I’m unsure how common this experience is for other poets. I have days of not knowing what to write, mixed with days of ideas crowding in, until eventually every idea has been pushed so much its no longer there, and then, like today, those when one idea that makes a big fuss about coming into the world.
Today is one of those days. There was one idea buzzing around in my head, though in truth it wasn’t really an idea, just a thought I had when I lifted someone's legs so they could get into the car. I wanted to capture the feeling that gave me. It wasn’t a feeling I could put into words. so I tried a poem … and words are what make a poem –and that’s probably why the writing today has been so difficult, Or is it?
As words failed me, I turned to reality, to the doing of something that seemed very lightly connected to my feelings. The result is a very drafty first draft , but I felt more and more as if it could be a poem each time I returned to it. As if neglecting my writing to go to my yoga class, make and eat lunch, do a few rows of knitting, was a positive thing.
The work has mellowed, what needs to be changed, made clearer, what must be removed is being revealed … time to leave it for longer, perhaps in a few days I will see the feelings I couldn’t put into words in the words I put into the poem. Perhaps.
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