Dorianne Laux

How many losses does it take to stop a heart,to lay waste to the vocabularies of desire?

Moon In the WindowI wish I could say I was the kind of childwho watched the moon from her window,would turn toward it and wonder.I never wondered. I read. Dark signsthat crawled toward the edge of the page.It took me years to grow a heartfrom paper and glue. All I had was a flashlight, bright as the moon,a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.

Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.

Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

The slate black sky. The middle stepof the back porch. And long agomy mother's necklace, the beadsrolling north and south. Brokenthe rose stem, water into drops, glassknob on the bedroom door. Last summer'spot of parsley and mint, white rootsshooting like streamers through the cracks.Years ago the cat's tail, the bird bath,the car hood's rusted latch. Brokenlittle finger on my right hand at birth--I was pulled out too fast. What hasn''tbeen rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night skyinto stars, the stars into patternsI make up as I trace themwith a broken-off bladeof grass. Possible, unthinkable,the cricket's tiny back as I lieon the lawn in the dark, my harta blue cup fallen from someone's hands.

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won__.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

Death comes to me again, a girlin a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.It__ not so terrible she tells me,not like you think, all darknessand silence. There are windchimesand the smell of lemons, some daysit rains, but more often the air is dryand sweet. I sit beneath the staircasebuilt from hair and bone and listento the voices of the living. I like it,she says, shaking the dust from her hair,especially when they fight, and when they sing.

You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don__ regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You__e walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You__e traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don__ bother remembering any of it. Let__ stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.