What's Your Origin Story?

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Hi, Friend.

Earlier this week I had the honor of supporting the National Poetry Series alongside Natasha Trethewey, Michael Cunningham, Imani Perry, and National Student Poet Shangri-La Hou. Thanks to Daniel Halpern, who founded the National Poetry Series in 1978, we all met up in St. Louis for a reading, a panel discussion, and a live auction to raise funds for NPS. It was a remarkable whirlwind, and I came home buoyed by the conversations. Many thanks to Dan, and to Lisa Trulaske, Lucy Nalen, Ginger Imster, Serena Moyle, and everyone who made these events possible.

The brilliant Imani Perry moderated our evening panel discussion, Keeping Language Alive, and one of her questions was about when we were first inspired by language. When the spark was lit for each of us. Michael’s response made me laugh and nod in recognition; Natasha’s response brought tears to my eyes. And what did I say about my origin story as a poet? I came to the power of language as a child via two things primarily: fairy tales and music.

When I was young, I could usually be found in my bedroom. An introvert’s haven! My books were there, my sketchpads and notebooks, but so was my music. I’d sit on my beige bedroom carpet, my “boombox” on the floor in front of me (a portable double tape deck, no CD player yet) and play tapes.

To think we now have iPhones, AirPods, and streaming music anywhere, anytime.

The first two cassettes I bought were The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and Revolver. My dad took me to NRM (National Record Mart) in the now-defunct Westerville Mall, and he couldn’t decide which one was more essential, so we came home with both. I was probably ten or so, and my Beatles syllabus had been a little scrambled to that point. The first album I fell in love with was The White Album, released in 1968, which I listened to on vinyl downstairs in our house, not in my bedroom. My parents’ stereo had large floor speakers with glass tops, which we used as end tables in the living room. When you set your cold drink down, it would sweat and leave a little ring.

I played The White Album anytime I did housework, dusting and vacuuming (or, as my mom said, “running the sweeper”) to “Blackbird” and “Rocky Raccoon” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey.” I remember ironing my church clothes while listening to “Helter Skelter,” which even then struck me as funny.

My dad had wanted me to go back and hear the albums that led up to those songs—the evolution of the band. After bringing Revolver (1966) and Rubber Soul (1965) home from NRM and listening to those tapes over and over—playing side A, flipping the tape, playing side B, flipping the tape, playing side A again, and on and on—I moved on to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is the song I remember rewinding over and over again.

I sat with a pen and spiral-bound notebook, listening to a line or two at a time, pausing the tape to hurriedly write down the lyrics the best I could. (I must have lost the liner notes; I know I didn’t have the lyrics handy.) Eventually I was satisfied that I had the whole song written down correctly, or at least close enough.

That sixth-grade girl would be amazed at what the Internet has made possible. Tell Alexa to play a song, and she plays it. Google the lyrics, and there they are. And program anything to play on repeat, no rewinding necessary. Forget the jetpacks we thought we might have in the future; music anytime, anywhere is better than that Jetsons stuff.

Back then I was a bookworm and a regular at the Westerville Public Library (now I’m a bookworm and a regular at the Bexley Public Library), but like most of my friends and classmates, I read mostly fiction when I was younger. Until high school I hadn’t read more than a handful of poems, and even then, I read only the what was anthologized in our textbooks: Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes. Looking back, I see these songs—“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “Dear Prudence,” “I’m Only Sleeping”—as my first poetry teachers. Listening and transcribing, I was taking in their sensory imagery and figurative language. I was absorbing their rhyme and alliteration (“plasticine porters”!) and consonance and assonance, their rhythm and pacing, their repetition and anaphora.

I also discovered the singer-songwriters in my parents’ record collection: Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dan Fogelberg. Over time I grew into my own taste in music and found new songs to listen to again and again. It seems right that lyrics would be my first door into the lyric poem. These songs showed me that language could do something other than tell a story. Words could present a scene, crystallize an experience, create a mood, or describe feelings in a new way. And most of all, the sounds mattered.

When I played a song, I listened hard and took notes. Then I rewound it and played it again. When we write, we listen hard—to the inner voice, to where the language is leading us—and we take notes. Then we revise, again and again.

I’m curious: What were your gateways into writing (and/or reading) for pleasure?

Happy writing (& listening)—
Maggie