Writing Through Emergency
A message to emerging writers in yet another season of crisis
Hi Everyone,
As you are doubtless well aware, May is a month of commencements. This year, May also marks five months to an election that could well destroy our democracy. There is every indication that, however the vote goes, America will see some version of January 6, 2021, happening all over again. This means that culminating students today are emerging with their new diplomas into yet another season of emergency.
Three years ago, I had the challenge of delivering (virtually) a mid-pandemic commencement address in the immediate wake of January 6. It would be my farewell to Goddard College, where I’d taught creative writing for 15 years. Like the country, the College was in trouble. Even though I was leaving, I hoped the College and our beloved writing program would survive. But it was difficult to muster the kind of buoyant encouragement that commencement addresses call for.
What saved me as I struggled to find the right message was the transformative magic of words themselves, especially when voiced with the power of moral conviction, courage, and hope. It was Amanda Gorman’s voice that inspired me, as I hoped it would inspire the graduates before me.
So, in honor of all the emerging writers who are graduating this month into a world [still and increasingly] at war with itself, I thought I’d share this address. Whether or not you have a newly minted MFA, these words just might inspire you, too.
Writing Through Emergency
Well, now you’ve done it.
Through patience, persistence, diligent imagination, and – yes – vision and revision, you have emerged from the frenzy of these historic years with completed novels and memoirs and a whole new foundation for your lives as writers going forward.
We are here today to celebrate your rising.
At the same time, we cannot ignore the unprecedented nature of that surrounding frenzy. Would that we could, but the undeniable truth is that you are both emerging from and emerging into a period of overwhelming alarm. Global pandemic and climate shock. Economic crisis. Racial conflict boiling over. A growing threat of civil war menacing America.
Even as we applaud your commencement as masters of creative writing, the world awaiting your words is rife with uncertainty and real-life drama that no one would wish on their least loved characters.
Several weeks ago, when I first tried to summon my thoughts for this address, I could not contemplate your evolution as writers -- your emergence-- without being distracted by the aura of emergency that permeates our current moment.
Emergence
Emergency
I’d never thought of those two words in the same breath before, which struck me as odd, considering that both clearly stem from the same Latin root, emergere [é-mér-ghér-é]: to come forth or rise up out of ; to become known. But, oh, what a difference a [Y] can make. It’s the equivalent of pairing emerge with urgency, and the result is crisis demanding action.
In other words, you are emerging as writers into a world that requires your immediate attention. [Not to pressure you, or anything…]
But what does that mean, and is it a good thing, or a terrible thing, for you as writers – for any of us? Surely, we all are wrestling with this terrible sense of emergency each time we reach for our phones or face our screens, and especially each time we confront our keyboards and the blank, waiting page.
Apart from emergence and emergency, what words can possibly convey the truth and meaning of this historical moment for us as creative writers?
Do we spin the lens wide and write about the hatred inflaming our nation? The threat to our institutions? The failure of leadership that led to hundreds of thousands of needless coronavirus deaths? Children once locked in cages, separated perhaps forever from their desperate parents?
Or, do we narrow the lens of our thoughts and words to focus on the struggles and conundrums that flash through our small, immediate circles? The absurd family squabbles that erupt under stress. The considerably less absurd plights of friends who must couch surf after being evicted, or couples depending on food banks for the first time in their lives.
Or… do we strive for the long view, setting our sights on a vision of normalcy that transcends this moment by traveling forward or backward to an entirely different era in time?
Choice is always the fulcrum on which our story rests.
I was still mired in this messaging quandary on Inauguration Day, when Amanda Gorman, a self-described “skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother, [who dreamt] of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one,” appeared at the microphone on the Capitol steps and exquisitely – magically -- delivered the answer I was seeking.
We will rise,
she insisted.
we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,
but what stands before us.For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
The emergency is real, she acknowledged, and must not be ignored or minimized. At the same time, we cannot let the magnitude of this challenge silence or defeat us.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour,
she admitted,
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter.For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.
