Sylvia on the Phone
---I woke up today thinking “Sylvia Plath had the right idea. She left a pretty interesting legacy; A couple of kids, a bunch of famous poems, And she went out on her own terms.” Depression is like an ex-lover I can't get rid of, She shares custody of my brain, Owning at least some part of every day. Anxiety is her jealous new fling-- Anxiety keeps thinking I want to take Depression back, She calls Depression all the time, whining about the time I’m taking up, bombarding me with text messages that I can’t ignore. I’d be happy with Depression gone forever. This never ending threesome with no climax is exhausting; Keeps me up all night, and demands my attention all day. So I fill the prescriptions, And swallow the tablets, And talk the talk… Trying to ignore Anxiety’s text messages And Depression’s phone calls. Mark the texts as Spam and let the calls go to voicemail, So I can stick around and be here to answer the real ones. -Erika Grumet
MY First Poem
I remember writing my first poem that wasn’t something I had to write for school. I was ten. The Challenger space shuttle had just exploded, and there was so much sadness around. I was still trying to sort out my own grief over losing my grandmother and my great aunt, and I wrote a poem about death. I kept it pinned to the bulletin board in my bedroom for many years, the shaggy edges of a page torn from a spiral notebook, yellowed and shriveled, the rest of the page pierced by push-pins as parts of the page were covered with other things like concert tickets and photographs.
The people I shared it with seemed to like it, and that felt good, but there was something better than the positive feedback. I liked writing it, and that felt better. And I felt a sense of relief, as if I were simultaneously acknowledging that it was okay that I was sad, and also releasing some of that sadness.
Teenage Poems
I wrote my quota of poems as a teenager, poems filled with angst, ennui and nihilism, some were even good enough for the school literary magazine–one even won an award from the National Council of Teachers of English, but in my late teens I stopped writing. When I finally picked it up again more than twenty five years later, I had no plans to write poetry again, but as another poet said, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men. Gang aft agley.”
I discovered that I still knew how to write a poem. Poems, for me, however, are even harder to share than other kinds of writing. It took six months of near daily writing, and a lot of coaxing before I became even the slightest bit comfortable calling myself a writer–something that I can now do, although at times (like right now,) it’s difficult. Poet? I’m definitely not there yet.
When is a Poem Finished?
In spite of everything I thought I wanted to do as a writer, poetry still worked. And not long into my studies with Adam, when I wrote the first poem I showed him, one we’re still workshopping, it felt like a locked door had suddenly given way and I’d fallen through it. Writing, and sharing that poem, was like giving myself permission to write again. Of course everything I’ve written since then isn’t good–some of it is quite terrible; that’s part of the “make mistakes” rule, but I wouldn’t have even been able to let go and write those things if I hadn’t written that poem, that permission slip to myself, to be authentic in the writing I do, whether it’s poetry, fiction, or these blog posts.
I recall a few things about what led me to write the above poem in the late spring or early summer of 2021. I’d read something by or about Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s husband) and I was dealing with the day-to-day chronic illness stuff and was finally getting some relief from an injury that left me essentially in bed, unable to do anything for a month. I’d been talking about confessional poetry with someone, and that person drew comparisons between some work of mine and the work of Sylvia Plath, which left me flustered and bewildered. It’s hard sometimes, to be okay with not being okay, and I think in a way, this poem came from me trying to acknowledge that it’s okay to not be okay and it’s also okay to honor the fact that it’s hard sometimes to keep going when you’re not okay.
Does “Finished” mean “Ready to Share”?
Poems, as I said earlier, are harder to share than other pieces of writing. Like peek-a-boo slits in clothing, they show pieces of me that might not otherwise be seen unless you’re someone who gets to see me naked. My writing journey started with the single goal to “become a better writer,” and in order to do that, I have to share some work to get feedback, but that work doesn’t have to be seen by anyone beyond my mentor.
As Adam and I were workshopping this particular poem, along with two others I’d written, we were also preparing for an open mic poetry night. Public speaking, reading a poem in public, that’s not something I have particular struggles with, but this writing journey has been pushing myself to grow, and it felt like a good next step would be to allow some other people to see (or hear) my work, but in order to do that, it had to be finished. What does “finished” mean, though? I don’t really know. This poem feels finished because someone else (Adam) told me to leave it alone, to let it rest, and that’s what I did for a week or two before the open mic night.
