whom I forgave long ago, yet whose memory can sometimes still anger me.  Simultaneously, my mind is at war with this body, my body, over which I have limited control.  It grieves as it will.  It ages as it will.  Flowers bloom and die regardless of whether I have paid enough appreciative attention to them, and if I have not, this year’s chance is gone.    Recently, I learned that a former classmate of mine has died.  I did not know him well.  I will not know him now.  Continue reading “Down Time” →