Accountability, Marvin Bell, and the Absurdity of Rejection

My writing mentor, Marvin Bell, passed away in December. It's still hard to write about this loss in any form other than poetry because it isn't just a personal loss for me, a writer Marvin helped at a crucial stage in her introduction to a writing life. His community of students, friends, fellow poets, colleagues, family-- we're all still trying to get our feet back underneath us. Even now, the short essay form feels too distant to be accurate. 

Shortly before Marvin died, when we knew the cancer was bad, a few of his former students and I started a weekly prompt-based correspondence. We needed to keep writing, and we wanted to reinforce the connections Marvin made between poets around the world. Every Monday, we rotate responsibility for generating a list of 10-15 random words, as well as "bonus" prompts: mention a fictional ailment, reference several types of flower, include a corny conversation starter, etc. By the following Monday, we need to submit our poems to the group, having used as many of the words and bonus prompts as we can. 

Some weeks, we admit we started with the given words but they fell out as we wrote. Some weeks, the prompts don't make a connection with where we are, what we're struggling with, how we're moving through our weeks. We've got pets, kids, jobs outside of writing. We've got deadlines, family to care for, appointments, projects. So we write what comes to us, even if it wanders from the prompts. And that's okay. I like hearing how each of us begins a piece (where we were physically or psychologically, what we wanted from the page) and what we end up with. 

The poems are long, clipped, finished and unfinished, varied, narrative, formal and free verse, polished and rough, luminous and confusing. You get the idea. The point is that we're accountable to each other, and that we see each other's writing, every week. We see Marvin in our poems and patterns of thought. Accountability becomes a way to stay alive, to preserve memory, to persist. Usually, we respond to each other, a line or two of encouragement or reaction. But we don't have to. We're all busy. 

This week, I wanted to share what I came up with here for two reasons: 1) it makes me giggle and where better to giggle than the echo chamber of one's personal blog, and 2) I want to encourage writers to create accountability groups that spark new poems and conversations without the grief of excessive rules and unrealistic expectations. Allow yourself to write. Allow yourself to read. As Marvin used to say, "On the one hand, it's poetry. On the other hand, it's poetry."

Plus, my poem this week managed to contain ALL the words on our list-- spray, candle, resolve, unfamiliar, run, crush, plump, dip, project, between, idea, and flake-- so I'm feeling spunky. The optional prompt was lifted from a Poets & Writers idea: "write a poem in the form of a speech addressed to a group of animals or objects that offers advice or encouragement". I ditched the idea of a speech in favor of form rejection letters, and the objects I felt like addressing were purple crocuses that bloom in winter only to be blasted with frost and snow. 

It felt good to play, considering the ways humanity rejects nature, and nature rejects itself sometimes. I can hear Marvin laughing, even in this rough draft.

Happy writing, friends. 

--

Rejection Letter to a January Crocus

Thank you for submitting

"Viable Spring Bloom:

Six-Petaled Symbol of Hope"

through the frozen crabgrass

on the corner of 86th and 144th.

Our editors were stunned

by your project, which

attempts to resolve the crush

of a long, grey winter with

a spray of purple blossoms,

plump and golden-hearted

and uncomfortably small,

after just a few days of rain

in a months-long slog

of frigid fog and mounds

of snowflakes rising like ghosts

in the gutters. While we appreciate

the way your work seeks

to inspire unfamiliar joy

in the face of hardship, a kind of

"candle in the hurricane" story,

we regret to inform you

the idea of grace in such

an unpolished state does not

suit our current needs.

Between this era of brutality

and a dip in demand for

vulnerability or optimism,

we find most pedestrians

respond more readily to grit

in the form of explicit despair.

If you should revise your work,

perhaps to include the pale

wilt of contagion, bloated 

stems or broken blossoms,

we encourage you to run

this by us again next year.

We wish you all the best

in the forecasted blizzard

and subsequent ice storm,

and we look forward to

reconsidering the ragged yet surely

wiser remains of your proposal

in the gnarled grass

this spring, muted beneath

a coat of hoarfrost.