A reader messaged me recently to comment on a piece I’d done about struggling with writer’s block:

“It seems possible to me that poetry and writing are occupations that some of us take up as a matter of identity,” he wrote. “It means something to be a poet or to be a writer that an individual finds valuable in some way.

Taking up that identity does not necessarily mean that one has something to say, no matter how practiced his or her technique might be. Nor is it true that simply because one has been able to write something valuable at some point in their life that all the rest of their life is to be about writing. Any more than the 20-some years we may put into parenting means that 'parent' is the only thing we are in life, or even that 'parent' is a role we will play until we die.

Perhaps ‘writer’s block’ is simply a state where one has nothing to say. In which case, silence is the most useful thing.”

My first response was, “Ouch, he thinks I have nothing to say.” I admit it, my feathers were ruffled.

When I got home, I looked at the peacock feathers I have in a blue glass vase. I met the bird who once owned those feathers (he dropped them) at St. Mary’s College in Maryland a few years ago, when I was a speaker at their literary festival. His feathers were ruffled, too, because all the peahens on campus ignored him, despite his obvious good looks.

Since he couldn’t get their attention, he would stand for hours, looking at his reflection in the windows of the arts building. He was devoted to that image. Even in heavy rain he would gaze admiringly at his beloved, unmoved by the cold or the wet.

Occasionally he would notice us humans, and if we stopped to watch him, he’d put on his finest show. Those dazzling feathers would fan out behind him, forming a blue-green half-shell. He would stand, head high, while we oohed and aahed, and then he’d turn around and pose for the windows. Back and forth he would turn, so both audiences could see him.

One day I stood there for 30 minutes, wondering how long the performance would continue. There was something so sad and charming about this bird, which wanted – demanded – attention.

He reminds me of the inner peacock we artists have – the desire to be noticed and appreciated for the hard work we have done.

That bird can be an asset, when kept in check.

It displays its finery when we struggle to complete difficult poems. “There’s something valueable here, keep going,” it says. It pushes us to keep sending out work, despite possible rejection. It’s the tiny voice that whispers, “I have something worth saying and sharing.”

Some people feel that the joy of writing should be all the reward we need, but imagine if Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, or Elizabeth Bishop had kept their poems in a drawer. Imagine if Shakespeare had said, “Ah, don’t waste your time with my plays.” The peacock has an essential role.

The problem is when “I have something to offer” is replaced by “look at me.” Too much window-gazing isn’t good for the writer or the audience.

I’m sure the man who messaged me understood that. He probably also knew that window-gazing often covers up a lot of insecurity. “Look at me, so you don’t notice that I have nothing to say.”

In that case, the writer has to dig deep. Resistance to hard work and personal growth may be the problem. Sometimes it’s simply a need to do more living.

And sometimes the peacock just needs to hear, “Aren’t you gorgeous. No one else has your style. Now go do something constructive.”

It's not a subject that poets discuss over dinner, or at literary parties. If someone does raise the issue, we murmur a few perfunctory words, followed by "pass the hummus, please."

Yet the more we ignore the elephant in the corner, the more damage it does, breaking one chair after another and then taking aim at the walls.

The elephant is the poetic economy, of course. The sagging poetic economy, since book sales are abysmal and more people write poetry than read it.

But no one knows how to fix the problem, so we cover our eyes and whisper, “Shhh, he’ll go away if he can't see us.“

Unfortunately, that approach didn't work when we were 2-year-olds, and the elephant isn't falling for it, either.

John Barr, a successful investment banker, prefers to look the pachyderm right in the eye. And as president of the Poetry Foundation, he's trying to tame the unruly creature by implementing several initiatives intended to jumpstart the poetic economy at both the macro (large scale) and micro (individual) levels.

One major factor, as he explains in “Six or Seven Ways to a Better Poetry,” an unpublished manifesto, is that writers ignore – or forget – their job description. “The poet’s job, basically, is to celebrate life. Poetry’s limitations in the past century come not from failures of craft but from afflictions of spirit,” Barr writes. “A Bosnian survivor reading our American literature of despair, with its spiritual quality of dispossession, might compare our own lives to his own and ask, ‘So, what’s the problem?’ "

The problem, it seems, is a steady diet of self-imposed darkness with no hint of respite or redemption. Who wants to swallow that, especially when each thin book costs $15 or $20?

Another part of the equation, argues Barr, is that poets tend to live narrow lives, especially those in academia. They confine themselves to the ivy walls, rather than following the example of Ernest Hemingway, who sought out new experiences – African safaris, driving an ambulance during the Spanish civil war – in order to feed his writing. “When did you last meet a contemporary poet who takes that approach, seeking out fresh experience or new knowledge specifically for the benefit of his or her poetry?” Barr writes. “If you would write better, live differently,” he urges.

