The Poet's Search for Joy

"Where in this feast can you find your joy?"

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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In your travels have you ever encountered a local cuisine so spectacular you volunteer to cook it for Thanksgiving, perhaps forgetting your family’s less than adventurous dining habits?

To your delight, the filigreed crust on your Pâté en Croûte turns out golden and flaky. Your Tournedos Rossini is a dish worthy of three Michelin stars, and your pièce de resistance, a Croquembouche, is so light and elegant you could serve as the pâtissière for a queen.

And your meal is received with praise all around. Throughout the afternoon family member after family member makes a point of telling you how much they appreciated the “unusual” dishes. But by halftime of the Cowboys game, you begin to wonder if there is obligation rather than honesty behind their overblown accolades. You note that the men seem wistful, as though remembering the turkey and dressing sandwiches of previous Thanksgivings. By the time they leave, declining leftovers, you have discounted their plaudits as duty and while washing the wine glasses break one in frustration.

Yet the next morning, as you dine on these leftovers for breakfast, you confirm these dishes were a gourmet’s delight. So where in this feast can you find your joy?

Yes, this was all an overlong metaphor to set up the poem below; apologies, but that's what we poets do.

Preface to a Guided Writing Session

Dear poets, there is no joy you can depend upon
when writing a poem beyond that instant 
when a phrase explodes for you, when the new-born 
poem burns right into your skin—the rest is all

beyond your control, whether your mother cries when she reads your poem, if your 
critique group faints upon reading, if the crowd 
at your open mic carries you away on its

shoulders or if editors from The Paris Review, 
The New Yorker and Rattle all break out acceptances from their paltry supply 
and are forced to paper rock scissors for the right 

to publish. You can't control if their readers all scream "Yes!" and hustle out to buy extra copies just for the thrill of owning your first step to fame, 
or if your poem is nominated for a Walt Whitman 

and the judges declare it unanimous. You have 
no control if your poem is collected in every
Year's Best, or if it catches the eye of a dream agent, if she asks you to assemble a book-length 

manuscript, if that book goes to auction 
and the winning bidder is a Big Five press offering 
a six-figure advance. You have no control if 
the book should come off the press so beautiful 

every poem is elevated, or if it should climb the best-seller list, if you score a Pulitzer 
and a National Book Award, if you are asked to 
write the inaugural poem, if the Library of Congress 

appoints you as Poet Laureate. You can't control if the Nobel Prize Committee finds no reason to read anything else after your book, or if you become known as the poetic voice of your generation: 

none, none, none of this is in your control, 
nothing except that sheet of paper before you today 
and that pen you hold in this pensive moment. 

So take the awesome vision that is yours alone, 
get to work, and, for God's sake, 
please yourself.

Yes, buy that leather-bound journal, the pen that writes in space; you're worth it. Convert that three-season porch into your writing study. Light a fire in the wood stove even if it isn't that cold out, wrap yourself in alpaca and brew up a specialty tea from the loftiest bushes in Tibet. Set out a snack of Girl Scout Do-si-dos and Camembert left over from your dinner party, put in your earbuds and launch your favorite playlist before dislodging the cat and snuggling into your overstuffed leather chair.

All comfy? Time to reach for joy.
 

And this Thanksgiving? Let someone else cook
and practice your praise.

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