Creating Common Bonds
Using Threads of the Web
by
Sanora Bartels
Last November, I did something I’ve never done before and it paid off in a
huge way. I contacted an established author about her work and it turned
out to be an amazing experience. It affected my personal growth as a
writer and gave me an incredible feeling of community in this sometimes
lonely business of writing.
In
October of 2004, I read a collection of poetry by
Diane Wakoski called Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987. It’s a marvelous book and won the
Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams award in 1988.
I related to Ms.
Wakoski’s writing style because of the prose nature of her poetry. Even
so, there was a repeating phrase, or more precisely, image, in her poetry
that confused me as a reader. “The King of Spain” kept showing up in
various poems and seemed to mean different people at different times. Ms.
Wakoski uses nicknames and/or pseudonyms for various people in her life
(including herself) so I was no stranger to this particular device. For
instance, she often uses George Washington to indicate a paternal
guardian, at times he is specifically her father (her father was absent
for much of her childhood) and at others, he is simply that icon that she
looks to for inspiration on how to be a grown up in any given situation.
But “The King of Spain” had me stumped. Of course, I did what any modern
reader does, I googled her. There were many bios with various poetry
societies and several interview articles but none of them made mention of
“the King”. I was back where I started, but then I noticed that one of
the bios listed her position at Michigan State University and gave an
email address.
I didn’t want to send
her an email simply asking about “the King of Spain”, after all, if she
came up with a pseudonym, it may be an indication of a desire for
anonymity for that particular person. I decided to choose my favorite
poems in the book and ask her about all three of them and then slip in
“The King of Spain” as an “oh and by the way” kind of question. I sent a
short single paragraph email to her and held my breath. Ms. Wakoski not
only responded, but was incredibly generous. She answered all of my
questions and offered her home email because she would have more time to
correspond from there. I was thrilled. It was the beginning of what has
become an important correspondence between a mentor and protégé. I began
to discuss poetry and writing style in earnest with her and she responded
with incredible insight and humor every time. We have since shared our
current work with one another and I feel so lucky to have this extra
“teacher” in my life. All of this stemmed from my having a question about
a writer’s work and deciding that the best person to ask would be the
writer themselves.
Oh, and Ms. Wakoski’s answer was that “the King of
Spain” was a nickname she used for that “perfect man” or in her words:
“I invented the
King of Spain as a fairy tale figure, one who was/is
invisible. I invented him as the most desirable of all lovers, one
[who]
loved only me. He was sort of immortal, or like the Silver Surfer, a
mythic figure surfing the galaxies for his missing lost love. Except
that I was not missing, I was always there. But because he was
invisible and I mortal and visible, he could only be with me as a
spirit. The King of Spain in my mythology is always following me,
like a benevolent stalker. Always there to protect me by his invisible
presence, and to make me feel loved when mortal, fleshly men reject
me…. The first man whom I called My King of Spain was my second
husband, Michael Watterlond, …”
Of course, her second
husband was not really the “perfect man” and indeed one of the poems I
addressed in my original email to her was George Washington’s Camp Cups
written the winter after her marriage with Michael ended.
Even with that
interesting tidbit to chew on, the real lesson here is that the web has
become a friend of anyone with literary interests. There are so many
biographies and articles to peruse and incredibly, there is often a way to
directly get in touch with your favorite author. Through this experience,
I learned that famous writers are actually still simply “writers” and
writing is, and always will be, a lonely profession. I think that many
writers welcome the creative distraction and sometimes, inspiration, of a
dialogue with another writer. I am grateful for my newly formed
friendship with Ms. Wakoski and encourage you to seek out a mentor or
favorite author and start a dialogue that believe me can only enrich your
life as a writer and, I think, will give them a renewed relationship with
their work and their reader.