No but Serious. When is it Finished?
It still didn’t feel quite finished before that night though, but I read it anyway, along with another poem, which I felt was more complete at that point, and then I put them both away, with the idea that I’d eventually submit the other poem somewhere, but not really feeling like this one was ready. When I was talking with Adam about inaugural posts for the blog, I was thinking of going back to the memoir-style essays that I’ve been writing, the kinds of things you’ll see if you read the earlier posts, things we’ve re-published from a previous blog, but I was stuck for an idea.
I don’t have much wisdom to share about my own writing process–I throw ideas at pages and see what sticks. I always have an abundance of Google Docs open on my screen (seven at the moment, although I’ll probably close two of them) and I make copious use of Google Keep to store ideas, which are often a single line or fragment. I’m not very good at deciding my own work is actually finished, only deciding that it’s “finished enough” that I can show it to someone to get feedback and to begin editing. This poem, which I felt completely unsure about back in August didn’t feel finished.
Ugh Fine. Read it. I’ll Try not to Flinch.
Three months later, now that I’ve picked it up again…it feels finished enough that I’m not looking at it and wanting to change things around–a new word here, a comma there. It feels finished enough that I’m ready to take another step in my writing journey, and put it out there for an unknown, invisible audience to read. So, this is a poem I wrote, the first one I’m sharing with this nameless, faceless internet audience. I hope you like it.
Welcome to the next part of my path and thanks for joining me on it.
Erika Grumet, MSW
Erika Grumet, MSW (she/her or they/them) was born and raised on Long Island. She earned a Masters in Social Work from Stony Brook University.
She has been researching and writing essays and poems about mental health, physical disability, sexuality (particularly bisexuality), rape and sexual assault, gun violence, the writing process, and a variety of other topics. In addition to writing and managing content for the website, Erika brings her experience as a social worker and educator. She works with writers to help them manage or overcome issues that prevent them from bringing their best writing.
Erika was recently chosen to Lilith Magazine’s “The New Forty” cohort. You can also find her published in Bi Women’s Quarterly, Kveller, and Lilith, with a forthcoming publication from Spoonie Journal.
I love this poem, so much resonance for me.
Love,
Megan
Thank you. I really appreciate hearing that.
I absolutely love this, so much resonance for me.
Love,
Megan
Sylvia on the Phone — having endured depression with good, Irish stoicism my entire life, I feel like this poem was etched into my bones. More recently, my drugs have helped me to block Depression’s phone number, but Anxiety keeps robocalling me, but with the joyous addition of, when I thoughtlessly answer, is an FBI scam that I fall for. Every. Single. Time.
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MY First Poem — for me, writing isn’t an option. I’ve told Doug that “the joy” in writing is the creation of the story. If my muse could be said to be anything, she’s bi-polar and mutters stories into my mind at a manic rate, demanding my attention until I’m nothing else but words. I realize that many other creative people would love to have that problem, but it’s exhausting and there are times when I’d rather do anything else but writing, not because I have writer’s block but because I’m stuck in writer’s creation but to hone my writing, I need to work on other things than creating. And, that angers the witch queen all writers have made deals with.
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Teenage Poems — every word of this, except my drug of choice is prose. That’s what I started with, that’s what I’ve been published for. That’s what I tell myself that I can no longer write, my neurological problems having taken it from me. So, I decided to write poetry. Which offers my soul up to the audience more than prose ever did. Maybe, one day, I’ll call myself a writer, as opposed to just someone who writes.
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Does “Finished” mean “Ready to Share”? — for me, it’s ALWAYS time to share. Sometimes, I find myself screaming internally “shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP” even while I’m sharing. It’s something that I share in common with my mother, and I think that I have more issues with it because of that. My enemy isn’t the Share, but trying to understand why I wasn’t able to close the sale.
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No but Serious. When is it Finished? — this is far closer to Doug’s writing experience than mine. He said that the joy of writing for him is in the editing. That it’s his Zen exercise, his sudoku or crossword puzzle. That he always wants to tweak and hone and that sometimes he has to remind himself of what George Lucas said, “writing is never finished, it’s only abandoned.”