My, we are feeling a bit masochistic today, aren't we? Well, since you've invited this level of abuse, I shall take advantage of it, and chatter on egotistically until you either know all the interesting bits about my life or you go someplace else more amusing. If you fall asleep in front of your monitor, I accept zero responsbility for you bonking your silly forehead on the table and injuring your tiny little-- I mean, your ...uh... magnificently developed--brain.

My Serious Side

I do have have one. In the Mundane World, I work part-time as a substitute teacher and get asked interesting questions such as, "Do you use drugs?" (no) and "Do you have a pencil I can borrow?" (not usually).

In my Real Life, I am an artist, poet and writer. Like most poets, my poetry has appeared mostly in small, obscure magazines, and even the more well-known literary quarterlies are hard to find at your local library, so you probably won't have heard of Tina Quinn Durham as a poet and writer. However, you can see my artwork at artfuldogger.com, and I'll try to give you a taste of what I do elsewhere on this site.

Being a poet is a rather peculiar profession, since one cannot make a living at it, and most people would rather hold their breath and turn blue than read poetry. Maybe our poetic phobia has something to do with the inaccessibility of modern and contemporary poetry, or the speed at which our society gallops relentlessly along, or the failure of the American education system to make poetry a satisfying experience for young readers. Whatever the cause, poets are forced to pay their bills by teaching or writing prose, or paying their bills with some sort of labor.

I've tried sales, management, secretarial work, teaching full-time, and letting my husband support me while I raised small children. None of them have been particularly satisfying solutions to the problem of surviving in the world while thinking deeply and writing well. If you have any better ideas, let me know - I'd be willing to try them.

My Musical Side

I've had enough I want to... Go Home

From the day in sixth grade that I picked up a flute for the first time and blew across the hole, making a wavery tone, I was hooked. I soon discovered that every instrument you learn involves a certain amount of suffering. For young flutists, it's the muscles just under your arm that ache from holding up the instrument. Within a few weeks, the muscles toughen up and the pain goes away.

Tragically, few of the other young musician wannabe's in my elementary school made it through the first month of suffering and the tedious process of learning to read music and play "real songs". By the end of the school year, I was the only flutist left. Why did they lose interest? Was it too much for them, those early days when we played the same note, over and over, for minutes at a time? Or was it the disappointment of having to work hard to play "kid stuff" like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Hot Cross Buns"? But why did they give up? Didn't they realize that, if they just kept on, they could be like the high school students who had come to our school, playing in the orchestra, with that magnificent fullness, just like what we heard on the radio? By the time I was in junior high, I wanted to be the next Jean-Pierre Rampal, and I would hold onto that dream until college, when I finally realized that I would never be good enough to be a world-renowned soloist, or good enough to be the last chair in a city orchestra. I saw a future of teaching hopeful little girls to play out of tune, and packed up the flute and the dreams for a few years. I switched my major to English literature and got a full scholarship to the University of Arizona where I took a class that changed my life.

Intro to Poetry Writing

I've had enough I want to... Go Home

Since I was such a precocious darling, I was able to test out of three semesters of French and one semester of freshman comp. So I signed up for a poetry writing class, just for grins, with Richard Shelton. He had us read ten books of poetry, which of course I was too cheap to buy. I spent hour upon hour siting in the Poetry Center, sometimes actually reading, sometimes pouring out my heart to the indefatigable and sympathetic ear of Lois Sheltion while stroking D-O-G's luxurious white fur. D-O-G was the center's Seeing Ear dog, and his photograph was taken many times with famous poets who read in Tucson. If you visit the poetry center, look for D-O-G's picture on the wall.

By the way, now that I've seen my husband weather almost twenty years of marriage to a poet, I understand something of Lois's own trials and difficulties, but if you want to get a good idea of what it might be like to be married to a reasonably sane and compassionate poet, read Richard Shelton's Back to Bisbee. As Dick Shelton talks about his life, you'll get an idea of what Lois puts up with. You might prefer the tedium of being married to an engineer. Or you might enjoy chaos. I think my spouse secretly enjoys the chaos.

