This is part 2 in a guest series featuring Andrea Beltran. Yesterday she shared her poem, Finding Baby. Today she shares thoughts on the process of writing poetry. Thanks again, Andrea! 

While in college and really tapping into the world of writing poetry, a few of my professors repeatedly told me,

“Read, write, then read some more. The writing will come to you.”

I didn’t listen. I would read a few pages of the books they gave me and classify it as read. I didn’t allow myself to be immersed in poetry the way I should have been, but there is a lesson in everything, and now I know better.

These days, I read, read, write a little, then read some more.

The more I read, the more I find myself sitting in front of a clean sheet of paper with pen in hand.

I don’t have those moments of not knowing what to write as often. I don’t feel myself forcing myself to write something down on the page. I always start and end the day with a poem.

I begin each morning with some light reading. Taking a cue from Jack Myers, my poetry professor in college, I write something every morning after my reading period. I don’t force a poem out onto a page. If a poem isn’t ready to be written, I write a few notes down about what I’ve read, moments that stood out to me from the day before, or thoughts about certain things or people in my life. Sometimes, it’s only a few lines. Other times, it’s a few pages. No matter the volume, I’m grateful for the words, as I can come back to them later and maybe weave them into a poem. Oh, and there is always a cup of coffee and music involved.

Revision is something I never did, but that’s because I didn’t fully understand poetry. It used to pain me to do massive revisions on a piece. Now, I’ve found that revision is key to writing. One needs to learn to look at their work objectively to make it better. A few close and honest writing friends help.

The writing process for me has become a habit. It’s ingrained in my eyes, my hands, my mind.

Read, write, revise, listen. Repeat.

Focus more on the reading and listening and the rest will find you.

Andrea lives in El Paso, Texas and moonlights as a poet. Her poems have recently appeared in flash quake, Rose & Thorn Journal, and Referential Magazine. She blogs about poetry and writing at andreakristen.blogspot.com. 

Above photo taken from Andrea’s Instagram. Don’t forget to follow her on Twitter.

Today’s guest poem is Part 1 in a 2-part guest series featuring the lovely Andrea Beltran. Folks, she is the real deal – a wonderful wielder of words for both prose and poetry, and I love following her on Twitter for her positivity and kindness. I followed her tweet to this poem she wrote for Pyrta Journal last week, and was captivated by it, so I invited her to share.  Don’t miss tomorrow’s post, where she will share thoughts on the process of writing poetry.

Finding Baby
He’s not in a basket wrapped
in blue and white blankets
at our front door nor in the screen
we glare at during the first ultrasound
unable to translate letters and numbers,
notes the doctor makes without elaboration. He’s not
in the six vials of blood they take from my right arm or the eight
removed from yours. He’s not in
the second ultrasound or your biopsy
nor in the parenting magazines
we never ordered coming in the mail.
He’s not in the silence growing
in between bread loaves
and pot roasts in our poorly lit
home. He’s not here but I can hear him
calling from different rooms,
this unending game of hide-and-seek.

 

Andrea lives in El Paso, Texas and moonlights as a poet. Her poems have recently appeared in flash quake, Rose & Thorn Journal, and Referential Magazine. She blogs about poetry and writing at andreakristen.blogspot.com.

I’m skipping town this weekend to visit these lovely, goofy college roomies of mine. There will be river floating and farmer’s markets, juicy stories and maybe a little dancing. I can hardly contain myself!

In case you couldn’t tell from yesterday’s cynicism, this week has not gone as planned (full explanation is another post for another day), but this plan that we’ve been anticipating for six months is happening, and for that I am relieved and deeply thankful.

I am also thankful that in the years since we graduated from college and ventured out on our own I have found another community of lovely people that have helped me thrive. Most of them I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face, but there is deep joy with every exchanged word – the blog posts and tweets and emails are a growing history of love letters and real friendship, I believe. You know who you are. Thank you for filling my heart with laughter and rich words.

A purpose to unfold.

“There is one thing you can do in a valley you can’t do on peaked mountaintop: you can walk a level path, a flat one, one made for the weary. And I’ll take it. Today I’ll take it.”

Joyous congratulations go to Sarah for her first book deal and to Preston for his fully-funded kickstarter to write his book! I eagerly anticipate holding both.

Death by Cuteness.

Good-bye, sweet Nora. Your witty dialogue and beautiful words will be forever cherished.

And lastly, did you hear? You could be the next face of The Write Practice. Get on that!

I stand in the backyard of my in-laws’ house, and Gabby prances through the spray of the hose as I water little seedlings – bell peppers, wild enthusiastic dill, potted spinach, quiet peonies that have lost their blooms in the heat of June.

The rest of the yard is scorched from a month of no rain, dry and course as straw. But we water this corner faithfully, willing our little harvest to grow and thrive.

The neighbor lady stands in her backyard and scoops dog poop from the lawn and asks about my dad, about my sister-in-law, tells me stories about her daughter and son-in-law and plans for the grandbaby’s furniture and then asks, in her abrupt way, “how is the job going?”

It’s going.

I hold my last shreds of enthusiasm close, explain my new freelance routine.

“That’s great,” she says, “as long as the projects keep coming.”

And there it is, sitting between us like the chain-link fence, the weight of it hanging overhead like the clouds that have forgotten how to rain. Those clouds brood darkly as though they have the rain and just aren’t giving it, and it is maddening.

Yes, as long as.

She tosses the poop bag in the dumpster and with a wave of her hand she says she’ll see me later and calls the dogs into the house.

