The Germ, Or, the Seed

The beginning of this beginning.

PLUS, an offer for paying subscribers (at the end! Read on!)

I first became attached to this beginner’s idea thanks to a poem by Wisconsin writer Ellen Kort. She was the first Wisconsin Poet Laureate, appointed in 2000 and serving until 2004. She worked with at-risk youth, prisoners, domestic abuse survivors, anyone she thought might not have ready access to the potential of poetry. 

But I didn’t know all that when I first read Kort’s “Advice to Beginners” many years ago. And I certainly didn’t know that it would be the germ, or the seed, of this ongoing project, whatever it is. This attempt at looking at the world the way I most want to look at it. The way that seems most valuable. A way of looking that I am still, actually, pretty damn bad at. (Those of you who have been subjected to the angst and uncertainty about my new job know what I’m talking about! Also, thank you for listening. 😘)

I don’t know for sure how I came across the poem. I think my mother sent it to me, but it's possible it came from another source. In any case, I hung it above where I made coffee each day, a small, quarter sheet of paper taped to the cabinet door. That same one followed me across the country, through divorce and job changes and across the other half of the country and eventually, to the door of my studio at the Visual Arts Center here in Richmond. Now it’s in a folder somewhere, corners torn, frayed from years of taping and untaping. 

If you’d like to read it before we get too much further, here is a link to the full text. (Unfortunately it isn’t on Poets.org or the Poetry Foundation, so we have to rely on evil, evil  Goodreads.) 

The poem found me during an anxious period. I’d had a medical issue and received a steroid injection that sent my moods swinging wildly back and forth. Spontaneous crying. Panic. A feeling of dissociation in my head. Numbness in my fingers. I couldn’t bear to be left alone, so I went and sat in the tiny restaurant office where my then-wife worked. It got so bad at one point I went to the ER. It took over a month for me to return to some semblance of myself. Even so, the feeling that some invisible filter exists between my brain and the world remains. It has never left. Usually, I don’t notice it anymore, but if I stop to think, there it is. Some bubble of consciousness that feels separate from reality somehow.

I would read the poem in the morning, taking particular comfort in the line that reads “everything that happens will happen and none of us will be safe from it.” We can plan. We can prepare. It is wise to do both. But we cannot make ourselves safe. Not totally. We can lead healthy lives and get hit by a bus. We fall in love with the wrong people at the wrong time. We lash out. We hurt ourselves and each other, over and over again, even as we seek to love both. We squeeze too tight. We grip too hard or let go too soon. We say the wrong things and worse, say nothing. It is the way of things. So often, we do these things in service of the illusion of safety.

It is not possible to be a human being and live safely in the world. And when everything feels frightening, there is a sort of salve to that idea of everything happening. I once went on a date with someone who enjoys sneaking into abandoned buildings and rappelling off bridges. They said, “Well, I’m scared of everything so I might as well do genuinely scary things since I’ll be scared no matter what.”

I take comfort in that, too, when I am able to remember it. Very often, I am not. 

At the same time, so much of what makes the world feel unsafe these days is genuinely terrifying. Genocide. War. Climate disaster. Creeping religious totalitarianism. The world can feel very unsafe indeed, and perhaps we can be forgiven for seeking that illusion of safety. 

But that is dangerous, too, to let our comforts blot out the reality of our existence and its precariousness.

What I love about this poem is how it seems to revel in both wildness and quietude. Moonshine and naked swimming and howling and death, but also whistling, tea, listening to the stories of your own hands. Silliness, too, and profundity. Sure, “lick the mountain’s bare shoulder,” if you can figure out what the hell that means. But overall, the blend is wildness and quietude.

Nature, in other words. Where safety is not guaranteed and survival is dicey, but where our lived experience is not filtered through other mediums. It is all right there, visceral, immediate, even when we are at rest.

Art, at its finest, possesses similar capabilities, I think. Somehow the experience of a moment

Kort’s poem provided the genesis of this beginning fixation, and as a result, it became my first independent letterpress project. It’s not that long a poem, but that’s still a lot of lines of text to lay, letter by letter. I was four lines in before I realized my font was too big and a standard paper wouldn’t hold the longest lines, so I had to disassemble it and start again. 

Letter by letter. The same as every piece of writing, really, but selecting each from a tray with lead-stained fingers hammers the point home. We build words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, stories, novels. Letter by letter by letter. 

I got to know a poem I’d basically memorized but got to know it physically, building it out over multiple hours. Squinting at the type and hoping I had enough e’s in the font to finish. Running test prints. Realizing letters were backwards and switching them around. Realizing some e’s or t’s were just a little worn down and couldn’t catch the ink. These had to be cleaned and fished out of the line with tweezers, new e’s and t’s located and inserted in their place. Then more tests, then troubleshooting when the tests went badly. Sliding paper under the edition pages. Sliding paper under the tray. Inking the type. No, inking the rollers. Inking myself, always. 

Finally, the plan text, in a serif font, on the thick paper. “Advice to Beginners” physically manifested by those stained fingers and hunched back and mineral oil fumes.

One of the letterpress prints I made of this poem

I ran a bunch of these prints, then I disassembled the galley. All the letters went, one by one, back into their trays. Should I desire to do another run, I would have to reassemble it from scratch. Perhaps, one day, I will. 

For now, I would like to offer my prints of this poem to paying subscribers. You’ve been so kind to throw a little cash at this experiment, and I would like to offer you something tangible in return. So if you want one, I will get it to you! Send me your address, I’ll mail you one, just as soon as I figure out the best way to keep them from getting mangled during shipping. 

I don’t have a ton (maybe 25 or so) but I would love for you to have one if you’re interested. Thank you.

Cheers, 

Ty