Leaving Paris is a dramatic monologue about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald—a poem about writing, about encountering and facing ourselves, and about the question of madness...especially in the context of women, artists and writers...

I have always read biographies about famous icons; I couldn’t find enough when I was young. After a while, the characters became vivid…they became as vivid to me as any other person walking around my life. So when I started reading about Zelda and Scott, I needed to understand Zelda and her so-called struggle with madness. This wasn’t a story I expected, especially when it came to Zelda, the privileged Southern belle who stood out as the F. Scott’s “Golden Girl.” I had to ask…who honestly knows if Zelda was actually mad? 

As writers, each of us sees and faces the world in a unique way. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, however, stand out through the ages as the uniquely charismatic, irresistible couple of the Jazz Age, the actual “beautiful and the damned” of the literary world. 

As a culture, our definition of madness is ever-changing; our antidotes for what we consider madness evolve as we do. Based on this, how can we define madness in the context of women and of genius? Sometimes, women or artists aren’t mad at all; we simply aren’t easily or readily understood. 

As for this iconic Jazz Age couple, we can choose to view them in different ways…

Yes, there are the stories about Zelda…but then there are also the stories about Scott, bless his spirit, who essentially drank himself to death, and relied on his wife for written material…after all, the more we read about this famous couple, we come to learn that Scott’s female protagonist in THIS SIDE OF PARADISE was modeled entirely after Zelda; to construct the dialogue for the book, Scott quoted his wife verbatim. 

We also learn that entire sections of Zelda’s personal diary made up THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED. When asked about THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED, Zelda told the New York Tribune: "Mr. Fitzgerald -- I believe that is how he spells his name -- seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.'' 

And when an editor expressed interest in publishing Zelda’s diaries, Scott is purported to have flown into a rage. What did Zelda actually write in these diaries?

I ride boys' motorcycles, chew gum, smoke in public, dance cheek to cheek, drink corn liquor and gin. I was the first to bob my hair and I sneak out at midnight to swim in the moonlight with boys at Catoma Creek and then show up at breakfast as though nothing had happened.

Zelda was clearly an eloquent, charismatic, fiery spirit. There is no question she lived her life to the fullest; this is what made Scott and Zelda one of the most popular couples in the America of their day. 

And then we shall always live with this burning question...how much of Scott's genius was borrowed from his wife? 

As writers, we don’t choose writing; writing chooses us. Since the act of writing quickly becomes all-consuming, at certain moments…as we struggle to put something on paper that the world can understand, something that echoes and resonates with the divine, musical voices that come to us…writing itself can bring what feels like a state of madness. I don’t believe the world understands how incredibly difficult and impossible this can be—bringing that otherworldly consciousness to paper. I have projects I have been working on for years. Sometimes, there is no immediate answer, and so I set the project aside until I have the stamina and also the peace and space to tackle it again. 

Living with a writer…this can also be a maddening experience, as it probably was for Zelda. I have heard many stories about writers, or those in love with writers, who just cannot live with being abandoned days at a time while the writing consumes everything. 

Struggling to achieve balance and “normalcy” as a writer can also feel like an impossible act; as writers, we are essentially channels for the divine, in search of a greater consciousness, attempting to bring this consciousness to the rest of humanity. This is no simple balancing act. 

And yet, as writers, turning away from our craft can bring us to an even worse state of emptiness; Zelda, who was a writer, chose to first give up her work in order to support that of her husband, and then to later gave up a pregnancy for his career, which just could not support a child at that time. 

The story of the Fitzgeralds is fascinating and tragic. Zelda was the quintessential Jazz Age party girl, Scott’s “golden girl,” the subject of some of his greatest works, and center of the glitterati. When this all became too much, Zelda left her Scott in Paris and tried to go back to America, to reestablish some form of “normalcy” or “balance.” But for writers, the concept of normalcy is often an illusion, and we never truly can achieve exactly that…not for extended lengths of time, as we find ourselves immersed in impossible pursuit after impossible pursuit.

Leaving Paris is also a poem about encountering and facing ourselves, a theme I return to often. Just as Zelda attempted to flee from the life she had created with Scott—back home, back to her privileged upbringing as a Southern belle—on a universal level, we often cannot return to our pasts, or go back to undo past mistakes. We must make peace with our history and step forward into our future, into the more evolved human beings we are meant to become. In trying to run back to her past, to the privileged, idyllic, scandalous reality Zelda once knew, in a sense, she trapped herself. And it is dangerous to inhibit our discovery of the self, regardless of where that may lead us, or however terrifying that may be. 

Zelda died during a fire in an institution, so we don’t honestly know how long she might have been institutionalized, or if she could have simply taken a break, gained perspective, pulled it all together, and gone on to live a life that was replete…

As a woman, a mother, and a writer, I wonder what might have become of Zelda if she had simply dared to listen to that inner voice and respond to it, without being harnessed or caricatured or institutionalized by her husband…therefore, the question burns in each of us…was Zelda mad, or was it the life she chose that sent her temporarily to the edge?