A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Forty-Six
It gets rather frustrating, at times, when I am in transition with my work, as I have been of late. Often it feels that I am not quite hitting my target, somehow, but that feeling is often an illusion, born of the changing nature of what I am aiming for. In some ways, the issue is that I am not always aware of what is happening in a poem I am writing. This is true a lot of the time, when writing, not only when in this kind of transitional period, but in other times, it usually is clear to me how the poem is operating by the time I am through with a draft.
In writing these newer poems, I am working from a position of trusting my intuition, as it is the knowledge that I am developing by writing so much comes from underneath. It is not that I become aware of a new idea, it is that I discover it happening. It is not a clear delineated learning, but instead a slow realization, often with my conscious recognition of what is really happening as a final step. Essentially, the part of my mind that does the work is ahead of the part of my mind that is able to understand what I am doing, or at least it often feels that way.
This, in and of itself, is fine by me. It would, I think, be far harder to have to knock my head against the wall trying to understand the practical idea of something that I think I know how to do in theory. Instead, I am looking at the work and reflecting upon it, and that seems like a perfectly fine arrangement, as far as it goes. I am learning, developing my writing within a process that feels organic and which allows me to have the joy of discovery as I find myself exploring new techniques or concepts.
At the same time, however, as I pointed out at the beginning, not being certain of the work in this way can leave me feeling at a bit of a loss. I don't always know what the work is doing, or if it is any good, and it is often not the kind of poetry that I am accustomed to writing. As a result, I am left with a feeling that I am off in some way, that the poem does not really represent my best effort in some way. I know this not to be true, at least in the sense that I spend the time working on these poems, and do not think I am slacking by writing them or anything like that.
The feeling is the sense that I am not hitting my target, as I said at the top. I have a sense of what my poems "are" and these new pieces often go outside of that territory in some ways. That is a good thing, really, as it represents me expanding my writing in new ways, even if, at times, I find myself feeling dissatisfied with the work when I first produce it.
In writing these newer poems, I am working from a position of trusting my intuition, as it is the knowledge that I am developing by writing so much comes from underneath. It is not that I become aware of a new idea, it is that I discover it happening. It is not a clear delineated learning, but instead a slow realization, often with my conscious recognition of what is really happening as a final step. Essentially, the part of my mind that does the work is ahead of the part of my mind that is able to understand what I am doing, or at least it often feels that way.
This, in and of itself, is fine by me. It would, I think, be far harder to have to knock my head against the wall trying to understand the practical idea of something that I think I know how to do in theory. Instead, I am looking at the work and reflecting upon it, and that seems like a perfectly fine arrangement, as far as it goes. I am learning, developing my writing within a process that feels organic and which allows me to have the joy of discovery as I find myself exploring new techniques or concepts.
At the same time, however, as I pointed out at the beginning, not being certain of the work in this way can leave me feeling at a bit of a loss. I don't always know what the work is doing, or if it is any good, and it is often not the kind of poetry that I am accustomed to writing. As a result, I am left with a feeling that I am off in some way, that the poem does not really represent my best effort in some way. I know this not to be true, at least in the sense that I spend the time working on these poems, and do not think I am slacking by writing them or anything like that.
The feeling is the sense that I am not hitting my target, as I said at the top. I have a sense of what my poems "are" and these new pieces often go outside of that territory in some ways. That is a good thing, really, as it represents me expanding my writing in new ways, even if, at times, I find myself feeling dissatisfied with the work when I first produce it.
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