Isn't "prolix" a cute word?
I've been fiddling with this poem for a while, trying to find a way to talk about being prolific when the stakes are low, but almost wordless when it really matters.
In college I complained about papers writing them later and later each time but it was also true that once I started writing I found it hard to stop, words tumbling like marbles spilled out of a cup, clacking and almost breaking, glowing with swirls and dashes of orange. Oceans of notions rose and I floated on them, facing the sun. The hardest class I ever took was from Professor Byrd, who told us: Your papers cannot be longer than one page. Don’t smallen the font. Don’t widen the margins. Just say exactly what you need and leave the trimmings out. Needless to say, I didn’t do well. I was used to making waves of phrases to push the reader along submerging the thesis beneath a reef of curled quotations. When I went to talk therapy in college (ten free sessions rationed to each student that stretched to twenty as I wept my way through ten) when my therapist asked me to tell him what it meant to be in therapy— not write him a grateful letter not send an email after not compose a poem in my next workshop— of course I cried and couldn’t speak. And then I tried, and the words were few broken by the silence of his listening.
(Words) They are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most unteachable of all things. These are Virginia Woolf's words, but I believe we all relate to them.
Your poem is wonderful, Margaret. 🖤
I can really identify with this! Wow! Also I love "oceans of notions" 😍