Ren Powell, Poet | Playwright | Teaching Artist

Good morning, Richard.

Sitting down this morning with coffee and a clementine. I can’t believe it’s that time of year already. I light the candle under the bowl the rosemary oil, and between that and clementine, it’s difficult not to think of Christmas. This morning, the bridge at the trail head was covered with ice. I guess that means the sparrows I was listening to yesterday will be staying through the winter. I’ll need to remember to fill the feeder on the porch regularly.

The old lady is settled on the rug next to me, and it’s quiet – except for the grinding of the coffee machine and the small sounds E. is making in the kitchen. I need the quiet. The silent run in the morning, the yoga routine with the silent chanting of old hymns in my head. Then this: the humming of the space heater in the tiny library. Now my head is quiet enough to write.

I can not comprehend how you can write with music playing! Music whips up so much noise in my head, it would be like trying to collect fallen leaves in a whirlwind. It would be interesting to be in your head for a while. Is it chaotic in there? Or compartmentalized, like a smoothly running production line in a factory?

In regard to dealing with aging, you wrote, “Sometimes, often, I think you have a more definite sense of self than I do. And because I lived a very sheltered childhood, I find I’m still kicking against things that maybe I shouldn’t be kicking against. I don’t think I’ve ever known who I really am.”

I’ve never really thought I had a strong sense of self, but perhaps because of my own childhood, I was so disassociated with my body that these physical changes aren’t (perhaps) as startling. I was 45 before I began to live in my body with any kind of appreciation or awareness. Any kind of gratitude. Maybe it is a sex issue, too? My body changed so much with childbirth that midlife brings with it gentler changes?

When I look down at my hands now I see my grandmother’s hands when I held them during church services. It’s a strange kind of self-comfort, having her incorporated in my life in such an intimate and physical way.

Although a friend was visiting a few months ago; she saw a photo from the wedding and said, “Oh, your hands don’t look that old in reality.” To be honest, what I was uncomfortable with was how thin my hair looked in the photo – but now I have yet another thing to be self-conscious about.

And at the doctor’s office last week I skimmed through an article in a women’s magazine I used to read in my 30s, the headline was something like: What You Can Look Forward to as You Age. It went on to describe, in language I can only categorise as contemptuous, how even your vagina will look old. I cannot for the life of me figure out why that made me feel so deeply ashamed. And had I taken my plump, youthful labia for granted somehow? What’d I miss?

So, no. I’m not unaffected by the ageism and age-shaming that is so integral to our culture. Do you think those places where people revere the elderly are just a myth?

Have you ever read Being Dead, by Jim Crace? I might actually reread it, now that I’m thinking about it. He has descriptions of a couple’s decomposing bodies, interspersed with flashbacks of their lives. I remember it all being extraordinarily beautiful. Even the decomposing.

Like you said, this is midlife, Richard. I don’t think we should feel obligated to spend the second half hiding so as not to remind people under 40 that they will eventually die. Every time I read the words, “the aging population” as a euphemism for “old people”, I laugh. We are all aging. I’d say from birth, but really, from conception. It’s a done deal from the get-go.

And there is still plenty of time to set new goals and achieve them. It’s just that the goals are no longer laid out for us. There is a terrific freedom in that. Maybe this is where we actually are able to be individuals?

A writer in Paris. Not exactly the romantic image I had in mind, but maybe the reality of having to do self-promotion these days?

Anyway, back to the sense of self. I think you have a better grasp of who you are “metaphysically”, as you described it. You write birthday poems for your children. I believe that the last birthday poem I wrote was for my grandfather when I was six or so.

[Quite] A few years ago – just after my first book was published – a friend got married, and I sent a poem to him and his wife as a wedding gift. I framed it like a broadside. Almost immediately, I regretted it.If I know who and what I am, I am not very impressed with her. Seriously: 18 years and five books later, I’m still embarrassed by my little wave of confidence that day, or week, or however long it lasted.

I think this is why I’m still not posting poetry on my blog. I’m still craving outside approval. Kind of like writing a story I am proud of, but waiting to get the little smiley stamp and an A from the teacher before I show it to my mother.

That is pathetic, isn’t it?

Fame? I just read the translator’s afterword for the new book. It’s an essay about my writing over the years, and he makes flattering comparisons to canon writers. He describes this book as representing a “late style”.  Most writers have to be dead or at least moderately famous to get such close attention to their forfatterskap. I’m thrilled. And I’m terrified. People will say (as they have before) that my work doesn’t warrant such attention. I’m preparing myself for that now, even before it goes to print.

So: Respect, renown? Yes, please.

Fame? People are just plain mean sometimes.

By the way, loved hearing you on the radio this weekend! Your name is incorporated into a radio jingle. That’s a kind of famous, isn’t it?

Give my love to M., and I hope you guys make plans to visit soon so we can meet your kids. We have this ludicrously large house and plenty of space.

XO Ren

Richard’s reply

This is one of a series of weekly open letters to friends – friends who write back to me on their own blogs. Please click through.  Category: Correspondence.

If you’d like to catch up, read the letters in chronological order here.