About 10 years ago, as I entered the middle years of my life, and at the very height of my career as a journalist, I decided to take a leap of faith. I left my job as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. I wanted to focus on my first love in writing, poetry. I knew that on my deathbed I would never regret not having covered yet another corporate merger or political story for The Wall Street Journal. I would regret not having given myself a chance to prove myself a poet.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has joked that poets earn salaries in the high two figures. I did not know then if I was condemning myself to a life of eating macaroni and cheese in some drafty efficiency apartment. I can now honestly say it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I have never looked back.
Since then, I’ve edited an anthology called Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul, which gave me the chance to write about the many poems that changed the course of my life in reading them. My first poetry collection, Inventing An Alphabet, won a national award. And this year, another collection, Discovering Moons, will be published. I could not have imagined all this happening when I decided to change my life a decade ago.
Things didn’t fall into place at once. I entered one graduate program in creative writing, only to find it was not the right fit. I decided to still keep my hand in journalism as a freelancer, which stole time from my poetry writing. But eventually I discovered the right graduate program. I learned to balance my writing time. Most importantly, I encountered some excellent writers willing to mentor me. It was as the philosopher Joseph Campbell has written: when we follow our bliss the invisible hands appear out of nowhere to help us on our path.
I have found the writing of poetry to be an important spiritual practice. Poetry slows us down. It asks us to look, and look again. The best poems put words to emotions and experiences we all share. Poems remind us we are part of something larger than ourselves.
“I believe every person has inside a poem waiting to be written. Anything that touches us deeply is material for a poem,” the great American poet William Carlos Williams once said. “Nor is poetry just for professional writers or intellectuals.” (Williams himself was a pediatrician in addition to being a poet.)
My co-editor on Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul is my husband, Bloomington IL Circuit Court Judge Charles Reynard, who is also a published poet. Since then, we’ve traveled the country giving workshops for busy professionals like ourselves trying to tap into the sacred in the everyday. It never fails that the person in the workshop who says, “I’ve never written a poem before, I don’t know anything about poetry” ends up writing one of the best poems of any of the participants.
So today, I urge you to look around, listen silently to what is going on. Was there one “sacred moment” you experienced today? Then find a piece of paper, pick up a pen. Write the poem that only you can write. And if there is a goal that you have long desired, but been too afraid to pursue, decide today to begin taking even one small step toward reaching that goal. As the poet Mary Oliver has written,
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Free Workshop – Judith Valente and Charles Reynard will conduct a workshop using poetry, image and music on “Finding the Sacred In Daily Life” at Holy Trinity Parish Center, 711 Main Street, Bloomington on Sunday March 15 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The workshop is free and open to the public. For more information, call 309-829-2197.