The Importance of Feeding Your Poet

Readers of this blog know that I am married to a poet, specifically, 9 to 5 Poet. We just celebrated her birthday last week. Normally, I’d find a thing, an object that expressed my continued infatuation with her person. This year, I noticed that she had grown thin in her motivation to produce poetry – not a good situation for a poet. This does not mean that she had stopped writing, in no way do I mean that; however, I haven’t seen the same level of dedication to her craft.

So, in stead of a thing, I picked up tickets to see Nikki Giovanni at the Fitzgerald Theater, which we attended Thursday night. I think that seeing a politically active artist, poet, was good for both of us. I came a way with a refreshed mind and surge of energy to get back at my true work, not blogging, not reading (however very important), not teaching (however essential to paying the bills), but writing.

Still, however important I felt the Talking Volumes interview was to my craft as a fiction writer, it was even more important to my poet wife. Seeing the rang of emotions on my wife’s face as the interview bobbed and weaved through moments of sadness, joy, love, and hope, made me realize that I had been contributing to her malnutrition as a poet.

We both like TV drama. We like TV drama a lot. We watch and rent, Lost, The Wire, House, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, and ... The list goes on and on. We love TV. It is easy and inexpensive. We can do it together. However, it has caused us to stop, well, at least not actively peruse that which will feed out inner artists.

Well, I think that it is time that we start to feed the inner artist. We need to do more that will connect us to our craft and the community of artist in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I hope that by going to this interview, we can start 2009 out right. Perhaps we can call it, the year we became artist.

We will see.

- - - Check out the 15 things that 9 to 5 Poet learned while at the interview last night.