Glimmerings

After a couple despondent weeks, today I finally was able to write something worth keeping (or at least I think so), and I've got another idea for a poem in the chamber. No telling whether this spell of creativity will last but I'm happy for the time being. Check back next week for an update.

In the meantime, since I've been thinking so much about the conditions necessary for writing, here's a Friday quote for you:

"For a poem to coalesce, for a character or an action to take shape, there has to be an imaginative transformation of reality which is in no way passive. And a certain freedom of mind is needed--freedom to press on, to enter the currents of your thought like a glider pilot, knowing that your motion can be sustained, that the buoyancy of your attention will not be suddenly snatched away."

-- Adrienne Rich (from "When We Dead Awaken": Writing as Re-Vision)

Skidding

I'm not happy with the poems I'm writing right now. For one thing, there aren't many of them. And the ones I do produce strike me as boring and predictable (and based on a few initial comments on the latest batch from my readers, they think so too -- although they say so far more graciously). It's disheartening, not only because it never feels good to create crappy poems, but because good writing depends on a kind of momentum that I'm not currently able to achieve.

I have a feeling that this is one of those situations when you have to resist your instincts to forcibly regain control and instead loosen up -- like not slamming on the brakes when your car skids on black ice. But it's not easy. Relax. Relax! RELAX! I yell at myself.

Poems Every Which Way

A lot going on this week as I continue to keep up a steady writing pace. That feels lucky and I'm eager to maintain it as long as possible. From past experience I know that everything can dry up quickly, and getting as much as I can on paper now will help carry me through future droughts.

I also sent three new poems out to my readers and flipped the ones I got back from Kenyon Review out to Tin House. That's the fastest I've ever turned a batch of poems around, but after looking over them again they still felt right to me. Ideally I'd like to have four or five such groupings that I can easily keep in rotation until they find a home. I still intend to get another submission out by this weekend (leaning toward FIELD for that one), so that may become the second set.

Hunting

Slow-going this week, as I grapple with some fundamental questions about subject matter. Bukowski says the poet is like a cat; it doesn't think about killing a bird, it just kills it. But what if there aren't any birds around? It seems to me that writing poetry involves a lot of waiting and hunting. You find a quiet place to watch for something with a heartbeat, or stalk it in the shadows. The beginning, especially, demands patience, focus and timing. In silence you calculate what is catchable and when to pounce. If you move too quickly, the commotion scares it off and you're left hungry.

So how do you decide when to go off hunting? In the morning, before I start actively trying to write, I read for an hour or so. If I'm lucky, something will occur to me during that time, some piece of a poem or just an interesting image or idea. It's like the cat spotting movement along the treeline. It gives me something to work with later on, and that's when the words seem to flow most smoothly. The poems that result tend to be the ones I like most.

But there are so many days when it feels like I'm sitting in a quiet field, and nothing's moving. Just me and a few vague ideas floating overhead, ungraspable as clouds. A lot of people would call this writer's block, but to me the problem is not so much that there are obstacles as it is that everything is so wide open. My time is not limitless, so I can't just sit around waiting--even cats realize that's a good way to starve to death. So, always somewhat hesitantly, I trod off in search of something to sustain me.

The problem is, as I get hungrier, it becomes increasingly easy to hallucinate poems where none exists. I start pouncing on dry leaves that blow by or I waste my time chasing grasshoppers. I might catch something, but it's never very filling. It's a frustrating experience, and the question becomes, how long to persist? There are days when I spot a cardinal while stalking a cockroach, and that makes everything worth it. On the other hand, there are many more days when all I get is leaves and bugs, or I convince myself that a ragged bundle of cloth is a bird. I might as well have just given up and hoped for better hunting the next day.

What's worth writing about? What's not? It's like knowing which kind of day it will be for bird-hunting. There's no way to know until afterwards, so I go out there and follow whatever movement I find, and hope it all works out. Maybe what Bukowski really means is that you can't go into the hunt looking for one particular bird; instead, you act on instinct, not thinking about what you want, but taking what the field provides. If that's right, then maybe the real trick of it is knowing where to hunt in the first place.

Fitting Together Shadows

It strikes me that writing a poem is like creating a picture by painting only the shadows. What the poem references is impossible to recreate, so we write around it. To work, the poem must achieve a certain volume defined by the words and, to last, the shape it makes must have a kind of movement or tension. You could also say that making poems is like sculpting pots, only the poem is not the pot but the space inside.

Whatever the case, it's been a frustrating morning. Clay, paint, shadows, words -- all I know is nothing I've started on today is holding together, much less making any space worth sounding.