And standing before us all, this 22-year-old beacon did embody that light. Her voice was strong, her gestures sure, her poise and courage unwavering. I felt the thrill of hope and confidence that she was telegraphing around the world. I’m sure we all did.
But what was it about Amanda Gorman’s words that made them so galvanizing? One clue may be the history she shares with President Biden, of having a speech impediment.
“If I’d written this poem three years ago,” she told interviewers after the Inauguration, “I wouldn’t have been able to say it. So it was me rising, I think, as well as the country.”
Rising. Emerging. Raising her voice to meet and overcome this emergency.
Here’s what you need to remember: Amanda Gorman employed her personal struggle to cast a new light on the much larger struggle that now engages us all. The Hill We Climb resonated not just because of the ideas it conveyed, but much more so because of the human depths of Gorman’s own experience, which she confronted inside these lines.
It was the hard-won truth of that experience that empowered her to write this poem. It was her long battle for mastery over her own emergency that convinced her she had something important to say about the national crises we faced on Inauguration Day. And it was the ultimate lesson she’d gleaned from her personal battle that infused the public words she shared with us.
The essence of that lesson is that we always have a choice. The best choice is likely not the easiest or the most obvious, but it comes from within us and is always within reach. And I’m saying this to you, today, because Amanda Gorman’s lesson applies to us deeply as writers. [It applies to our characters, too, by the way.] Choice is always the fulcrum on which our story rests.
Not all choices are equal, however. Those that come most easily in moments of emergency are purely reactive in nature. Fight. Flight. Freeze. These are reflexive responses, whether we’re endangered by man or beast, or by injustice or lies. They’re short-term solutions, at best, and more often catastrophic mistakes. We saw plenty of fight, flight, and freezing in the Capitol on January 6. No solutions there.
But we also saw acts of proactive heroism that proved stronger than automatic instinct. If you were writing January 6 as a novel, you’d surely dramatize the choices of Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman, who lured the mob away from lawmakers hiding in the Senate chambers. Goodman baited the attackers to chase him, instead. He didn’t fight, flee, or freeze, but summoned his own past struggles as an Army combat veteran to face this new threat and imagine a future different from the one that was staring him down. He chose to outwit his reactive instincts. In Amanda Gorman’s words, he found enough bravery to be the light that others needed to follow.
As we face this new season of emergency, the thing to remember is that we all have the power to be that light— if we face the future through our truth, through our experience, even through our fear. It does no good to beat it back or run from it or deny it. Not in our lives. And not in our writing.
Even in our most terrified hours we have the power to author a new chapter. So, reach deep into your own history, consider your own most painful choices, honor your bravest moments, and allow this wealth of human truth to guide you forward.
Emerge now, both in your writing and in life.
P.S. Sadly, Goddard College is slated to close at the end of the summer. This weekend my dear colleague
will deliver this semester’s Goddard MFA Commencement Address. It will be the last one ever.I profoundly hope that we will not have to say the same of our next U.S. presidential election.
I’m late to the sad news about Goddard but I’m
grateful to have heard it from you, Aimee. I’m in a phase of life in which many dearly loved older relatives are passing on. This feels similar - so much sorrow for what we’ve lost and then the deep gratitude to have been a part of it.
Thank you for your hard work to make Goddard such a special, life-changing experience. Love to you, Elena, Paul, Darrah, and all of the students in the Port Townsend MFA program. What a thing you all did.
Aimee, these are sobering and timely reflections on the era in which we live, move, and have our being. Amidst my grief for Goddard (my history with it goes back to 1974 when I started earning my first master's degree there), is my yearning that some aspects of it continue. So, I am grateful that I started participating in the Work-in-Progress sessions that meet on Zoom every other month started by a few MFA graduates awhile back, and by all indications, will continue. The writing conference is still on for July, and will be completely virtual. I've met a lot of new friends there, and I hope more Port Townsend graduates join in.
Like Amanda Gorman's words, yours talk is full of light. I'm saving it in my writing inspiration file, so I can read it again when I need uplift. Thank you, Kakwasi