Duffy

I’m just getting started with my writing.

In college, I took a creative writing class. The teacher’s name was Duffy. She was southern, though you’d never know unless she told you. It turned out she had run away from her southern roots. She must have been in her mid-twenties at the time, an age that was, for me, seemingly many years away. An age you don’t just run away.

Perhaps she was just getting started with her writing.

I never knew her real name, but I later learned her pen name was also Duffy. But she almost never shared details about her personal life, keeping a professional, if upbeat, persona. She possessed a poise and high heels that seemed out of place in a badly-lit, cramped classroom.

It turned out she had already been writing.

She had published a book of poems, and one time she shared one with the class. She held up her book without passing it around. She somehow managed to hide her secrets even in verse. But she never hid her convictions.

She showed us a music video on her phone one day, a pop song. Your classic modern pop song: three minutes of misogyny. A poor performance, poor delivery. In poor taste.

A feminist. That’s what she was.

Her womanhood as conviction.

I wrote a poem about a woman who wore lipstick. I had spent time on the Sephora website, clicking on lipstick shades and settling on “Tantalizing Tease.” Duffy sat there while I read, nodding while jotting down notes.

My womanhood: unapplied like a lipstick shade you’d rather put away.

She later told the class that poetry is meant to be spoken out loud; it is a performance. Devyn, a girl in our class with more intelligence than I will ever possess, knew about performance, delivery. She read a poem that put us all to shame. I’ll never forget her performance; her reading of her piece made the poem what it was. Her comedic conviction. Her voice.

Where was my voice, my conviction?

I didn’t, honestly, distinguish myself in that class. Poets like Devyn were just too talented. Maybe my delivery was off, unimpressively bland. Uncertain, possessing no womanhood.

I was just getting started.

Years later I looked Duffy up. She wrote another book of poems. I never even knew her full name but I knew she had what it takes.

And maybe no one reading my writing will ever know my full name, and maybe that’s what makes all of our performances, personal or in poetry, what it is.

We’re all just getting started.