Web administrator’s note: Thanks, Melissa, for this great essay.
By Melissa Varnavas
An MFA teaches you the mechanics of good writing, sure. But just as important are the lessons learned regarding one’s own creative process. In Drawing on the Artist Within (Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1987), author Betty Edwards outlines five essential stages of creativity: “first insight;” “saturation;” “incubation;” “realization” (indicated as the “ah-ha!” moment); and “verification”.
When I sent my application to Pine Manor College’s (PMC) MFA program, I was firmly in the “realization” stage of Edwards’ creativity curve. I’d “incubated” in my professional career, and come to the conclusion that I could begin another career, a career I always wanted, a career as a writer. The idea was like an epiphany. The letter of acceptance from PMC Director Meg Kearney was my verification. A month later, however, I was back at “first insight” learning how much I actually did not know about poetry and the craft of writing.
Those first months were full of self-indulgent sobbing: “What am I doing here?” (I’m a bit of a drama queen.) Until my former professor, poet Ray Gonzales, offered the seemingly simplistic pearl of wisdom—“What do you mean? You’re here to write, aren’t you? So, write.”
Of course I headed off to get my MFA to learn how to write, to become a better poet, to learn (perhaps most importantly) what makes a poem a poem. And I did learn these things under the tutelage of numerous kind and patient poets, much as I learned over the years from the kind and patient tutelage of the wonderful community of poets we have in the North Shore Poets’ Forum, the Massachusetts State Poetry Society, the Tin Box Poets and so many more.
The quest to become a better poet and discern what makes a poem a poem is still the subject of my creative search.
As I approach the year anniversary of my graduation I continue to answer the skeptical regarding the worth of my degree. “So,” the vaguely interested ask, “what have you done with your degree?”
I have not published a poem, or penned a thrilling essay, or begun a fictional treatise of the ills of believing in an ill-fated world. But I am sure that at any moment one of the 15 or so perfectly-formed poems currently out in the world will find a home. Any minute now my phone is going to ring. Any. Minute. Now.
Okay, so the phone’s not ringing off the hook, and I haven’t become an international success. Still, I am not discouraged. I believe in the creative process. I believe in the craft lessons learned during my graduate work. I believe in the old “ass-in-chair” adage which implies that being a writer means saturating oneself in the continuous process of reading, writing, and living.
That’s not to say I didn’t take some time off after completing my degree. Of course I did. I spent about two months in hibernation. I’d never seen the TV show Lost before then and fell into nearly a month of continuous viewing. And I spent some time simply living.
Come March, I attacked poetry again like a beset warrior (armed with only a broken sword), and sent out poems from my creative thesis. I got back to writing.
In the spring, I returned to my garden after two years to find it overgrown; I opened my eyes to a mess of unfinished house projects. In the summer, I helped my niece plan her wedding. We celebrated my husband’s birthday with a trip to Las Vegas. I spent some more time simply living.
This fall, I re-entered the local literary community, rejoining groups like the Forum, and I recently joined the Thursday Theatre of Words & Music and the Salem Writers Group. I’ve also returned to the collection of notebooks steadily accumulating on my shelves to find some not-so-perfectly formed poems waiting for my attention. I am back to writing, again.
The best part of being on the other side of graduate schooling is that not only do you not have a 40-page paper due at the end of every month but you can have another glass of wine and read another book and write some more and read some more and not worry so much about the end product.
But here I am again. Writing again. Back at the beginning of the process, somewhere between the incubation of a poem(s) and the realization of its completion. After an essay is written or a poem poured out, I lapse into the day-to-day rigors of home and family and work, overwhelmed by the question I had that first month of my schooling: What am I doing here? Why should we bother writing poems?
While I joke about the millions poetry will miraculously procure for me in royalties from my first book, I know that I am simply continuing to do what I have always done, what Ray Gonzales so aptly pointed out that first semester—I am a writer so I’m writing.
So, don’t worry if life gets hectic and you step away from your poems for a bit of life “saturation” before finding poetic “inspiration”; you’ll keep writing too. It’s all part of the process.
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