Barr isn’t the first to make such observations, nor is he trodding virgin ground when he points out the dangers of “the MFA poem,” which is written in free verse, in the present tense, and is “single-mindedly personal.”

He is, however, connecting the dots between individual "producers" and the market as a whole. “Poetry needs to find its audience again, and address it." To do this, poets must bear in mind the impact of "what they write on how their readers live.”

That's a polite way of saying there's a cost and a consequence for every action, and poets have reaped what they've sown – unwittingly, perhaps – in vivid, disappointing ways. Even if Barr can improve the poetic economy, rebuilding its infrastructure and improving delivery methods, he can't make people buy a product they don't want.

That's the real elephant here. Shh, don't let it hear you.

A friend of mine called me last week, sobbing. She's had writer's block for several weeks, and the more she worries about it, the more entrenched the block becomes. Now she's at the point where she feels as if she's underwater, without enough breath to reach the surface.

I can certainly understand that feeling. I've recently overcome a block of my own.

"Are you afraid you have nothing to say?" I asked. "Do you need to live a little? Maybe let things 'compost' a bit?"

No, that wasn't the problem, she said. She was worried about big life issues – possible layoffs and a romance that wasn't working – two more things I understand.

"What if I lose everything?" she asked. "What if I can't find another job? Should I give up my apartment? Move back in with my parents?"

"Slow down," I told her. "Every 'what if' pushes an image or phrase back down into the whirpool. How do you normally get past a block?"

She couldn't think of anything, so I told her about two approaches I've used.

When I first moved to Boston, I'd hop in the car and drive three hours north, to Goose Rocks Beach, in Maine. There, the water is cold, not frigid, and the tide washes in hundreds of sand dollars each day. I'd grab a pail, wade in to my waist, and bend down, over and over, reaching for the round white shapes that look like communion wafers.

I'd bend and scoop until my legs went numb. Then I'd carry the bucket up to my towel, set it down, and head back toward the water. After an hour of floating in the sun and the salt I'd be totally limp, every worry dropping to the ocean floor below.

"I'm not really the nature type," she told me.

"So try something more urban," I suggested. "Pinball, followed by a large chocolate ice cream. There's no faster – or cheaper – form of escapism."

"Pinball?" she asked incredulously. "My life and career are falling apart and you want me to play an arcade game?"

"Yes," I explained, "because the game is a metaphor for what you're dealing with."

I told her all about the machine I used to play in grad school. The lights would flash – yellow, red, and white – each time I earned bonus points. But when I missed a simple shot, the ball rolling right between both flippers, the carnival-like music would grow louder.

"Great," she laughed. "A game with attitude that's going to mock me. No thanks."

"So try prayer," I said. "Or yoga."

She groaned, so I went back to the pinball idea, explaining how my first game was always annoyingly fast – ball one, two, and three going where they shouldn't. Game over. Another two quarters.

But once my mind shifted into neutral, the games lengthened and scores began to rise: 300,000, 500,000, 1,000,000. Occasionally I'd even win a free game. By that point, my worries, like the silver spheres, were
completely under my control. Red, yellow, white. Goodbye.

She wasn't convinced by my low-brow approach to her high-minded problem.

"Look, whatever you do, just cut yourself some slack," I said before we hung up. "Don't try to force it. Just stop thinking."

I know I gave her good advice, but it probably didn't help. It didn't help me a few weeks ago, when friends told me the same thing. Neither did reading an article called "Blocked" in a June issue of the New Yorker, by
Joan Acocella. In the first few pages Ms. Acocella lists a whole range of theories – biological, psychological, linguistic – why writers shut down, and she names many prominent authors who never regained their ability to write. After the third page I was so discouraged, I threw the magazine aside in disgust. Most serious writers have reached this point once or twice.

Most people also know that the block won't subside until you've dealt with some of the underlying fears. That was certainly the case for me.

One night I found myself walking toward a Ferris wheel near the harbor of a city I was visiting. I couldn't explain why I was so drawn to the ride – perhaps it was the red, yellow, and white lights. Or maybe it was the giant circle.

Either way, as the wheel slowly turned, I thought about a comment I'd heard at a poetry reading the night before. "I go to my doubt every day," said one writer.

Many poets do. But we get in trouble – I do, anyway – when we stay in that place too long. Doubt is like a lover that does nothing but slap you around.

The Ferris wheel helped me calm my thought some, but the red, yellow, and white lights weren't enough. I needed more altitude and perspective, so I went to the observatory 94 stories above the city. From there I could see patterns in the traffic and the water that I hadn't noticed before. Everything moved to a gentler rhythm. I relaxed for the first time in weeks.

