Intersection
My 30th birthday is about a month away, and I've been giving some thought to what entering that new decade will be like. To quote Tom Waites: How the hell did it get here so soon? Frankly, I'd hoped to have accomplished more by now. My B.A. for instance. And on the poetry side, instead of this extended bout of writer's block, I'd hoped to perhaps have a book out. But alas! Not a single published poem.
The silver lining: By the time I do start publishing, it will be mature work. Or at least more mature than that which I was capable of in my twenties. I've won some hard wisdom over the past decade, and that wisdom has deepened my ambivalences and uncertainties, making me (to borrow Carl Phillips's adjective) a more athletic thinker.
Perhaps thirty is the decade in which youth and maturity intersect--the decade in which vitality merges with early wisdom and proves fruitful. I'm optimistic.
