Author Connections 6

/ lyncrain
Loneliness in a world filled with opportunity should be a paradox. Yet, we all experience that feeling at some point in our lives. We don’t want to do the same things, see the same people we want to change. We need change. But when that door is open, and we’ve ventured into another space and realize we have no connections, no kind face to make a connection with we feel isolated. Loneliness rears its ugly head.
I know there are other types of loneliness, but for today I am just addressing it as an author.Here on WordPress, we are blessed with the daily interaction we have. I’ve never forgotten how I initially felt here when I knew no one. I was alone, I felt lonely. My writing wasn’t read nor did I really know what direction to go. I only knew I was surrounded by people who loved what I love… WRITING. Over time by putting myself out there, I interacted with people, and a following began. We’re connecting.

However, in the real world where I exist that is not the case. Vic enjoys poetry but not to the extent I do. I find myself feeling alone because when we gather with other people, the conversations go from sports, politics, weather, movies anything but poetry which saddens me. I am reminded of Issac Asimov’s quote “Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his typewriter or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.”

My poem for today is about a writer’s need to name things. For Lisel Mueller, a German immigrant, fleeing Nazi Germany the English language was relatively new she chose to use very easy to understand the language a lot like her idol Carl Sandberg did to express herself in poetry. I believe she is still alive, I didn’t see any note otherwise https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/lisel-mueller.

Things

By Lisel Mueller
What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.

Lisel Mueller, “Things” from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

I find myself wanting to name things that surround me like my desk is my sanctuary whereas my garden once was. Now, my garden is my Zen space where I only rejuvenate. As we live, everything is named or has been appointed. We need the labels for they connect us. And we remember that we are not alone. It is up to us to change our perspective.

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