My block didn't fully give way, however, until I was back in Boston, waiting for my suitcase at the baggage carousel. One bag after another moved toward me, briefly looking like mine. I started to notice certain patters and colors, much as I did when I collected sand dollars. "Oh," I thought, "this is just like writing. I don't create the patterns, I just notice them. I let them move through and past me."

A few days after my friend's phone call, I rang her just to check in. We spent an hour talking about the fine balance writing requires: sometimes you take action, sometimes you just let go. The same is true when thinking about layoffs, or any big challenge. You take the necessary steps and do everything you can, but when life pins your arm behind you, you must stop fighting until a new thought or option comes along.

She wasn't saying much, so I read her a passage from that New Yorker article, which I eventually finished: "With so many ordinary facts lurking behind its impressive name, writer's block may come to seem just that, a name, and names can be dangerous.... Possibly, some writers become blocked simply because the concept exists, and invoking it is easier for them than writing.... But for most writers the danger of 'block' is that it gives them something to scare themselves with."

"That didn't help," she said sadly. "It's almost as useless as your pinball idea."

I stand by the pinball method. Whenever I start playing, even in my mind, my worries become like the large silver balls – something I can knock around. Red, yellow, white. Winning score.

My friend still hasn't tried the game, but perhaps she'll find another way to take aim at her fears. I'd love to see her knock them away, rather than waste time worrying – as I did for several weeks. It's so much easier to take a deep, slow breath, still the surface of your mind, and begin to look for patterns, in whatever way they choose to arrive. Eventually a phrase or image will replace those shiny balls. Red, white, and yellow, sound and sense intertwined.

Red, yellow, white. Game over.

People have strange ideas about poets. We're supposed to be more dramatic than most Hollywood celebs. Our sensitivity and perceptiveness are hyper-developed. We see and feel things that others can't, as if we're borderline savants. Call it the poetic mystique or the bardic archetype. Either way, the centuries-old stereotype shapes expectations in strange and powerful ways.

A friend of mine learned this several years ago when she gave a reading at Boston University. An office worker approached her after the performance, lavishly praising her work. But then the woman had a complaint. "You dress all wrong for a poet. You should wear long flowing skirts and a cape. Always a cape."

Apparently, a good poet wears both her heart and her flamboyance on her sleeve. And audience members aren't the only ones who feel there are poetically appropriate ways of dressing. Many of the women writers I know spend a fair amount of time selecting an outfit, yet none of them give a hoot about fashion otherwise. I know I've deliberated over what to wear. In fact, half the clothes in my closet where purchased for various events.

A few times I've wondered if my inner drama queen was pushing aside my more sensible side. But I don't think that's the case. The voices that influence me the most are those that belong to other people, people who've heard me read and then commented: "How can someone with a [baby] face like yours write stuff like that?" or, more to the point, "You don't look like a poet. You're the average girl next door."

People don't tend to say such things when I "look like a poet," however. That's why, instead of my normal pastels, I'll choose an all-black outfit and funky heels. Rather than my businesslike attire, I'll wear silks in bold colors. When I look artistic, people tend to pay more attention to what I say.

Granted, a good outfit can't make up for bad poems, or for a lackluster reading. But having that poetic mystique definitely gives one an advantage. Why?

Because it signals the audience, perhaps on a subconscious level, to pay attention. It helps people shift from their normal way of viewing things to a more heightened sense of awareness.

And when you get right down to it, much of poetry's power comes from its ability to move people away from the ordinary, if only for a short time. Good poems say, "Pay attention, there's more to this subject (or scene, or life) than you realize."

Perhaps that’s why people are so drawn to the poetic persona, too. If you put on the more exotic role of poet, then you cast aside, to some degree, your ordinary self. Maybe that's why troubled teens cling so tightly to their identity as poets. And maybe it’s why people in their 50s and 60s who have written only two or three poems proudly introduce themselves as writers. It isn't vanity so much as wanting to be more than what they are.

Mary is a great example of this. She is the star pupil in the poetry workshop I teach at the local women’s prison. For weeks now Mary and I have been polishing her work, preparing her for the reading that she and I will give together.

To me, this is a minor event, one more reading in a long, long list. I won’t spend any time choosing an outfit. I don’t have to, because the inmates already know me as “the poet lady,” and I carry a certain mystique simply because I live "on the outside."

But for Mary, this reading will be the highlight of her year. She sees her debut, as she calls it, as a major turning point in her life. And she’s right. When she is introduced to the audience of inmates and prison staff, she will be Mary, the resident poet, not Mary, the quiet one, or Mary who committed such and such a crime.

She will have a new identity, a fresh start within the prison walls. That’s the power of poetry. But in this case, her new persona will be so much more than a myth.