Transcriber: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Hi, everyone. I'm so happy to be here.
When I thought of this talk,
I was thinking about what I was going to give,
but I can't tell you how happy I am about what I've gotten so far.
This is even better than I imagined, and I imagined it was going to be awesome.
Yes? It's been incredible, incredible.
(Applause)
I was really excited
when I heard that the theme of today's TEDx was "Inspir(act)ion."
What inspires action?
This is an idea that personally moves me
because there actually was a moment that inspired action in my life,
that changed who and how I am in the world,
that led me to this life, this campus and this talk.
Many years ago, I was teaching at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in a program called Sundays for Families.
A crowd of parents and children were gathered,
and we were writing group poems.
So children would call out lines; I would write them on a whiteboard.
Somebody called out a great first line:
"This is the story of a heart."
Now remember, these are small children, and I was thinking, "This is golden."
Already I'm imagining this lovely poem about a beautiful heart.
And so we begin.
I'm writing; they're calling.
And pretty soon, the heart's in trouble:
it gets divorced.
(Laughter)
Parents in the room.
It's in a car crash.
It's in a plane crash.
People die - and wait for it -
it gets divorced again.
(Laughter)
Now, the children are totally gleeful;
they're just absolutely absorbed in writing their poem.
I can feel the adults in the room, on the other hand, myself included,
getting tense.
As the experiences in the room spooled from bad to worse,
parents started laughing nervously.
So when we got to the last line,
I said in my sweetest, most enthusiastic voice,
"Now, wasn't that fun?
Let's see if we can take that same great first line
and write another poem,"
hoping it would go in a more positive direction.
I barely had the words out of my mouth
before a very small boy jumped up, pointed at me
and said, "That's our poem."
Woah. Bam. He saw right through me.
He was fierce, and he was right,
and at five years old,
he knew who he was better than I did at almost 35.
Luckily, I got it, and I said,
"You're right. That's your poem."
As Mark Doty says in his own luminous poem "Ararat,"
"Any small thing can save you."
That child saved me
because I got, immediately,
that that same sweet false voice I used with those kids
was whispering inside me,
keeping me from doing things that made others uncomfortable,
limiting my life to a zone of acceptability.
So, although I'd already veered off the path I'd charted in college
by walking out of a PhD program after two years
and wandering through a crazy variety of jobs and living situations -
which is a whole other talk -
it was always with the idea that I'd get back on track one day,
go back and finish my PhD,
become a professor,
have a family.
You know, be good.
Do what I was expected to do.
Instead, that moment showed me
that the so-called wandering I was doing was my path.
It was genuine.
This was unnerving.
What would become of me
if I seriously committed to taking my life off-road?
It scared me, but it also got me thinking,
not just about a single poem on a whiteboard
or an embarrassing moment in a museum
but what my poem is and how to live it.
The word "poem" comes from the ancient Greek "poiein,"
which literally means "a thing made or created."
The action to make or do.
What was I making of my life?
What was I making of my life, and how could I lead a genuine life?
That really is the question:
how to lead a genuine life?
I turned to poetry as a means of self-discovery.
Initial comfort came in Wendell Berry's poem "The Real Work":
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey."
Berry taught me to trust the process -
when it is scary,
when I feel at risk,
when it is slow,
when it makes me uncomfortable.
He taught me to trust myself.
Okay, so I've determined what doesn't work for me:
PhD program, lots of different jobs.
What is right?
How do I determine what is right?
Two words: Mary Oliver.
I turned to the poet Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese,"
which begins - and listen to this first line:
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."
Really?
That sounds so simple.
Simple, yes.
Easy, maybe not so much.
This is not mere positive thinking,
not "I think I can, I think I can."
It's not passive.
Walking your own path is work.
It means being absolutely honest with yourself and with others.
It may mean disappointing people,
which was particularly hard for me -
I do not like disappointing people.
But I started looking
at what I really loved and what I was naturally good at,
what I like to do rather than who I thought I should be.
What do I love?
Community, communication, creativity.
I love to learn and I love to teach.
