"She"

"She" is actually the first of a trilogy, "She", "You", "Me" I wrote in response to my first really bad experience reading a poem.

Most of my poems are about love, many quite revealing, coming as they do from personal experience and a deep-well of feelings I was unable to express any other way. But I felt a little under the gun the day I was piecing together "There Is a Place", unlike the flowing ease with which I normally write such bits. Sorta like I was pushing it; like I was forcing two separate poems into one.

The reason I felt pressed that day is I intended to read this new poem at No Shame Theatre that night in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the person I wrote it to would likely be there.

I felt enormously uncomfortable performing my work, like I'd written a very bad poem, the kind that convinces everyone of the worst nine words in the English language: "Would you like to hear one of my poems?" In fact I heard later through some catty females that it had been bad.

In response I set about to organize "The Love Poem That Ate Manhattan" for the upcoming Poetry Lounge which my then roommate emceed. I asked for a contribution from him, from the dark genius Damani, and from a young poetess of promise. It would be a combined effort.

I only read the first two parts of my trilogy. They seemed to go over well.

Ursula T. Gibson of Poetic Voices Magazine liked She" enough to give me feedback and do a little editing on it, then submitting it for publication. Her faith in me must have been justified as the piece ran in their August 2005 issue.

Most importantly, the actual process of writing those three poems changed me. I felt myself being transformed as each of them came off my pen. The crying was prodigious.

Fate has had the last laugh, of course. Googling "Michael J. Farrand" gives top billing to my Israel rant "Pull the Plug", which my friend Tucker Duncan very bravely performed at No Shame , under the title "There Is a Place" (haven't asked him to change that yet, just the other poem it headed off incorrectly). The actual cause of all the trouble comes up next.

I still can't read the damn thing for remembering my shame at No Shame that night in Charlottesville. May my perspective, talent, and experience yet grow to the point where I might take a stab at reworking it some of these days.