As long as.

And I look at the sky and I want to give up. I want to give up on so many things every day.

Bills. My email inbox. The bone dry ground that suffocates the green beans and zucchini.

And yes, even writing.

There are days when I hate it a little, when no matter how much I water and will it to thrive, my world of words feels barren, dry, one lit match away from going up in flames.

But I stand in my little corner of the yard, waving my arm and the hose at our small plot of garden, making my own rain.

Today I’m taking part in a one-day blog series about travel, hosted by Prodigal Mag. Do you have a travel story? Feel free to post them on your blog throughout the week and link back to our host page! 

Copenhagen in November is the most boring city on the planet.

For the second time, we were stranded, standing in the wrong station at the right time while our train left without us from the other side of the city.

It was All Saints Day, and the train we should have been on 24 hours before was full with families traveling to celebrate, and we foreigners watched it pull away, dejected and bored to be stuck in a cold and quiet city where every shop and restaurant and museum was closed.

We realized our mistake and exchanged tickets yet again, shelled out more Euro to cover the difference. We had only planned to be in Copenhagen for one day, but we were stuck there for three. Our 10-day Nordic adventure had only just begun and six cities suddenly felt like a foolish plan.

I sat down and pulled out my travel journal, let my thoughts wander to another missed train and a phone call a few months before.

_

On the way back from a weekend at the family lake house, my aunt got a speeding ticket.

We were already running behind schedule, having lingered a little too long at the house, drinking coffee and chatting about marriage and what it meant to be wives and partners, and where each of us were headed. I was headed to Europe in a month. Two of my cousins would get married before I left, I would be married to Matt a year later, and the other two were in serious relationships that would one day be marriages, too.

It was a weekend we had set aside for just us girls, the Droscha women : our mothers, who had married into the family, and their daughters, whose blood ran thick with their love. None of us really wanted the weekend to end, knowing that from here on out, things would be different – a series of weddings and babies and who knows when we would do this again, but if we ever got the chance we would return changed in deep and unexpected ways.

I had a train to catch back to Chicago and my aunt was going well over the speed limit to try and make it to town before 4:37 p.m. Amtrak was always late; we would make it.

We watched in agony through the rear view mirrors as the cop walked to her window. All of us sat silently, watching her argue with him and try to fashion a loophole from thin threads of truth – “we are running late, I’m sorry, Officer, I think my speedometer is faulty, no, I didn’t realize I was going 80 in a 55.”

Our margin of time slipped away from us. The train was on time and we missed it completely.

Hours later than planned, my father drove me to the station to catch the next Amtrak from Battle Creek to Chicago.

“How do you think mom is doing?”

My voice broke into the silence, trying to make conversation, trying to get past that unsayable thing that always seemed to intercept the words we really wanted to say to the other.

He didn’t answer right away.

“I think she feels a lot more than she lets on,” he finally responded.

I asked him what he meant.

And so the conversation went – my question, his answer – like the brittle skins and bitter layers of an onion slowly peeled away, revealing something deeper, stronger, that thing neither of us had told the other before, until we were crying. He pulled over to the side of the road to dry his eyes and tell me that we would be okay, his large, rough hands on my neck, thumbs wiping tears from my cheeks.

It was the first time in 10 years that either of us had talked to each other about mom’s cancer.

The sunset peeked through the low hanging branches of maples that lined the dirt road we drove. In my deep sorrow and peace at knowing this secret we didn’t want to tell anyone – that we knew what would happen and knew it together – I wanted to worship God for missing my train and giving my aunt a speeding ticket.

_

“Honey, I have something to tell you,” she said.

The familiar phrase elicited an instant, gut-sinking dread. While I had been off wandering the Alps and making plans to visit Rome and Berlin and Paris, she had been making frequent trips to the oncologist. She shared her recent test results – “spread to my organs and soft tissue ” – talked about the impending chemo treatments – “it’s better than last time, side effects aren’t as severe, I’ll still have my hair.”

I cried alone in the bathroom for an hour or two, where my roommates couldn’t see my puffy face, where I could stare at my naked body in the mirror and wonder whether it would betray me, too, and where my life was headed.

Where are you going with this, God?

_

Monday, November 3, 2008. 

City : Copenhagen. Still.

“Most unfortunate happenstance. We are stuck in Copenhagen for another full day. We leave tonight for Stockholm, but a misunderstanding with the ticket master made us miss the fact that our train left from another station. We arrived at the right time, wrong station. Our new reservations will take us away from Copenhagen at 6 this evening and will get us to Stockholm at 11 p.m. Because we made reservations for a train from Stockholm to Oslo tomorrow morning, we won’t be able to spend any time in Stockholm. We won’t even get to see it in daylight, which is really disappointing. I’m sure there’s more to His side of the story, than our simple mistakes…

 I just think that sometimes, missing trains is God’s way of sending us down a different track, for the better journey and the better destination.”

_

I had one prayer when I left for Europe, that God would  go before me, unravel the road so that my feet and heart would follow Him. It is surprising how specifically He answers these prayers of ours, how four years later, I can look back and see that road unraveled – the trains missed and the tracks taken instead.

I am still traveling toward Him and who He’s called me to be.

Sometimes I go back and reread that journal, filled with ancient dust and the thoughts of a girl a world away, a girl on the cusp of an unplanned adventure. If travel taught me anything, it taught me to let go of the plan and the destination in search for the better journey.

Have you ever missed a train? Where did you wind up? What are you learning from the journey?