I'm glad you're here, Lighter, even if you're doing yoga while the talk flies.
Amber, I LOVE that distinction between the What and Who.
Would you mind sharing that author's name?
What I am is the D of an Nmother (and gentle father, ttl), S of a sociopathNbro, and...a serious poet, which is by definition an outsider, outlier, and misfit. (Embraced, not apologized for; it's just where most poets are in culture). It was startling to learn, first in grad school, that there's emotional bravery to the best poetry. It kind of meant that while my knees were knocking over all sorts of things other people do routinely without my wimpiness....I also had an inner commitment to
feel the consequences of my unusual shape, at the cost of profound, involuntary change. Later, I found in my poetry a refusal to paper over pain and a drive to drill toward empathy, and later still, a determination to connect the dots and splotches no matter how it dirtied the novelistic, religious self-image I'd cobbled together much by accident before I understood I was a poet, by definition an emotional revolutionary.
Huh. That was kinda pompous or polemical. (At least I said revolutionary rather than anarchist!)
I just watched a visually gorgeous film about a representational artist and his protege. I bet you'd like it, Amber.
Local Color is the title...
Hugs
Hops
