Can deep confidence and deep shyness coexist?
Despite being a social person and even enjoying attention, to an extent, I will admit that I have difficulty with public speaking/reading my poetry before an audience. Strange thing shyness...
I believe it has something to do how to be at home in two places, at once, airborne (with one’s lofty inner thoughts) and grounded (read vulnerable, before strangers). I wonder if caring too much —what others might think — might also be at the root of this self-consciousness.
Mercifully, after 15 years of doing readings/giving talks, I’ve gotten a little better at it, even as I continue to wrestle with the basic irony of a private (& overly sensitive) person in a public profession.
Here, is a poem of mine that dramatizes this tension:
Liberation Song
He walks with a convict’s gait
a dream-ravaged, slip of a man
formally summoned to confess
before a suspicious audience
He makes music with his chains
the one with wild, hunted eyes
disoriented and unaccustomed
to such confusion of light and sound
His throat burns so, he’s uncertain
how he might find a voice to utter
his strange sin to the huddled faces
attending his trial and to every move
Then, a hush descends as he’s introduced
by members of officialdom at a podium
and the crowd erupts into polite applause
for the invited poet at the reading.