Edgar Silex, one of my writing teachers in Baltimore, used to tell us: “just remember – you don’t own your poems. They were just a great moment going through you.” I’ve always remembered that comment. I have these notebooks of poems in my writing studio, but somehow I never feel that they’re my possessions, like my checking account, or my driver’s license….
When my friend Lucy and I went to the publisher’s office to collect boxes of my second book, Imagining the World, Lucky looked at the boxes, and said, “These are dreams, Sandra, these are dreams.”’ That night I stacked them by my bed, and I kept waking up to check on them – I guess I thought they’d disappear - … I really believe that comment about not owning your poems, but it was so strange to see them in a physical book, laid out on the page, with numbers and fonts – it took me a while to take it in. Maybe all writers feel this way the first time they see their books…here it is – this living thing, this moment, and somehow you had the grace and bravery to get it down on the page…
When my friend Lucy and I went to the publisher’s office to collect boxes of my second book, Imagining the World, Lucky looked at the boxes, and said, “These are dreams, Sandra, these are dreams.”’ That night I stacked them by my bed, and I kept waking up to check on them – I guess I thought they’d disappear - … I really believe that comment about not owning your poems, but it was so strange to see them in a physical book, laid out on the page, with numbers and fonts – it took me a while to take it in. Maybe all writers feel this way the first time they see their books…here it is – this living thing, this moment, and somehow you had the grace and bravery to get it down on the page…
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