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The Journal of Brian Fuchs

My Love Affair
02/19/2009 10:58 p.m.
I wrote my first poem in 4th grade, "Autumn Leaves." It just seemed natural, but didn't strike me as something I wanted to do. I wouldn't write another poem for 3 years. It was a 7th grade poetry assignment when I got around to it again. My interest hadn't increased by that time, but it didn't change my homework assignment and I begrudgingly wrote a poem titled "Paige." My teacher gave me a 0 on my poem because I had clearly plagiarized. I was pretty irritated and after a phone call from my parents (because uh, yeah, she didn't buy it from me), I was given a 60/50 on my poem. That was the first time I actually cared or realized that this was something I might be able to do.

Regrettably, "Paige" has been lost. I do know it was a brief life story about a woman. But I don't know much beyond that. I focused a lot on reading over the next few years and wrote a tiny bit of poetry here and there. Mostly, these were silly poems. My brother and I had an entire series of poems that were about ways to die at mealtimes. They were more silly than morbid.

In my senior year of high school, I'd pretty much pinned down that I wanted to write. I spent most of my time writing short fiction pieces, but still got some poetry in and then I went to college. The class I'd been looking most forward to -- and with good reason -- was Creative Writing. There I started to find my voice and discovered that not only could I write, but even I liked the things I was writing. I also started to dig a little bit. Mostly, my poems had been surface subjects, but my writing class forced me to start exposing myself, something I'd never been comfortable with. And when other people in the class read the things I wrote, they didn't laugh. In fact, they enjoyed them. And I was hooked.

I initially joined pathetic.org in 1998 and through a series of changes from both the site and myself, moved away from it several times. But I've found that there is no place out there that takes the art of writing poetry as seriously as the folks on this site do. It isn't a place for the silly and pastoral, although they certainly have a time and place, but it is a place to tear the bandages off and expose the wounds to a community that will withhold judgement and focus on the craft of writing. That is liberating.

I may never see my works published, but I know the words are never going to let me rest. I like that and I look forward to seeing where they take me in the future.

{edits to this may come later}
I am currently O.K.

Member Comments on this Entry
Posted by Nanette Bellman on 02/19/09 at 11:35 PM

welcome back.

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