In Answer To "Why Bother?": Some Further Statements Of Purpose

Through the messy, noisy, tedious, and oftentimes frustrating business of adulthood/parenthood, in the available hour(s) i have to write at the end of the day, the question that pops into my mind before i begin, and immediately after i finish a poem is this: Why bother?

i write to exist, but

i can’t do this for anyone else.

i can only write for me,

and as an open invitation to others

and that sometimes feels desperately lonely.

But seeking validation from anywhere other than the profound satisfaction in my soul from a piece well composed would rob me of my core purpose. It feels wrong.

But of course, i also write to be read.

"Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

~Walt Whitman

"Song of Myself"

This project is about the practice and honing of my craft (in the sense of the skill as well as the vessel, i suppose, because i’m trying to get somewhere). 

i am learning to make choices with language that make poems like spells, that enchant and entice the reader or listener ...

(Who is it that said, words are magic, that’s why making them is called “spelling”?)
 

... so that, should this become my career – one in a series of “consummation[s] devoutly to be wished” – i can continue believing i am even a little worthy of the dream some part of me has guardedly nurtured since the age of ten.

Thank you for reading.

Be good to each other.

MS