in today's mail
a note from my professor
praising my little book
all the leaves on the trees
turning their brightest yellow


This after receiving a note in the mail from a former grad professor; how a little note like this carries with it more power and punch than its writer will ever know! Or perhaps he does, being a poet himself. Back in May, when I published "six sunflowers", I sent out a copy to the professor who helped me publish "empty baskets" my last year of Grad school. I hadn't even received so much as an email from him acknowledging he had received it, never mind a thank you. But this note was so much more than a thank you--it was an acknowledgment to me as a writer from another writer that I am indeed a writer and a good writer! It tugged hard at my heart strings that, shamelessly, I admit need tugging at once in awhile, especially now that I find myself removed from the literary circle of peers that Grad school had provided, a circle I may have taken for granted.

Anyways, the little note went on, after the never-too-late thank you, to praise the poems it contained; even listing poems he found particularly moving. But it was what he saw in the progression of my overall writing that I needed most: In the work, I really hear a voice confident in its abilities and aesthetic. When I first began work on my thesis, under this professor's direction, I wrote my own mission statement as a poet. In it, I hoped to redirect the tone of my poetry, to be more imagistic, more original and above all, more empowering. This note from my professor made me think that I had indeed achieved this and more. This mission statement was written before my discovery of tanka; tanka provided for me a forum for these things I was trying to accomplish. I didn't want to erase the hardship and despair from my poems; I wanted to establish a voice that had overcome, a voice that celebrated both the struggle itself and the beauty I had learned to rely on to lead me out from beneath it.

My professor ended by saying he expects he'll be using my poems to teach in his future classes. How could their be a higher honor from a former professor? So this poem was written to show my elation, my heart and soul felt joy, at being so acknowledged in the place inside me that matters the most and to show how a soul can be lit with so very few words. Ah, but we tankaists already know this, don't we?

a sea strong wind
sends throngs of crisp leaves
tumbling up the street
so all the trees tomorrow
will be November clean and new

Nothing touches the writer in me more than a brisk fall day! Went for a walk this morning with the dog; the ocean was stirring, the wind was so strong that the sand off the beach hit me in the face as we passed; and the trees seemed to be losing their leaves before my very eyes. There is just something incredibly surreal and timeless about a deep gray-blue sky full of wind; about watching the earth shed its ornate wardrobe and become somehow starker, cleaner. I feel an awesome sense of renewal with the loss that November brings.

Needless to say, the morning inspired me to scribble out several tanka, and then I got into the Jeep with the dog and drove the entire coastline, stopping to snap pictures with my camera, of waves and gulls and the lights on Thatcher's Island. How absolutely blessed am I to live on this rugged little island! But how I wish I were a Cape Ann artist rather than a Cape Ann poet; such yearnings to be able to paint what captures my heart and speaks to my soul. Maybe someday I will find the time to take a class or two and pick up a brush, but for now, I try to translate my moods and impressions through the words of my little poems . . .