The Existential Moment

In the late 1970s, since high school days I had been spilling out narcissistic poems, and a true novice, fancied myself quite the writer. One afternoon, the ground shifted. “I”, “I”, “I”—that pronoun! Was my writing nothing more than ego-babble?

On the desk, lay my white loose-leaf binder thick with poems. Till then, each phrase I had blindly cherished simply because it was mine. But suppose I dropped dead tomorrow. Would a stranger reading those words be impressed? Could s/he even relate to their content? Suppose they sneered, “Was that the best she could do?”

Pretending to don the stranger’s glasses, I peered at the first poem. Such trivia! Be judged by that? I yanked out the page and tore it in pieces. The next was no better. Nor the one after that. As my blood pressure crept higher, by two hours later shreds of 150 poems littered the rug. The purge left me giddy, but also quite frightened—an existential moment. Where did I go from here?

Now beginning my eighth decade, beside the modest pile of my published books I stare at a big red loose-leaf binder and just beyond it glimpse the shadow of the critical stranger. Is it time to face myself again as a poet—and a second purge?