A poem is an endless process, and, as I always say: the process is the purpose. Allen Ginsberg once called “Howl” an “emotional time bomb that would continue exploding,” and pieces of it have ended up everywhere, bursting infinitely. In a sort of personal sense, I ascribe a similar sentiment to my own poem “The Magnificent Year.” The first poem I wrote after a long spell of silence writing-wise. The poem I wrote in a frazzled outburst in my mother’s living room last summer, midway through my first reading of Kerouac’s On The Road. The poem from which Blackout Fascinations takes its name.
I don’t think the poem is necessarily good, however. How could it be? It marks my first foray away from my juvenile style of reckless emotion and basic imagery. I captured everything in it, from pandemic anxiety and festering loneliness to the desire to cultivate a unique writerly voice and effectively conduct personal learning outside of academia. It’s one of the biggest poems I’ve written to date, as far as word count, out of necessity. I not only had a lot to say but a lot of realizations to come to after the fact.
I fully believe that every personal poem is prophetic. Many poets have expressed the feeling of really getting the meaning of their own works upon revisitation, and I agree entirely. I’m still dealing with these conundrums. As I seek a balance of friendship, creative work, and my job, I ask myself “how to be a unity of opposites: a lover & a genius.” When the world dulls below a flat, depressive lens, I try to remain “in every time stupefied by earthly magic.”
There are also manifestations in these lines: “for soon a perfect gravity will pull me into a new pair of arms / to which I’ll dedicate my smiling, / & soon will come days of perfection freewheeling over the hills of hope, / & the want of war will cease & beget rebuildings, / & the practice of playfulness will be implied, my deepest root feelings flaunting floral.”
Thoughts that felt like vaguely optimistic self-assurances that have since burst into my reality. Moments of true happiness, connections and re-connections, the ability (opportunity, really) to trust others and practice being vulnerable. If the poem is tethered to anything, it’s the whole world— nature, society, community, passion, vices, conformity, poetry, time, religion (or lack thereof)— the billowing quilt of a life.
“The Magnificent Year” takes its title from a misquote. At some point early in the pandemic, I saw someone somewhere mention Isaac Newton’s stage of prolific productivity during the Great Plague of London in 1665, a period actually referred to as “the year of wonders.” At the time, I was obsessed with the creative process. I read up on the productive habits of creative and innovative people, aided in large part by Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals. More than halfway through 2020, I decided that it should be my magnificent year. And it was.
During those fall and winter months, I assembled a plan to combat my longstanding writer’s block and even-longer-standing mental barricades. I woke early, read constantly, wrote hundreds of poems in dozens of different styles, seeking to find myself for the first time ever.
This year, in 2021, I enjoyed some of the fruits of that labor. I started this newsletter in late February, and have written some things here that I’m genuinely proud of. I had 17 poems published across 10 different journals and released my microchapbook Alive on Planet Earth through Ghost City Press. I was paid for my poems for the first time ever. I saw my work in print in a non-academic journal for the first time. And I can now say that multiple poets I look up to have encountered and read my work, which is unimaginably awesome.
Currently, I’m working on a manuscript that I hope to finish early next year. I have two poems forthcoming in Poet Lore (the longest running American poetry journal!), and a poem forthcoming in the next print issue of Olney Magazine (a magazine whose dedication to poets and their work is really admirable). As I put together this next book, I’m excited to get back to submitting again and have more poems out in the world.
So here’s to the next magnificent year. To myself, for being creatively diligent for over a year straight. To my friends, for showing me that while I ascribe most of my value to my productivity, I have desirable traits outside of it. To my family, for kindly approaching my poems and my passion. To everyone who reads anything of mine, for spending any time at all with what I’m creating.
The ellipsis at the end of “The Magnificent Year” leaves deliberate room for what’s next. For you and for me to excavate magnificence out of the hellscapes burning around us. There was a time when I’d feel ashamed for being so publically sentimental (and probably a bit self-absorbed), but now I see it as part of the process, thus the purpose.
I hope you see me in this poem, in whichever way you know me, but more importantly, I hope you see you. See how we struggle and celebrate, how we beg to be accepted, how we latch onto the mythologies of ourselves. How we only want to move through the world magnificent, looking back to see a beautiful life falling gradually into place.
The Magnificent Year How to be in every time stupefied by earthly magic, how to be one of a mutable kind in a society whose heart beats for sameness, how to find myself blush-twitching & starry-eyed in crowded solitude, how to cleanse myself of sordid conformities, how to beat bloody the grayscale of despair & covet freedom, how to wed myself to the spreadopen petals of a sunflower, how to unclaim the propensity of gravestones, how to move green in the world for eternity, how to cultivate panoramic impressions, how to prune my funny sadness, how to handwrite a portrait of heartache, how to write a death poem with no ending, a fern poem with no wilting, a love poem with no forgetting, which of course no poem can achieve as every presence implies absence: the sea of whiteness on which the black word floats, the sea of light on which the shadow finds its footing, how to be a unity of opposites: a lover & a genius, how to soothe the excruciating greyness of the skies, how to lullaby my childhood, how to be slow limitless, how to activate the lazy-eyed proponents of status quo, how to sketch the architecture of dreamscape— As I listen to you marblespined or heavenheld, your tidy radicalism steeped in sanitary prose, I rebel against the perfected signatures of time & past forebeating, curve contrary to patterns of sabotage-addiction within eyeshot. My crosscountry hopes have been squandered by myths of endless epilogue, & the apocalyptic pestilence of fixed souls, & the fingerprinted contours of memoriam, & lowercase fondness repeating, repeating, & slumbering until March where outside the palms slouch under the fat weight of crows. & now my main street gone, my girl gone with my kisses no more than faint hasbeens, my friends locked safe away, & the parking lot yellow as a dirty page forgetting, & the dirt forgetting all that has not been buried in it, & the resonating hum of unnecessary evil. I must forget the agony of my already-passed lives, my awful long hair & drunken lack of sleep, for soon a perfect gravity will pull me into a new pair of arms to which I’ll dedicate my smiling, & soon will come days of perfection freewheeling over the hills of hope, & the want of war will cease & beget rebuildings, & the practice of playfulness will be implied, my deepest root feelings flaunting floral. The infinite plain between wanting & trying, the smaller plain between trying & trembling, the same sun ambling over both, printing sweltering burns on it all, the fall of angels into the waxing temptation of Other. The quiet undoings of someone pursuing death one drink at a time, the sublime artifacts of joy losing their shine. Blackout fascinations & constant oscillations between love & not-love; I was blindtrue to you in one night, object of my favor, subject of the labor of my writing hand; laced between your fingers like wool through a loom, both of us in unison pondering starstuff…