The Poetry Center was a haven for me during some of my most difficult years; the poetry was a source of life itself. I read Ginsberg's Howl for the first time, encountered Robert Bly's poetry, met Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. I began to realize what free verse could be, and experimented, imitating every new poet I came across. YOUNG POETS, READ POETRY! It's how you grow in your craft. You can't workshop your way to great writing, although you will definitely benefit from the workshops.

Think for a moment of the forest. Trees die. Branches break off. Leaves fall. Wildflowers blossom and wilt, their petals dropping to the forest floor. And all those pieces, big and small, gradually break down into soil as they are eaten, digested and finally discarded by creatures like bacteria and centipedes. At some point, the plant material becomes detritus: it has changed so much that no one can tell what plant it originally came from.

This digested plant matter is what fuels the growth of new plants. And for us, as poets, digested poetic material - whether found in poetry, prose, art or nature - is the food for new poetic works. If we've done our work and chewed well, the influence of other poets is not obvious imitation or "borrowing" - it becomes our own and critics call it "original."

If you don't do your homework by reading the works of the past, you are simply doomed to recreate the clichés of the past - a wheel of repetitions from which only the enlightened may escape. So READ. Read everything. READ, READ, READ. When Ezra Pound decided to become a great poet, he determined to know more about poetry than anyone else. And he's one of the top contenders for the title of The Poet of the Twentieth Century. Every great poet has been a great reader.

So READ. Oh, and write, too. That's something else writers have to do (yeah, I know - it's starting to sound like being a writer is a lot of work. And we were all hoping we could do it by having artistic friends and talking about literature. Or taking to the road like Kerouac. Or having adventures like Hemingway and Jack London, and then.... No, never mind. That's another story).

Is There Anything Else Interesting About Me?

I've had enough I want to... Go Home

I could talk about pets, family stuff, playing bass, my husband's music, but the most important thing is that I decided, in my early teens, to stop fighting God, and work with Him instead. You know the story of Paul, who was a dedicated Pharisee and bounty hunter until Jesus knocked him off his saddle into the dust and asked, "Why are you persecuting Me? Stop hurting yourself!" I wasn't blind for three days, and no prophet came to restore my sight, but I had some things in common with Paul.

First, I hated Christianity. I had seen the hypocrisy in the lives of the adults around me, who went to church on Sunday and ignored God the rest of the week. And even in elementary school, I knew there was more to this God thing than Bible races and winning prizes for bringing a friend to church. But church attendance was a requirement in my house, and I kept going on Sunday. However, I rebelled in quiet, little ways, like being sick on the Sundays I was supposed to open the fourth-through-sixth grade classes in prayer. And I investigated alternatives to Christianity, fascinated by alien abductions, spontaneous combustion, and the occult.

My friend's Ouija board began to tell us to kill her sister, because B. was a witch. Strange noises, objects falling when there wasn't a person or even a cat around, began to make us nervous. My friends and I would be sick with terror, in full daylight, unable to move or leave the room, because of the presence of something so palpably evil that we were petrified with fear. We thought we were dealing with poltergeists, unaware that we were toying with demons.

Though I was only in junior high school, I could already cast horoscopes and - using the resources of the public library - was exploring the possibility of contacting spirits through seances. We were sure we were dealing with something genuinely supernatural, but were cautious about the idea of actually summoning something up out of the spirit world. We'd seen enough movies and had enough frightening moments to know this could be dangerous.

I was chosen to be the first medium. I began to say some kind of a prayer or chant, made up on the spot from a pastiche of horror novels and movie dialogues, but as I got to the phrase, "Enter me, great white spirit," I stopped. I could feel something there, waiting to enter me, and it didn't seem as friendly as the books suggested a "white" spirit might be. Instead of continuing with the ritual, I let go of my friends' hands and stood up, breaking the circle. As soon as I said, "I don't want to do this," I was overcome by a sense of relief. An oppressive thickness of air that had made it hard to breathe eased, and the sensation of ominous presence withdrew. I felt as if I had escaped a terrible fate - I'm sure now that I did indeed narrowly escape something evil.

