I think what life experience has brought to my poems is compassion. When you work hard to make a living, raise a child up into the world, fail at marriage and try again, teach and fail, travel and fall, become ill, well again, weak but grateful, you learn patience, forbearance.
Dorianne LauxI donโt worry anymore about writing. There are times that I go through dry periods. I never go through a block. Iโm always writing, but there are times where Iโm just not on my game, and Iโll use that time to read some new poets, go see some art, walk down to the river and just stare at it, or have a conversation with my sister, or whateverโdo whatever it is that I do in my life, hoping that Iโll get filled up enough. And something will happen, some juggling will happen and boom.
Dorianne LauxDeath comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. Itโs not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.
Dorianne LauxWe're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.
Dorianne LauxAnd I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds--nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell.
Dorianne Laux