Local News
(2009-11-25)
null
Margaret Aho : "And he's drawing on these yellow gloves and he looks at me and says oh so this is the writer'."
Those words mortified Aho. She knew at a fundamental level the fox had called her bluff she was a writer. As a mother of three in her late thirties, she wasn't ready to tell the world. The dream continued.
Margaret Aho : "He said well if you had seen what I have seen you would realize you could never write the words to my music'."
It was as if the fox was taunting her, challenging her to write. But Margaret Aho couldn't. She was terribly insecure - something, she says, was imprinted on her as a kid growing up Catholic.
Margaret Aho : "And words enter us and saying over and over again before receive the bread of life, you say "oh lord I am not worthy to enter under your roof say but the word and my soul shall be healed.' So there was this fundamental sense of unworthiness."
The words Aho felt most comfortable writing, were the words she wrote in secret. She started jotting down her dreams after her first son was born back in the 1960s. Two more sons came. So did the vivid dreams. Aho kept writing them down.
Sound of footsteps on hardwood floors.
Margaret Aho : "We're in my study and we're looking at the bottom shelf of a three-shelf bookcase and these are chemistry blue books. This is the first one."
You almost need a magnifying glass to see her handwriting.
Margaret Aho : [sound of pages flipping] "Dreams observations."
It's in this lab book Aho noted the dream of the fox provoking her to write. At this point her three boys were no longer infants. She finally mustered up the courage to take a creative writing course.
Margaret Aho : "Oh my god it was horrible."
Aho struggled and obsessed over every word. She says her Catholic roots held her back after all in her world the word of God was the ultimate writing.
Margaret Aho : "In the beginning was the word and the word was god and the word was god. So it had this weight. How could I say the word or words?"
It was Aho's writing teacher who helped her wrestle through her interpretation of Biblical verse.
Margaret Aho : "My teacher who was so kind read what I wrote and he said amazingly I don't want you to come take classes anymore. I want you to go home and write. '"
And he gave her some parting advice.
Margaret Aho : " You have to stop being afraid of success.' And I said Success who in the world is afraid of success?' And he said You are.' Isn't that bizarre?"
She never wanted visibility. But her teacher made her realize she couldn't write secretly anymore if she wanted to be a poet. So the first poems she ever wrote were about giving herself permission to speak.
Margaret Aho : "So I wrote about mutinus, about silence, about how silence is carried in the body, about the color of silence, the texture of silence and where silence resides in the bones."
Twelve years later Margaret Aho published her first collection of poems called Carpal Bones. Years after that, she finally wrote about creature of her dream.
Margaret Aho reads from one of her poems.
Aho has since reconciled her past with the life she now has as a poet. She doesn't go to church anymore. Her poems have become a form of spirituality. Aho closes her eyes as she reads. She's somewhere else, as if she's meditating.
Margaret Aho reads from one of her poems.
Margaret Aho has moved past her fears and embraced her dreams.
Margaret Aho : "Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of all my poems really derive from dreams because it's the access to what cannot be manipulated by me can't be controlled by me. It is a gift and your job is to put it down as truly as you got it."
She now has 42 years worth of journals filled with her dreams... fuel for her poetry. That's why Aho and her husband Jim begin each morning the same with a simple question.
Margaret Aho : " Did you dream? What did you dream?"
© Copyright 2010, idaho
