On blogging and telling the truth and telling it slant (a post from our guest, poet Rita Quillen)

“Harder Than You Think is a Beautiful... In the vast village of the world

On blogging and telling the truth and telling it slant (a post from our guest, poet Rita Quillen)

Dear Karen and Nancy:

With the exception of some blogging on Goodreads regarding my novel and all its Sturm and Drang, I’ve avoided blogging in the way some frat boys avoid jewelry stores—even the idea of entering into such a commitment scares me. But I have jumped into social media in general with both [left] feet over the past 18 months or so, as I got the harebrained idea to find small presses willing and able to publish at the same time both my long-suffering novel and a little chapbook of poems I’d written after the death of my dad. I’ve built a website, two Facebook pages, Twitter, Pinterest, and Goodreads pages, and a Youtube channel for my songs. It’s been a steep learning curve, exhausting, unsettling, humbling, but fun and exhilarating, too. Facebook, in particular, has been a life-changing experience for me, having given me more insight than ever before as to who is really who and who isn’t and where I fit in and where I don’t. I have been absolutely delighted to find out how many friends, well-wishers, devoted readers, and cheerleaders I have, and to also discover that a few people whom I thought to be in the aforementioned group somewhere actually have absolutely no use for me for reasons I am clueless about! In other words, it’s all good.

I enjoy reading blogs, of course, and greatly admire those who do it well, like you two. I love truth-telling. I guess everyone does, as long as you’re telling the truth about someone else. If you start telling people truth about themselves, your family could find themselves having to pay good money for pallbearers when you go! I think that’s why memoir is such a hot thing right now in publishing. In this oh-so-fake world, to allow people willingly into your life, giving them permission to know your business, is something people are hungry for. (Or it could be a lot like that whole “Let’s go down to the coliseum tonight and see who’s for dinner” thing, too.) Memoir writing and blogging are true reality shows, unlike the staged ones on TV.

It’s no surprise why editors and agents basically insist today that writers must blog. An artist who opens herself and her life and her foibles up to the world will win admirers and sympathizers, sometimes judge and jury, too, but she will also, definitely, find readers. No matter whether you write poetry, fiction, plays or memoir, people love knowing as much as they can about you before they decide to invest the money and time in your work.

But I have continued to cringe at the prospect of trying to talk about myself and my life, my heart, my worries, my thoughts about this or that issue or problem, without the gauzy curtain filter offered by a creative treatment of some kind. I feel like I’m already enough of a burden to my family as it is. I laughed so long and loud and thought of my dad when the Dowager Countess character on DOWNTON ABBEY last season made her now infamous remark. “No one wants a poet in the family.” Why she mentioned a poet and not a playwright or a novelist? Two reasons: first, people understand what fiction is and cut you some slack. But poetry is supposedly always autobiographical. Poet’s lives are often, literally, an open book, whether our family wants to find itself hogtied on the white pages or not.

I’ve tried to take the approach that my poems and stories are true, but slant. My characters are real to me, but I can change them any way I need or want. I pursue truth and reality in my writing at all times, but it’s just not necessarily my personal truth or reality. Whether it’s one of my novel’s characters or the persona speaking in my poetry, all my writing is very much Me/Not Me, as I play up or play down, inhabit some other life, say “I wish I was” instead of “I am”. I’m Lieutenant Andrew Nettles in my novel HIDING EZRA, the antagonist (initially) who feels such an outsider to his home and family, and I’m also Ezra, who is the most comfortable person I’ve ever known in his own skin, as much a part of the land where he lives as the trees themselves. I’m the sometimes wise-sounding persona who speaks in my poems about the world, the eternal, about turnips and chimneysweeps and grave-tending as if she had confidence in her vision and her aesthetic, but who often doesn’t recognize that voice on the page, only channels it.

So I’m proud to know you, Nancy and Karen, and your fearless words, your truth-telling, your vulnerability, your collaboration-without-competition. It’s so inspiring. To write a letter to someone is an act of great intimacy; the scratch of the pen on paper or the click of the finger on a keyboard is a tactile reminder of the ideas and revelations passing between you. More importantly, to write a letter is to implicitly trust and respect that mind and soul you’re addressing and await their judgment and response. Then to publish that for the world to see, too? Astonishing.

I love this quote from your last letter, Nancy: “I used to ask the universe for a signal that I should continue, but I never do that anymore. I don’t think the universe particularly cares whether I write or not…” So far the universe hasn’t called and told me the world needs my blog either, though it could happen at any time, I suppose. After all, I said the same thing for years about songwriting, and yet here I am, working on song number 6 since late fall. I really need to stop telling myself I can’t do things, I suppose. It’s a girl thing, especially an old girl.

Yours,

Rita

Rita Quillen’s novel HIDING EZRA was published in March 2014; a chapter of the novel is included in the scholarly study of Appalachian dialect, TALKING APPALACHIAN, just published by the University of Kentucky Press. Her new chapbook SOMETHING SOLID TO ANCHOR TO came out from Finishing Line in 2014 as well. One of six semi- finalists for the 2012-14 Poet Laureate of Virginia, she received a Pushcart nomination as well as a Best of the Net nomination in 2012. Her most recent full-length collection HER SECRET DREAM from WIND Press in Kentucky was named the Outstanding Poetry Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association in 2008. Currently, she’s working on turning her poems into songs. She lives and farms on Early Autumn Farm in Scott County, Virginia.

from http://www.stilljournal.net/

TURNIPS ON THE TABLE

How odd when a vegetable and person merge

Becoming one in your mind and mouth.

My grandmother loved those little roots

Their stealthy sting hit your tongue

Like an angry truth.

Put all the butter and sugar you want—

Their heat cannot be denied.

No wonder they’re shaped like tears.

They owned a little grocery store

Could eat anything they wanted