What I Learned From Julia Spicher Kasdorf: an Open Letter

"there's your life, and there's what you make of your life." -J.S.K.


Dear Julia,

I want to know how it is that you do it. I want to know the inside rhythms that make you tick, the ways in which you pull words from your mind, beauty from paper, poems from life. Do you leave your desk lamp on in the late hours or do you start fresh when the house is still asleep? Do you use a pen or pencil? Did you ever feel insignificance as you made letters become words, that the time you poured forth would never amount to anything? Why is it that we have this need to create, the compulsion to strike flame with language, to make ourselves known and make sense of the lives we live? Does the art matter? Will the poem explain a deeper self to the stranger reading breathlessly in the dark?

After hearing you speak, I thought so. You made me want to believe that a poem matters simply because it exists. Even if I can't explain exactly what I think you tried to say in "What I Learned From My Mother" even if I couldn't always tell you the different between assonance and consonance and where the figures lie in each verse, I felt the small tinge in my belly when you read your last line, the invisible part of me connected with the invisible body of the poem, the limb that lives and breathes without consent. I could never explain what happens to me when an artist like you reads her work aloud, except that I get cold all over. I get that adrenaline rush that I can't mistake for anything but admiration, passion; that recognition within myself that I want to do this, too. I imagined the kindergarten kids you spoke of sitting in a circle, being taught to hold their pens and scribble about what their fathers taught them, and it made me marvel. It takes strong, beautiful women like you to help us carry on what we are sometimes at liberty to forgot in this busy life: we must carry the words along so they are not forgotten, so we never cease the creation of unspoken truth.

My father taught me this: that you can never rise too early to read, that you must always carry two pens in your pocket, that a good run and a cold shower will fix anything, and that showing love can be as simple as washing out a pair of white tights for your stubborn daughter. He also told me that you came to him as a freshman when he was the college newspaper editor with a big black portfolio, and you said you wanted to write. You have unwillingly taught me that these moments are what must be preserved, if only for the self.

So I will leave, and I will take a bag of my words, and I will write. I will tell the world I need to write because I must. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Kate