"trust the work"
Poet, writer, and teacher Cassie Pruyn on the power of patience, casting a wide net for inspiration, and trusting the work ✨✨
This is a Beginner’s Mind interview, a series that explores the intersection of mindfulness and creative practice. Zen master Shunryū Suzuki Roshi said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.” This series shines a light on the practices that sustain people in their daily lives and open the path to new possibilities. Subscribe below to make sure you don’t miss any future interviews. ✨
Today’s interview is with poet, writer, and teacher Cassie Pruyn. I met Cassie on a hot June day, the first day of grad school, feeling like an anxious, sweaty middle schooler, looking for a friend. Right away, I gravitated toward Cassie. She has an energy at once graceful and above the fray and also self-deprecating, warm, and real. When she shared a poem during our open mic, I was overcome with envy at the way she uses sound (who can write a sexy rhyming poem these days?) Cassie’s poems feel like they come from another world, like she is taking notes from beyond. And, her faith in her creative practice has persisted even as she teaches high school English full-time and raises two small children.
Major Jackson says of Cassie’s debut poetry collection, LENA, “We relish in the truth-exacting ear of her imagination, and the startling intimacy of her mind.” Mark Wunderlich says, “This is a moving, muscular, finely wrought collection and a memorable chronicle of the mind and spirit making beauty and music from the senselessness of loss.”
I really needed to hear what Cassie shared about trusting the work, patience, and casting a wide net for inspiration. If you’re also in a creative pause or writing in the margins or struggling with imposter syndrome, read on for Cassie’s wisdom. (& if you’re reading this in your email & want to be sure none of it gets cut short, click here!) ✨✨
What are your writing/creative practices? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you?
I’m in a place in my writing life where I don’t have any rituals or habits because my writing is happening around the edges, whenever I can fit it in. There was a time (before full-time teaching and small children) when I was much more ritualistic and protective of my writing time, and I think some day I’d like to get back to some version of that.
But then again, the manuscript I’m revising now would simply not have been written under those more structured conditions. When I was drafting it, it came out of such raw, associative emotion that my whole process involved stopping whatever I was doing, without fail, to write down what was “coming in.”
I really felt like a conduit for this voice, and my practice involved simply listening and recording when the voice had something to say. I’ve never written like that before, and I’m not really writing like that now; it was just what the work was calling for at the time. So I guess that is a kind of mindfulness—that paying attention—although this voice was very insistent, very emotional and intense, so not paying attention didn’t really feel like an option either!
What are your mindfulness practices? Do you have your own definition or way of thinking about mindfulness? Can you describe your practices and what they bring into your life?
There is something about this moment we’re all experiencing (nationally, globally)—something about how terrifying and surreal it is—that seems to push me into the present moment. It’s not a practice, per se, but feels like a new way of being in and seeing the world. I haven’t really fully processed the why and how of it, but I think it’s something about the contrast between my immediate world (that, due to privilege and circumstance, still feels safe and often beautiful) and the greater chaos and suffering that I know is happening and that I know will ultimately impact me and those around me if it hasn’t already.
There’s something about appreciating, therefore, all I or we truly have—the present moment, our bodies, our sensory experience, our imaginations, our love for those around us. There’s something about claiming and reclaiming that psychic and existential space that feels like an act of protest. That, and some of the strategies I’ve been tapping into to manage my anxiety, have made it easier for me to be in the present moment these days.
Mindfulness has historically felt very challenging for me to tap into. By that I mean, I've always dwelled in my excessively fast-moving, anxious mind and haven't necessarily put the time into a mindfulness practice even though I can feel on a deep, intuitive level that I'd benefit—that there's more I could be feeling, something deeper and more peaceful I could tap into on an existential level if I could calm my mind and witness the moment. For a time in my 20s, I listened to meditation talks by a particular Buddhist teacher (Gil Fronsdal from the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA) and even just the concept of an existence free of attachment and therefore free of suffering felt liberatory to me, even if I never committed myself fully to a practice.
And yet, in this personal inflection point I’m in, it’s like I’m finally seeing the world for the first time—maybe since childhood. And I think something about this extended moment of national/global crisis has allowed me to arrive in the moment with more clarity and tenderness and love.
Do you have a mantra or motto related to your creative/mindfulness practices/life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post-it note to help you remember it? (or does this make you cringe?)
I am not a post-it-note-on-the-mirror type of gal, and my writing identity has been plagued with insecurity and self-critique in the years since my first collection of poems came out in 2017 (or maybe always!). Until about a year and a half ago, writing felt strenuous and uninspiring and I really felt I’d lost my mojo once the excitement of bringing that first book into the world wore off. Then, due to a confluence of factors and maybe some mysterious reasons I’ll never understand, my flow broke open again.
