Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor

>The final edits for my collaborative collection of poetry needed to be finished the same weekend I was responsible for a large fundraiser to benefit a friend who lost her husband. It occurred to me (as it has before in other collections) that this was it–any changes I missed would not be in the book. I stayed up most of the night on Saturday night after the fundraiser to get it done, hoping that it was the best work I could muster for a book that is something entirely new for me. That’s how my life is–teaching at night, teaching during the day, running a poetry project for second graders… It’s a restlessness that leads me to continually invite new challenges. Still I take periods of solitude where I just write. I look forward to my next getaway to beautiful Enders Island in January.

Our upcoming collection, The Other Side of Longing is a collaboration with Geraldine Mills and we will launch it both in the United States and in Ireland. We each have twenty poems in the collection, speaking to folklore, culture, and the natural environment of our respective countries. Working with another writer has been a joy. Geraldine has brought her special humor, insight, and attention to detail to our work and our friendship. It is not possible to take on something different and remain the same. I think often of the directions I can go in with my work and the risks that one needs to take to continually create at a high level. I will spend time on fiction this winter, taking my story and my life to another level.

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>Today was a late fall day dressed up as a summer day. The temperature was unseasonably warm. As I was conducting a poetry lesson, the children looked longingly outside. Finally we escaped and made the trek to a wooded nature trail, complete with two wooden bridges and a stream–something the city children found remarkable. Returning to the classroom, they ran up the big grassy hill, suddenly happy to be children on a rare moment of freedom on a day that felt like June. This, too, is poetry. They listed what they saw on their ride to the school–cows, pumpkins, farms, fields. This, too, is poetry. A soft-spoken girl read the poems in Spanish after I read them in English. Everyone was so quiet, we could hear the murmur of the wind outside. This, too, is poetry.

There are choices–how to find the hours it takes to be a writer, whether or not teaching is worth the incredible amount of time it takes, if any of this makes a difference. Watching the faces of students as they are lulled by words is what every poet wishes for. It is the balance–how much to give and how much to save for my own work. I believe this is important work–writing, teaching. I want to unnumb students and give them back words that express humanity, empathy, observation.

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>In this past week, my mother turned eighty-six, a friend’s father-in-law died at sixty-three , and now the husband of a good friend died this morning–in his fifties. We were hopeful because our friend’s husband was so tenacious, defying the odds of finding a donor, passing all the pre-transplant tests. So fickle life and death. Walking this morning after a windy weekend, I noticed the leaves that held on, their gold and burgundy showcased against the chilly spectacle of a late October morning. How many days pass without consciousness of surroundings? The river was moving, sun flickering on the water. I wore gloves for the first time this season. My mother says she is lonesome for my father, doesn’t understand why she is living so long. There is so much of life that is out of our control. Like autumn giving way to the bitter pull of winter, we accept the inevitable. We will be the leaves underfoot and we will be the leaves hanging on. We have been buds and we have been full blossoms. I don’t pretend to understand any of this. When I see the sorrow of loved ones, I feel the unfairness but life was not designed to be fair. I remind myself of fragility, and hold loved ones close. All I can do is find hidden beauty and tell about it. Life is a season–stunning and cruel. I resolve to do better each day at living, writing, making a difference.

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>The rain awakened me last night with its persistent tapping. Acorns hit the roof and the wooden stairs leading up the hill to my house. It sounded like heel clicks and I envisioned a posse of women in black stilettos arriving at my door. What did they want? Perhaps they were the harbinger of a changing season and they soon will be trading their heels for insultated boots.

One manuscript has found a home and another was a finalist in a contest. Although being a finalist does not get me publication, it feels like a tiny validation from the outside world. I will go back to it, reorder the poems, perhaps delete some and add others. I may retitle it.

As the days grow shorter, my narrative grows longer and I wake up with stories perched on the nightstand. First lines haunt my dreams. Today’s first line: “I am not a stalker.” Go ahead–you write the story. Make her an unreliable narrator. Perhaps she has an addiction to texting and is compulsively texting someone who has made it clear that he isn’t interested. Throw in a few other habits, a complicated family dynamic–and there you have it. A beginning.

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>The nights are getting cooler and there’s a fire-tip on top of the oak tree down the road. It’s quieter and darker. I find myself gathering in, dreaming of winter nights with a persistent wind knocking at the window. My life is tightly scheduled again with decisions to be made almost daily. When will I see friends? How many hours can I devote to my caretaking role and still balance all my teaching? How will I find the time to finish two manuscripts and submit my work to journals? When I am discussing poetry or writing, the world drops away and I find myself immersed in words. I know that magic captures some of my students–I can see it because they get very quiet. I remind myself that the younger students will someday remember this. There is a synergy that happens in a classroom. When I leave, I take that energy with me, remembering that teaching is like learning which is like observing which is a vital part of writing. I try to stay in the moment, honoring all the voices in my many classrooms. I am lucky enough to work with all ages which keeps me from getting tainted or too fixed in a genre or attitude. Like life, my interactions continually change. There is always something growing, even in winter.

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