A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Twelve
I am still in a strange place. On one hand, I am experiencing a sort of shift in my work that is very promising, that seems to be moving me towards a deeper and more challenging area of work, at the same time, the energy of my creative inspiration is a bit flagging at the moment. So, I am simultaneously in a very creative mind frame, and yet lacking in the energy to fulfill the potential of those ideas. I am still, of course, writing my daily poems, and feel that I have done some good work today. Even in writing some pieces that were intended to be quota fillers, I felt that I achieved a bit more than I have in many similar circumstances previously.
In particular, the last poem I wrote was one of that variety that I often describe as plate spinning, just writing about the process of writing in some way, to at least keep moving. The poem that I wrote tonight, while it falls into that category, I am thinking that it is something else, as well, and it is certainly an example of a poem that I wouldn't have written before. It breaks rules that I had made up for myself, rules that served to teach me how to do the work, but which are not real in the end.
Really, that is the best way to describe what I think is happening in my poetry at this moment: I had a set of ideas that had become rules for me. They described the way a poem needed to function on many different levels, and they were and are useful ideas. Those rules were something ingrained within my concept of poetry, in a way that I followed them without thought. That is a positive thing, in many regards, because it made me a far more capable writer, as they were useful rules. But, they were not the truth, just a particular viewpoint, and as such, those rules were also keeping me from seeing other possibilities in the work. In the past week or so, I have let go of some of that and relaxed into the understanding of the work on a deeper level.
Now, this is a result, I believe, of writing some "found" poetry, particularly a long poem that is composed entirely of the titles to books of poetry in my collection at home, and it has taken me some time to really understand how that liberated me from some of my predilections, but it seems fairly obvious, considering it now. One of the realizations I had early on in that process was that the work which resulted from that process was distinctly reflective of my normal voice, of the work that I do all the time, when I am constructing the entirety at the level of the letter and the word. Here I was, using large chunks of language already constructed by other poets, and I was still coming up with language that seemed to be my own.
That recognition, gave me the courage to see that I don't need to hold the wording the way I have to come across on the page. It loosened my grip, in a sense, and helped me to relax about the work, in some ways. I came to see that the most important parts of my work, the things I care most about, are things I cannot lose. That recognition, allowed me to take a fresh approach, to open up myself to the possibility of trying things that seemed against certain ideals of mine, and finding that they opened up the potential for my work to be far more expansive than I had imagined, as well as offering me ways to create works I wouldn't even have conceived before. I am still unpacking all of this, so this isn't exactly a great explanation yet, but I think that becoming more aware of this is also going to boost the impact of the actual learning, and I have a sense that more revelations are working their way through my mind right now.
In particular, the last poem I wrote was one of that variety that I often describe as plate spinning, just writing about the process of writing in some way, to at least keep moving. The poem that I wrote tonight, while it falls into that category, I am thinking that it is something else, as well, and it is certainly an example of a poem that I wouldn't have written before. It breaks rules that I had made up for myself, rules that served to teach me how to do the work, but which are not real in the end.
Really, that is the best way to describe what I think is happening in my poetry at this moment: I had a set of ideas that had become rules for me. They described the way a poem needed to function on many different levels, and they were and are useful ideas. Those rules were something ingrained within my concept of poetry, in a way that I followed them without thought. That is a positive thing, in many regards, because it made me a far more capable writer, as they were useful rules. But, they were not the truth, just a particular viewpoint, and as such, those rules were also keeping me from seeing other possibilities in the work. In the past week or so, I have let go of some of that and relaxed into the understanding of the work on a deeper level.
Now, this is a result, I believe, of writing some "found" poetry, particularly a long poem that is composed entirely of the titles to books of poetry in my collection at home, and it has taken me some time to really understand how that liberated me from some of my predilections, but it seems fairly obvious, considering it now. One of the realizations I had early on in that process was that the work which resulted from that process was distinctly reflective of my normal voice, of the work that I do all the time, when I am constructing the entirety at the level of the letter and the word. Here I was, using large chunks of language already constructed by other poets, and I was still coming up with language that seemed to be my own.
That recognition, gave me the courage to see that I don't need to hold the wording the way I have to come across on the page. It loosened my grip, in a sense, and helped me to relax about the work, in some ways. I came to see that the most important parts of my work, the things I care most about, are things I cannot lose. That recognition, allowed me to take a fresh approach, to open up myself to the possibility of trying things that seemed against certain ideals of mine, and finding that they opened up the potential for my work to be far more expansive than I had imagined, as well as offering me ways to create works I wouldn't even have conceived before. I am still unpacking all of this, so this isn't exactly a great explanation yet, but I think that becoming more aware of this is also going to boost the impact of the actual learning, and I have a sense that more revelations are working their way through my mind right now.
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