Late Saturday night I received an e-mail from the South Coast Writers Conference announcing that three of the four poems I had submitted last summer for consideration for this year’s Rogue River Echoes are going to be published!
This was incredible news, especially when the e-mail included the comment that “we ordinarily do not select three entries from one writer, but the high quality of your writing merited it.”
This is a also a wonderful validation for someone who has her insecurities about how good her poetry really is and comes at a great time, when I am just beginning to submit to other publications and wondering if I will measure up, if I have a chance of getting published in them. It gives me a great deal of encouragement that that is possible.
One of my concerns has been whether my style of poetry is what editors are looking for these days, when so many of them seem to want “edgy” poems. I am definitely not into writing edgy things, nor do I particularly care to read them, either. I tend to judge myself against what is being published, even if I do not personally care for it. But I have decided that all I can really do is just write the way I do and hope there are enough other people – hopefully, some of them editors - who like my style.
I also struggle against the feeling that every poem I write must be wonderful. Looking back at the poems I posted on this site in 2009 when I was participating in the April Poem-a-Day Challenge, I find that the quality of my poems is all over the place: some are really good and some just are plain old bad, not even worthy of a rework. I have begun to realize that not every poem I write is going to be good. Some are going to be bad, and that’s okay. I don’t suppose there has ever been a poet whose every poem was brilliant, with the possible exception of the Bard himself. So maybe I should be a little gentler in judging myself.
I’ve also begun to see how very important it is to set aside a “finished” poem for a while before really considering it finished. Many of those 2009 poems that I was satisfied with at the time I wrote them now strike me as not finished at all. I have learned since then what I can do to improve the more deserving ones. And I am learning that some are just plain bad poems that I shouldn’t waste any more time on.
I am now thinking about doing a chapbook of my published poems, though it will be a while before I have enough of those to fill it! But it seems that taking the best of the best is a wise idea for a first publication.
At the moment, I am just reveling in the good news about my three poems, which I have posted below. One of them is “Paper Ephemera” which won me the Bob Simons Scholarship Award for last year’s SCWC.
Drift Away
As I approach the final stage
of my brief passage,
this is my wish: to drift away
down a finally peaceful river,
where no rapids disturb
my lazy progress toward the sunset;
where all is calm and beautiful,
if only for that short time;
where lush green riverbanks give way
to majestic mountains in the distance;
where birds warble their hellos,
and frogs croak out goodbyes
as I glide silently by on my way to the sea,
relishing my last moments
on this particular river
in the deepening twilight.
Lord knows the trip I’ve made so far
has often been a turbulent one,
and I have sometimes gone far out of my way,
paddling up creeks that joined into the river,
but did not go where I thought they would,
wasting precious time in backtracking.
Sometimes I’ve traveled with another,
most times it’s been alone and now and then lonely.
On more than one occasion I have found myself
in a swirling eddy, going round and round
in circles, making no forward progress;
or going over unexpected waterfalls
and miraculously surviving the drop;
or falling into holes in the churning rapids,
then suddenly rising again into the sunlight,
relieved to be alive to see another day.
Sometimes I’ve beached my boat
and pitched my tent on a sand bar,
staying in one place for a while,
listening to the wind in the trees,
gazing at starlit night skies with crescent moons,
wishing the river could go on forever.
But all rivers run to the sea eventually,
and mine runs into the sea of the eternal now,
where I will be absorbed back into all of life,
into all that is, into God, until once again,
in the never-ending cycle of the universe,
I find myself re-born on a new river
and begin the journey once more.
by Carol Berger
Putting Out Brush Fires
After all the years,
I am tired of putting out brush fires.
Let someone else throw water on them.
Or let them burn and consume
all within their range.
I care not.
I am re-claiming my life,
leaving the brush fires behind,
to deal with more important things:
the sound of angry waves
crashing on the rocky shore,
the autumn sun
angling across a field of fallen leaves,
the softness of a lush carpet
of deep green grass beneath my feet,
the scent of lavender fields
on a hot summer day,
the taste of ripe raspberries
melting on my tongue.
No longer will I waste my time
squelching minor conflagrations
that have nothing to do with who I am
and make no difference to anyone
in the long run.
Instead, I will find my freedom
on the rapids of a raging green river;
my peace, in wild pink rhododendrons
dwelling in quiet redwood forests;
my contentment, in sunset and twilight
and the evening stars in the vast, dark sky.
And not least, I will find my joy,
in knowing that for me,
there are no more brush fires.
by Carol Berger
Paper Ephemera
It is all there in the photo albums
and the postcard books:
the people, places, and things
that have made up my life.
If they could, each picture,
each card, would tell
its story in more depth,
but they cannot speak,
cannot reveal what lies behind
the surface of their silence.
No one but I
can tell those stories.
They will die with me,
taking with them the love,
the laughter, the beauty,
the excitement, discovery, and hope,
along with the all challenges,
changes, and choices of
one woman’s lifetime -
the quiet victories, the silent joys,
and moments of peace
that only I could recount.
Gone, too, will be the fears,
the failures, the heartbreaks,
the confusions, betrayals, and
disappointments – the quiet losses,
the silent sorrows of a life
that was not always so well-lived
as those photos and postcards
would suggest.
Though the artifacts remain,
the memories will be gone,
and these painstakingly
preserved records of my life
will become nothing more
than meaningless scraps
of glossy paper.
by Carol Berger
