Let me take a minute to explain the title of this post. Now and then, I search on myself to see what might be out there: to see where my latest book is being sold or whether there are any new reviews, for instance. Yes, I have a Google alert, but it doesn’t always catch everything, and searching can pull up some older references I’ve forgotten about.
That was the case today. When I search on my name, I often get a ton of results from this blog, most of which I ignore, but this morning one was a reminder of the time in 2020 when I participated (virtually) in the Tennessee Williams Tribute. I wrote about the poem of Williams’s that I read, “Orpheus Descending” and the poem of my own that I read with it, “Ishtar.” I also mentioned that this had led me to write “Orpheus” and “Eurydice,” two poems in Tree Fall with Birdsong. I’ve been reading these poems, and I remembered why I wrote them, but had forgotten the connection to Tennessee Williams. That cycle of poems about myths of the underworld became important to how Tree Fall with Birdsong reached its conclusion, and therefore important to how I found a publisher.
If I hadn’t blogged about it in the first place, and then if I hadn’t found that nearly five-year-old blog post, I would probably never remember the debt I owe Tennessee Williams.
This year, I’ll be participating in Friendly City Books’ Possumtown Book Fest, leading a poetry workshop. Now that I’ve retrieved this memory, maybe I’ll try to find a way to incorporate it in the workshop: either by reading another Tennessee Williams poem or by bringing in another poem for participants to respond to.
Of course, I could write a journal instead of writing this blog, but that might be a little harder to search. I would have to know to pick up an old journal and start reading in it for inspiration. If you don’t want to put all of your thoughts online, that is still a great option. Let this be a reminder to pick up those old journals and flip through them periodically. You never know what you might be reminded of or where that journey might take you.
Kendall Dunkelberg 