Considering My Embodied, Emotionally Full Poet's Voice

Sometimes I wonder if I missed out not becoming a fan of opera. And now it all seems too late for me. I wonder if graduate school contributed more to the wounding of my poet's voice. After all I cannot say that I have tried to create this kind of ironic, detached, disembodied voice in my writing.  I began to realize that somehow I was not exactly fitting in when I was in graduate school. I was in New Mexico and surrounded by people from all over the country. But I did not belong with any of the ethnic and cultural groups at my university. In fact I did not meet one other Italian American student the entire time I was working on my master's degree and my Ph.D. I did take a few classes with the only Italian professor at University of New Mexico. She was my only connection back to Italy. And when I visited her I would hear my mother language again for a short time.

In addition to the isolation I felt being away from the east coast, away from Italian American neighborhoods and bakeries, and festivals, I was also starting to wonder if I just did not belong in this country of serious, graduate students who were writing, publishing, editing, and networking with all the right people. I felt lost. A single mother in a program where there was only one other single mother (and she was my office-mate). And I was not from middle-class, white America; my parents were not college graduates. I had nothing to say when other people mentioned their fathers were lawyers or engineers. I started to doubt my teaching and wondered if I really had any right to stand in a classroom and teach college students. And yet my colleagues were confident that someday they would be able to teach graduate students.

Along with all that, for the first time I was being told to consider myself a poet--a professional, serious poet. This was not about having a hobby and writing a poem about my grandmother. It was about sitting in a room and hearing someone go on about language poetry, and I had no idea what that was all about. And I did not feel I could raise my hand and ask. We were all supposed to know what post-modernism was, who Michele Foucault was, and all that. And I did not. I knew that telling a story in a poem was not enough. So I dragged my working-class life into my life as a graduate student and poet--dramatic relationships, personal issues that interfered with my work, focusing on wanting a child and not on writing a book. And when all was finally over--my dissertation accepted, and I was finally graduating with a Ph.D. I settled for high school teaching. What happened? I am not even sure I understand what I did to myself. I guess it was self-sabotage--a girl from Long Island who should have been a secretary ended up with a Ph.D. but ended up being a high school teacher for over ten years. And with that kind of work, I did not spend the time to think about my voice as a poet.

Now I am reading Tony Hoagland's book, The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice, and I think I am starting to think about my poetic voice finally. I have no idea where this will all lead me, and it might be too late (it should have happened over twenty years ago). But here I am . . .