No dear, I would never pump sunshine about poetry. Open the e-mail already. It was only a small comment. I wasn't sure how you would handle it. By all means, drink rum and revise... art is
never finished... just be careful not to over edit and strip the power from the
words.
I'm concerned about your mental health sometimes too. The main thing I remember about Sylvia, Van
Gough, Hemmingway, Sexton is they couldn't identify what it was that made them
so crazy. In this day and age, we can
name it and recognize it as legitimate.
No one, not even Sylvia, believed her condition was real. Everyone thought she should have had control
over it. They only control she had was
over her words. That’s why she chose
them so carefully. Choose a line or two
and speak them aloud. Let them roll over
your tongue; taste the sweet and bitter sentences. She had control over that. She did that on purpose. Her vision wasn’t limited to her poetry. Her journals show us that she viewed every
moment with the same explicitly harsh and tender detail. Some believe she was not trying to kill
herself, only get as close as possible to death. I believe the world lost an extremely
beautiful soul.
Yes, they all had very productive periods just before their
demise. You know as well as any, mania
has that effect. When thy cycled down,
they didn’t have the resources available now.
Even this blog is a facet to achieving some level of equilibrium. Remember, they didn’t have that. They didn’t even have the name. Bi-Polar is not a death sentence. It is a fact.
It is what makes you the beautiful person you are. People like us have a gift. We have the wonderful ability to feel. You and I, and the many others who carry the same
chemical/biological/spiritual anomaly, can experience intricate levels of
emotion. Look around and see how many
other people really experience this.
They know the words but they don’t know the feeling. It’s as if they are born blind to
emotion. How would you describe “red” to
a blind man? How would you tell him the
color, the hypnotic dance, when his mind has no eye? What other person can capture a tragedy with
such precise heartache and help the world respond? Only a poet can do that. You my love are a poet. You have a gift. You have the resources. And baby, this ain’t no stinkin’
sunshine!
In the event you decide you would like to get as close to
death as possible, I would request you delay your journey until you have come
as close to me as possible.