Now, that could mean being a professor, as I thought I would be,
but it can mean so many other things, as my life showed me.
The 13th century Persian poet Rumi was clear on this idea,
here, in translation:
"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
As I began to explore the hundred ways I could be in the world,
my own poetry deepened,
became a marker on my journey,
started to show a confidence underneath the questioning.
In my poem "This Garden,"
I'm yelling at the morning glories
that insist on climbing up the fence instead of the trellis I labored over,
just as I insist on my own undirected life.
That same poem ends
with my promise to praise these stubborn lives,
however they may grow.
Or my poem "Following,"
a meditation on movement that ends with the lines
"Each step leads to the next step.
She doesn't know where she's going.
She knows she's going home."
So by embracing who I am and what I love,
I headed home.
Another poem by the clear-eyed, ecstatic Rumi spoke to me:
"For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn't decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside."
This simple poem taught me to look for mentors rather than models,
to surround myself with people who see me
and appreciate what I bring.
Champions I call them.
I actually have champions in this room.
Thank you.
These are the people that make me feel bold,
encourage me to take risk,
give me good-hearted critique,
tell me being true is the best thing I can do.
These are the people that believe in me.
Now, champions are important,
but as important as support is showing up.
I chose to take advantage
of rather unconventional opportunities that were exciting
even when I didn't know where they would lead.
When I was asked to teach a 10-day writing workshop
at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture
for free - 10 days -
I said yes for the experience,
which led to a position on the faculty of this amazing apprenticeship program,
a joyful decade of teaching and learning.
Or many years later,
when a friend called and said, "Can you help me?
I'm putting on a huge event at the USC Marshall School of Business,
and really, I only need you to temp for six weeks,
just six weeks."
Hmm. Long drive, short term, low pay.
And business?
I said yes.
(Laughter)
As you can see, I'm not a great decision maker.
But I have to tell you, four years later,
senior writer.
And that was the job
that eventually led me here to our beloved beach.
So I wound up at a university after all.
This is what I've learned:
show up.
Another way of showing up is by reaching out.
My first book of poems was rejected by every single publisher I sent it to.
And believe me, that was a lot of publishers.
This was before I had a computer,
before wide-spread self-publishing,
well before social media.
So I figured, that's that.
While I was sending to publishers, however,
I was sending thank-you notes with a handful of poems
to all the artists, musicians, scholars -
people I admired
and who I felt were my teachers through their own creative work.
One day, I got a call
from a very well-respected scholar and translator,
who I obviously did not know,
who said, "Got your note.
Your poems really resonate with me.
Now, I don't know, if you like,
I think I could help you get this book published."
And he did,
which in retrospect, sounds like a fairy tale.
I sent my book to publishers to get published,
but I sent those notes and poems with no expectation,
in gratitude,
and found a champion.
What did this do?
It reiterated my very strong belief
that gratitude and grace
are fundamental parts of a satisfying life.
I remind myself these things each morning.
And believe me, I really have to do it each morning.
Show up.
You know, you get it.
Say yes.
Reach out.
Be grateful.
And the world might surprise you.
Because as Elizabeth Alexander said in "Praise Song for the Day,"
her poem for President Obama's inauguration,
"Anything can be made.
Any sentence begun."
Now I'm pretty far along in my life's journey,
but I'm still inspired by poetry.
Our current U.S. Poet Laureate,
the irrepressible Juan Felipe Herrera,
insists that poetry is a call to action,
and that it also is action.
He inspired me,
reminded me that poetry is tremendously powerful
to advise
in these lines from his recent poem "Poem by Poem":
"You have a poem to offer.
It is made of action.
You must search for it,
run outside and give your life to it."
Give your life to it.
So I continue to challenge myself to be who I am in the world,
which is a daily process.
Because really, who knows what's next for me or for any of us?
This is what I learned through experience,
by paying attention and showing up,
starting with a small, bold boy and a discomforting poem.
I will never forget that.
And since that day,
with more or less success,
I have been embracing the poem that is my life,
which is not the life I expected,
and certainly not the poem I thought I'd write.
Thank you.
(Applause)