Soon after that, my best friend's brother started a Bible study for teens at our church. She had to go, and begged me to go, so she wouldn't be the only one there. Actually, quite a few teenagers showed up, but I kept going with her because we were best friends, and her mother made her go. What I discovered about the Christians there surprised me.

We were studying a book on the gospel of John, and it was easy enough to look up the verses and fill in the blanks. I'd been in Sunday school my whole life, and this wasn't much different. What was astonishing was not the material, but the people there. In school, I was too bright and too weird to be popular. Actually, "shunned" is probably a more accurate description than "unpopular." But here, in this Bible study, I was not made fun of. I was welcomed. I was listened to. I was even loved.

The Verse that Changed My Life

I've had enough I want to... Go Home

In our study of John, we came to that famous verse, "I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly" ¹. To my embarrassment, I began to cry. It was obvious to me that my life was far from abundant. If I was going to surive without going crazy, I needed a lot more than a lonely existence ruled by my own intellect and a distant, uninvolved Supreme Being.

Later, maybe even that night, I sat alone on the floor of the darkened sanctuary, and prayed. I can't remember exactly what the words were, but I know I told God that I was tired of fighting Him. It was a prayer of unconditional surrender. Afterwards, I was filled with a sense of peace and well-being that told me God had been listening.

There were other evidences of God's response. My grades jumped to straight As. I had real friends. I still wobbled emotionally, but there were no more really strange incidents like the week I walked around without emotions, feeling like a robot, watching my body do things while I was somewhere else. I was actually living my life, maybe for the first time since I was a little kid. The hurts of the past began to heal.

I have to confess that, even though I'm saved, I'm still weird. I think maybe God likes me that way, and made me that way on purpose. Our little ideas of what's normal don't mean much to Him. The only conformity that interests God is whether or not we're becoming more like His son, Jesus.

That moment of "second birth" changed me, but it didn't resolve all my problems overnight. For instance, I wasn't absolutely sure I would never commit suicide until I was almost 30. My dark times have been pretty dark; it took a long time for me to learn how to weather them and to believe that God was big enough to get me through them every time. Guess what? He is big enough, and He's faithful, and He loves us a lot more than we can imagine.

If You Don't Know God the Way I Do

I've had enough I want to... Go Home

He's worth knowing. Start by getting a modern translation of the Bible, and reading the New Testament. Look for people who are committed to loving Him and to loving each other. And tell Him what's on your heart. He'll hear you, even if you don't know how to pray. You don't need some kind of formula prayer like preachers tell you to pray at the famous "altar call," when the music is playing and everybody's supposed to have their eyes shut. Those prayers will work just fine, but you'll learn more by just talking honestly to the Father who loves you. And I can guarantee you, whatever you tell Him, He'll listen and He'll understand (even if, like a good earthly dad, He doesn't agree with everything you say).

Oh, and don't give up on getting to know Him. The powers of darkness are real, and they are going to try to interfere with you getting close to God. Maybe you'll be easily distracted when you try to read the Bible and pray, or you'll find yourself thinking totally ugly and sinful thoughts; or maybe you'll join a church and get really hurt be someone who's supposed to be loving you the way Jesus loved us. It's not accidental; there are spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, and they're going to derail your spiritual life if they can manage it. Don't let them! God will never give up on you, and don't you give up on Him either. The satisfaction of knowing Him is worth more than anything else you are ever going to experience in this life; the abundant life He promised is real. I know, because I'm living it.

To find out more about this abundant Christian life, check out these links.

Footnotes

¹John 10:10.

Want to see some artwork featuring basenjis? Visit artfuldogger.com, featuring hand-crafted decorative objects for art and animal lovers.

Return to Top

var sb_domain = "basenjis.com" var sb_user = "4info" var sb_recipient = sb_user + "@" + sb_domain var sb_url = "mailto:" + sb_recipient document.write(sb_recipient.link(sb_url)); ">

Go Home

---

All images and text ©2000 Tina Quinn Durham.