Identifying With McCain (but only in one respect)

As many of you know, I don’t plan to vote for John McCain. I don’t like his politics, read: don’t share his apparent love for war and his (or his followers) hell-bend posturing not just to beat Barack Obama but to perform character assassination on our first African American running for the Oval Office. But, oh well…

I found on Phoebe Kate’s blog an accurate description of the writer’s life compared to poor McCain’s having not had his op-ed essay published in the New York Times.

Here’s the paragraph that struck me:

“A writer’s life is an isolated one. We aren’t as fortunate as artists, who have exhibits where they can interact with the public and trade experiences with other artists. We aren’t actors with red carpets and the omnipresent media that reports how we got turned down for a big role or didn’t get our contract renewed by the studio. Even the best known and most famous authors aren’t hounded by the paparazzi or receive any real publicity or even get recognized when they’re out and about. We live in front of our computer screen and locked up in our heads with our characters; our world is insular and terribly, terribly private. Our literary victories are only apparent when another story or book by us appears, usually appreciated by only a limited audience. Our literary defeats are unknown and unshared.”

Read entire post McCain & Me: Misery Loves Company.

Phoebe Kate Foster, in case memory fails, is an editor long-associated with the Dead Mule. Foster has described a writer’s life almost perfectly, not that our lives don’t have other dimensions. Not that we’re not mothers (or fathers, as the case may be), wives, grade-parents, and members of the chess club. But when we write, we write alone. And writing takes up much of our time. We aren’t practicing for the performance; we are living the performance. We aren’t running for office; we are the office. We are waiting for inspiration (until the Muse whispers once agian); we aim to enlighten and inspire.

And as The Third Eve pointed out, “poets, songwriters, and artists of all kinds are today’s shamans. When we write, paint, photograph using our inner viewfinder, we are dipping down into that deep universal pool. If we wait patiently and attentively, something will come up.”

Read the entire post The Seed So Full of Meaning

Alas, poor McCain. I fear he is waiting for his turn. I aim to see he doesn’t get it. I intend to continue to be as seriously dangerous as my poem. I intend to continue to prophesy to a value-starved nation.

emphasis mine

**

Seriously Dangerous

The evening begins
with low whispers through kudzu,
then memories submerged
in a deep southern swamp.

When the morning comes,
will our darker brothers gather—
in hope, in church? They sing
and prophesy with the kind of truth

we like to deny. Seriously dangerous,
I have become my dreams
or, at least, my dream-self (with no
thanks to where no thanks are due).

So not-at-home in the modern world,
I twist memories ’til truth appears,
bleeds like a cut from a thorn on a rose
like that arching climber “Paul’s Scarlet,”

burns like a cross on a lawn deep in the night—
burns from a childhood
(like that cross without a savior),
surface where missing blacks

once disappeared beneath slime and muck
and old dryers now bob beside alligators.

first published in Poetry Friends