So I think my mantra is something like: trust the work, or trust the feeling that gives rise to the work. I am still very unsure about where the manuscript I’m working on now will end up: Will anyone want to read it or publish it? Will people get it? I am still drowning in insecurity around my (lack of) social media presence, how little I’ve been publishing, my perceived invisibility in the greater world of poetry, etc. But I do trust the work itself. There’s something really true about it—it’s an authentic creative expression of something really deep within me. So my mantra is something having to do with that feeling—with trusting it and believing in it, even if it turns out it’s only intrinsically valuable—valuable only in what it’s taught me and who it’s allowed me to be.
Trust the work, or trust the feeling that gives rise to the work.
What helps you when you get stuck with your creative/writing or mindfulness practices?
When it comes to feeling stuck in my writing practice, the only thing that’s really ever worked for me is to wait. To wait, and to try to remain open despite the discomfort of being stuck. It’s actually pretty brutal and unsatisfying, as far as strategies go, and really has only worked for me in retrospect.
As I said, I felt stuck for a long time—seven years or so—as a poet and writer. I thought maybe I would never really, truly feel like a writer again. But I didn’t stop reading or workshopping others’ work, and I tried to write (bad, uninspired) poems when I could; I hadn’t completely given up on that dream for myself. And then, one day, I started writing out of a vein of very intense feeling, and couldn’t stop. I wrote 100 pages of a manuscript draft in maybe six months, whereas I’d written maybe 25 or 30 pages of work over the previous seven years (almost none of which I felt enthusiastic about). I’m sure this strategy of waiting is not the best (it’s not really a strategy at all), but the fact is, I tried so many other ways of unsticking myself and none of them worked. For me, apparently, I just had to wait until I had something to say again.
What does the phrase “beginner’s mind” mean to you? Does it connect to your creative/or mindfulness practices? How?
I think, for a variety of reasons, my writing is very back-to-basics right now. There’s a way in which I’m just beginning again. By that I mean, I’m writing (and revising, to some extent) out of intuition and instinct. In some ways, that’s not even really true—I have been workshopping with dear friends (including with you!) regularly for the past decade, so many craft considerations are at my fingertips, but I’m also 10 years out from any formal engagement with craft.
Moreover, it feels like my memory got wiped clean and rebooted since having children; the person I used to be (an intellectual, an academic, a “serious writer”) simply isn’t around anymore. Which might be a good thing, in my case. So often I let insecurity and self-judgement, borne out of often feeling like an imposter in those formal spaces, get in the way of the work itself. But now, all I really have is the writing. Someday, hopefully, I’ll be publishing regularly again, and I’ll take workshops and go to more readings and reenter the writing world I haven’t been as much a part of recently. But, for now, I can approach the page with the freshness of raw emotion and intuition, and that feels like enough for the time being.
A Tip from Cassie
I’ve always heard others writers and artists speak to this, and I don’t think I ever really listened until I experienced the benefits myself, but my tip is to “cast a wide net.” By this I mean, when it comes to finding inspiration, don’t just go looking for it in other poems or books (although that’s also a great place to look). Seek out other art forms, other subjects and obsessions, and just live widely and deeply.
What unlocked my second manuscript was music—the manuscript itself is one long, obsessive fan/love letter to a musician—and just being a feeling person in the world, experiencing life. Following this musician’s art-making (he dabbles in other art forms himself) has inspired my own art-making, and I remain convinced that, no matter what, good art must have deep feeling behind it, fueling its expression. So, you know, making sure you’re awake and feeling and noticing those feelings (mindfulness!) seems to be foundational to any creative practice.
Cassie Pruyn is the author of Bayou St. John: A Brief History (The History Press, 2017) and the poetry collection Lena (Texas Tech University Press, 2017), winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Award. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in AGNI Online, The Normal School, 32 Poems, The Los Angeles Review, and many others. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, she holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.
More from Cassie
Order your copy of LENA (Texas Tech University Press, 2017)
Order your copy of Bayou St. John: A Brief History (The History Press, 2017)
Follow Cassie on Instagram and learn more at her website
Read Cassie’s poem, “Severed,” published at Salamander
Read Cassie’s short essay, “I Hated Country Music Until I Met Lena” at Autostraddle
Listen to Cassie read “Twenty Minutes at the Clam Shack” at The Common (from LENA)
Read “Lost Love Lounge” at AGNI (from LENA)
Cassie and me 15 years ago at Bennington, post-dancing in the student center, dying of laughter over something
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Be Where You Are is a newsletter about how to use writing and mindfulness to live more fully where you are. To reply to this newsletter, just hit reply. I’d love to hear from you! You can also find me on Instagram/Facebook/Bluesky or find more info at my website.
Love, love, love seeing the two of you together again--two of my favorite Bennington peeps ever!--and especially imagining/remembering you laughing your faces off while dancing in the student center. I admire Cassie's insistence on being patient with herself (even if it makes her anxious) while she's working out the shape of this new manuscript. And also, writing ANY manuscript with tiny kids is practically a circus feat! :)