Alone Time

On Creative Work & Simple Pleasures

Lately I’ve had evenings with long stretches of alone time as my husband’s season as a track and field offical has begun. Some of those evenings I’ve attended poetry readings on Zoom or watched some on video that I’ve missed over the past two months. I have binge-watched televison shows that he would have no interest in watching. (The new Percy Jackson series.) I have rewatched my favorite Pixar movies. (Toy Story 3. Up. Inside Out.) I have listened to the new album by The Vaccines approximately nine thousand times on Spotify. (Give it a listen, particularly the single “Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing)” - you’re welcome.) I have organized and revised a new chapbook, despite already having two full-length manuscripts without homes. (Poetry is nothing if not an obsessive calling…)

I’ve found that these times have been relaxing and creatively useful in ways I wouldn’t expect. After all, I’m retired from teaching, and I have long stretches of time most days where I can read, write, make art, workout, go for walks. The time itself isn’t anything new. Maybe it’s the darkness outside the windows. Perhaps the strange sense that the person that is usually next to me at this time is not. But free time in the evening hits differently. Whatever the reason, I find myself being more open and able to engage: with writing projects (particularly organizational tasks like researching and sending submissions, completing materials and plans for workshops); with difficult or deep reading material (craft essays, lectures for a class I’m taking online); or simply with entertainment that brings me joy. (Who knew there was a whole series of Pixar shorts centered on Dug the Dog from Up? Now I do, and they are all delightful.)

The best example I can think of is that I have read one of my AWP book purchases, Aase Berg’s With Deer, translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson, and done a deep dive into the structural repetitions that occur in the English translations. I’ve mapped out some of the poems grammatically and used these maps to write some after poems that try to capture the same rhythms and oddness. This has been a process that requires silence and attention, something I could not do with television on in the background. I don’t know that the poems are any good, but the exploration has been instructive and good food for thought. This is a book unlike anything I’ve read in long time, and I will continue to study its strange appeal. Here is one of the drafts I wrote using the grammatical structure of Aase Berg’s “Iron Healed”:

Slowly I unleash my unruly raw desire
The saint scythe slices the distress
from the crescent, the moon

In the mirror the blade gleams so brightly bright
In the mirror the blade gleams so brightly brightly bright

Slowly I unleash my domestic raw desire
No more hungry nights, no more will my honey-tongue
be silenced out of dream-naming a need, a fire

If knife is hammered into bracelet and key
If knife is hammered into bracelet and key
If knife can still be sheathed

Is this a poem? No. Not yet anyway.

Is it unlike anything I have ever written? Yes.

Can I learn something from this? Yes.

Would I have spent this much time deconstructing how these poems work without this “bonus” alone time? Probably not.

I also would not know all the words to the new Vaccines songs. Or have pretended my dog was talking to me like Dug from Up. Or texted back and forth with a friend about every new actor that appeared on the Percy Jackson reboot. (Jason Mantzoukas as Dionysius? - talk about perfect casting!)

So the next time you have some alone time, don’t beat yourself up about how you use it. Let it be filled with focused attention or simple joy. Both are good for the soul.

Writing Prompts:

1. Write a poem that gives voice to something common or familiar (like the collar does for Dug in Up. Sorry, not sorry that I’m a bit obsessed with Dug…), It could be an pet or animal, an oft-used appliance, a piece of furniture. What would it like? Not like? How does it feel about you?

2. Read a poem/poet that writes in a completely different way from you. Map out the structure of the syntax, the rhythms, the repetitions. (It’s almost like creating a Mad Lib for yourself.) Use the map to create your own draft. Don’t think too much about making sense or steering the poem in a certain direction. Let it be weird. See where it takes you & what you can take away from the experience.