Trying, poem by Susan Beem (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

TRYING
by Susan Beem

I keep returning
to stoned wishes,
love staggering
among the buried,
tall poplars,
anemones’ dramatic
sway.
I’m interested
in turbulence,
paranoia, dissection
of fundamentalists
and wary fish.
Fallen into woe,
I long to loosen
the blue door
to ecstasy.

SOURCE: “Sara Paretsky: By the Book,” New York Times (Sept. 11, 2014).

IMAGE: Erasure poem from page in New York Times (Sept. 11, 2014) featuring interview with mystery author Sara Paretsky.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susan Beem is a retired family physician who lives in Long Beach, California, and has been writing poetry for about 10 years with the help of local workshops. Her poems have been published by Verdad, Ekphrasis, Turtle Quarterly, Song of the San Joaquin, Bank Heavy Press, Medusa’s Laugh, and included in several themed anthologies.

John Gardner and Persistence

“…the true novelist is the one who doesn’t quit. Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or ‘way,’ an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious — a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand — and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.” JOHN GARDNER, On Becoming a Novelist

Find On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner at Amazon.com.