Reflections on the Teche

Slice of Life Day 19. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I subscribe to The American Academy of Poets Poem a Day email blast, so every day I get a poem. Sometimes they pile up in my inbox. I really hate to just delete them, but I don’t often have time to read them when I am checking my email. But this morning, the poet’s name caught my eye, Margaret Gibson.

When you’ve lived the first 20 something years of your life with a name, you get to know it, so imagine how surprised I was to find out I was a poet. At least I like to think of myself as a poet, but in actuality, I haven’t published much poetry. And truth be told, I use my married name more often now. But still, I was taken aback.

Of course, I didn’t write the poem. Another Margaret-Gibson-named poet did. I can only dream of being published by LSU Press. This namesake of mine lives in Connecticut, not Louisiana. I googled her. She is older than me (good). She is attractive (also good). I actually think we would like each other a lot.

Margaret Gibson, the poet. Not me.

Here are some lovely quotes by Margaret Gibson:

Poetry is really an act of taking things that come to you, a scarlet tanager or an act of war — whatever takes your attention, you study it for yourself, but you also take it into that part of yourself where you test things. You look out and you look in.

You realize everything is personal and everything is impersonal. We’re all part of one enormous, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful experience.

One of the things I think we’re here to do is to find the things that are broken and to mend them. Or to find where there is fracture or division and create a wholeness.

from Grace: A Magazine for Women

Margaret has a new book coming out in September entitled The Broken Cup which includes poems about life with her husband, author David McKain who has Alzheimer’s. The poem I received in my email is Losing it, speaking so frankly and eloquently about the loss of things.

What little I know, I hold closer,
more dear, especially now
that I take the daily
reinvention of loss as my teacher.

Read the whole poem here.

Funny thing, this daily writing practice. I had no idea what I was going to write about when I sat down at my computer. My avoidance strategy was to read my emails. What a gift I received today from a woman with my name!