SYMPATHY FOR DISTRACTIONS:An Afternoon with a Poet Laureate

By Aleta George

"I am the stubborn mule that I must lead to the well,” said poet, educator and two-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass (1995-1997). “Managing the mule so that the work gets done is part of the writing practice."

In an outdoor poetry workshop taught by Hass, one of the students expressed concern that she always jumped up to make tea whenever she started to get somewhere in a poem. Sometimes she’d get back to what she was uncovering, but just as often she didn’t.

 “These little antics that we do to avoid our writing are three-quarters of the writing process,” he said. “Try bringing your avoidance into the poem.”

The poetry workshop took place on a cloudless autumn day in Northern California. When we arrived in the morning, 12 white pelicans scribbled ink-tipped wings on a fading, falling moon against a blue sky. We clustered in white plastic lawn chairs beneath scraggly eucalyptus trees, leaned towards Hass and his words, and listened for clues that might make us better poets.

"Pay attention to the world around you," he said. His hands made arcs in the air to punctuate his words, and when they weren't accenting ideas, they fidgeted and worried over each other. A shoelace on one of his brown, lived-in leather shoes remained untied all morning.

When it came time to write, he didn¹t tell us to go out and make a poem, but to capture images. "Open your eyes and use images that reflect how you are feeling. To get an image right about a California autumn day on this ranch is to put something out into the world that wasn't there before," he said.

We each found a corner of the ranch to lasso our images, and later gathered back together to share those images in the form of poems. Hass listened attentively with a hand cupped over one ear to block out the pigs in the sty snorting their applause or criticism (hard to tell which when it comes to barnyard animals). Hass on the other hand said, “Good, please read it again.”

"If you put something down on paper everyday, and have the will to improve it, you can be a writer," said Hass. The workshop ended with the sun chasing the moon over the western hills.

I especially thank Hass for helping me to embrace my distractions. What a gift! Now it’s OK if I water the garden, pat my dog, get a cup of tea or stare at the shadows on my living room wall made by the afternoon sun. His gift gives me permission to get lost in reverie or saddle up to my subject sideways. Somehow by accepting my distractions they don’t seem so dangerous. Now when I have the urge to do all the millions of things that seem imperative at the very moment I sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper I remember what Hass said: Getting a cup of tea is part of the writing process.

However, I also need to keep my distractions in check that I must, like he said, eventually lead the mule to water. And that’s where Hass’s other piece of advice lassoes me in. Citing short-story writer Frank O’Connor, he said that the single-most important thing that a writer needs to remember is that you can’t revise nothing.

California native Aleta George lives and writes under the path of the Pacific Flyway. Her essays and stories have appeared in California Wild, San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales American Southwest, and the award-winning anthology, A Woman’s Passion for Travel.