Poetry has been running through my mind the past two days. I've rewritten several and have some lines rattling around in my head that will find their way to paper soon. Sometimes I go back and read poetry I wrote years ago and I wonder if that is really my poem or did I copy that from a book of poems. It seems strange to me that I'd write about a subject that touched me deeply enough to write a poem, but today I'm not aware that I wrote it.
I think it is because when we write poetry our minds go into a state of thinking, deeper than we normally think, and for a short time we are delving deeply into part of our mine that we are unaware of in our daily life.
But that might not be true of Nancy Simpson, Kathryn Byer and others whose lives are poetry. I'll bet Kay Byer dreams in poetic phrases. I know Nancy sees every thing around her as a poem.
I can't explain how I write a poem or why. But when a line or a thought comes to me, I know I must use it or write about it. I mull it around for days until I know how I will use it. Sometimes it is a poem and other times a line will lead me to a story or essay. Oddly enough, after completing the piece, the line might have been cut out of the poem or the idea I began with leads me to something else which I decided is more in keeping with what I want to say.
I have the last poem for my chapbook. I finally stopped re-writing it and I will mail it out this week. Ah, that is such a relief to have that last poem. Now I feel it is complete. The chapbook title is Now Might As Well Be Then, and my last poem, Blue Moon Every Twenty Years, is perfect for the ending. If only the publishers agree.
Glenda, You describe poetry and how it works well. I write all the time, but I also get caught up in life and it is like a battle of good against evil. People ask, have you been writing poems and I say well I've been busy, had to take my car for service or had to take my dog to the vet. Then like you, I find my clip board (which I begin every day with my coffee) or I find a folder and there are poems I hardly remember writing. I'm not saying I do not remember writing them. I just don't quite recall. But there are the words and the words take me back to the exact moment, to my first thoughts, and always there are new words to add, some words I might not have even known when I first began the poem, or some new experience in my life changes every word when I look closely at these lost and found poems. Poetry is my life. You are right about that.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes for 2009 and let Now Might as Well Be Then find its publishing home.