Blood Wolf Moon, the incomplete poem
A Wisdom Body Series on Rejected Works
With our series on rejection, I am thinking of what precisely rejection means to me, and when this particular emotion has impacted me the most as a writer. For many, perhaps, there is a connection of rejection to submitting to literary publications in hopes of seeing their work in print. While I share these triumphs and disappointments as much as the next person, having worked for multiple publications, I understand the nuance that can go into choosing what will or won’t be in print. In other words, it feels surprisingly not personal. Disappointing, sure, but not an attack at my integrity as a writer.
What does stand out to me are moments in my educational feedback where I have felt less than supported. What are meant to be workshops and critiques on a work have felt like a deeper slash as my identity as a writer. Sharing a work in progress in a workshop is always at least mildly anxiety inducing, as I am opening myself and my thoughts to an audience and critique. And generally at the point of workshop, I do not wish to present work that feels complete, but rather the opposite. I embrace and wish to discuss the process of its becoming. What is lacking? What is captivating? Where are the moments of gravity?
Two years ago, on the Blood Wolf Moon in January, my friend invited me to an all-women’s gathering to celebrate the first full moon of the year. I would know her but no one else at the party but she never failed to bring me unique experiences, so I ventured out to the rocky cliffs of Lyons, CO, that lie just before the expansive Rocky Mountains.
That evening I was moved. I stood around a flickering fire, the only source of warmth on the winter night. We threw our intentions for the new year into the flame, talked of our world and our position within it. Our faces glowed, illuminated against the night. Warmth emanated from within.
How can we move forward? How can we foster compassion? I felt more grounded than I had in a long time, more connected in community with women I had just met. I was touched by their words and their generosity, how open we all were to each other. A feminine reception to cultivate our innermost desires. Even with my body tense from the cold at my back, I felt relaxed and contented as I sunk into each moment.
We howled at the moon. As it reverberated in my chest, it was both a part of me, and more than me. The cold crept beneath my wool coat as I walked away from the fire out onto the cliffs. I laid down in silence next to others, feeling the near presence amid solitude. The quiet was serene, full. As I gazed upon the moon and stars, the chilled earth held me. My spine aligned, grounded, with all that surrounded me, as I breathed in infinite constellations.
Leaving, I was inspired. But what to say? How to say it? When I arrived back at my apartment, after midnight I would have to assume these couple years later, I wrote a poem. Excited about the zillion ideas charging through my mind, I was ecstatic for its potential. But looking back, perhaps it was beyond me, beyond capturing. I was attracted to the elusive nature of the event, the weaving of factors that even now as I recollect them, have continued to grow in their significance.
Here is draft one:
Blood Wolf Moon
I watched the moon catch fire
From the darkness of the earth
Under the blood wolf moon, I howled
A howl that escaped from me, a primitive plea
A rally cry that summoned the living and the dead
As my intentions rose from my heart to the heavens
Who am I, what am I to do
In a world where I don’t belong
When I see the essence of humanity slipping
Into dark crevasses, clamoring for clarity
We unite, we untie,
We unite, or we die.
Surrounded by matriarchal power, as women
Our spirits surged into the moon that night
I saw myself reflected in the night sky
As my back sank into the hard-stoned earth
I am my senses combined, the universe collapsed,
No atom within or without, belonging
For the first time the moon was a sphere
Suspended in equal space, I felt her craters
Drifting alone and beyond I felt the solidarity
Between us, the gravitational pull of me to her
And her to me.
I brought the poem into workshop, still riding the high of its creation, but was downtrodden by the end. At some point, my professor noted my language seemed Romantic, perhaps. What I remember most now and note constantly to my friends, is that he noted my writing was not contemporary. Retroactively, I can note many things that I would change about the poem, sure, but at the time it put me at odds with myself. What was I, my mind and body, in 2019, if not contemporary? Was I not living and breathing in contemporary times? Wouldn’t my writing then by definition be nothing but it? Was I displaced? Where did I or my writing belong?
It sent me into somewhat of a tailspin of a relationship to my writing. What was it to me if it could not reflect what I was trying to portray? Who was I if I could not present myself in a “contemporary” moment? (Whatever that even means, as my friends generously add when I reflect, bummed out, about that workshop.)
After class, I returned to my poem with feedback, but feeling uninspired. Here were my edits:
Blood Wolf Moon
Watch the moon catch fire
From the darkness of the earth
Under the blood wolf moon, howl
A howl that escapes, primitive plea
Rising preverbal from stomach depths
Back sinking into hard-stoned earth
See my
In the midst of stanza three, I had given up. It wasn’t working, wasn’t saying what I wanted how I wanted, and I felt like it would never be appreciated. I remember one of my feedbacks was about using couplets…which at the time I was experimenting with, funnily, because I had read them in the latest issue of Poetry Magazine and that it was an interesting choice of form to utilize and see what happens.
Now, looking back with two addition years of writing and reading knowledge, I wouldn’t call it great either, perhaps–some of the language is too vague, not full of and inspiring the emotion I actually felt at the time, but I’d say it was what I could do at the time. Perhaps what I mean more precisely, is that I feel it doesn’t capture enough of how I felt that night. I am still seeking how to embody it these years later as I encounter it newly.
Thinking about how I would approach it now, I would write much more openly, abstractly, not trying to stay so grounded within a narrative description that I felt slightly tethered to in order to describe the moment. I’d allow it to run wild like wolves, to fragment itself across the ideas that converged in my mind. I’d allow it to become an abstraction of distilled thoughts and emotions from that night to see what would arise. As a challenge to myself, I think on this year’s Wolf Moon, I’ll return to this poem and how its ideas have continued to grow after being in only their nascent stages two years ago.
In hindsight, that comment encouraged me to challenge myself more, as a writer, perhaps, but I think it did so at an odd expense. For a few months I felt rather uninspired. I felt deterred to try to commit anything to the page. It was not until the summer when working with visiting writers that I found my love of experimenting and expression, of the beauty that can come from play and fun, not being downtrodden about finding the perfect words, the perfect phrase, the perfect poem…at least most certainly not at a first go.
Perhaps most impactful, beyond a professor’s words that were meant to be a critique to improve my writing, are the ways in which I enact self-rejection, or worse yet, a proactive self-rejection. It’s a habit I’ve been guilty of well before that moment, but those small instances feed the little monster self-rejection. If something does not feel fully formed, fully thought out, fully developed, fully known, fully whatever, even now I often feel an apprehension to turn to the page. My stomach is knotted. Which is silly, odd, and paradoxical as a writer. We become writers through the act of writing itself. Simply. More importantly, it is the place where I feel most myself and most alive, most honest and playful, and yet an avoidant attachment style still lingers. I want to purge these absurd tendencies of self-rejection and remember to be open with myself and my writing so it can become what it is meant to be.
