A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Eighty-Nine

Three new poems today, and all quite different from each other, and not quite my usual work either. This mornings was a sort of meditation on waking up early.  Ironically, I actually didn't wake that early today, but the speaker is talking about rising before dawn.  I often am up that early, and I think it was thinking about the difference between mornings when I am up then and today which lead me to thinking about that subject.  It feels fairly complete, though still rough.  The idea in it is developed, though, which is often the most important thing in a first draft.  Getting the rest into shape is far easier when you know the poems overall shape.

The next piece was a sort of list poem about salt, and I am not certain how well it works.  It was in part an exercise, drawing on one of the prompts from the class I taught(I shared the full list on Monday, I believe).  The specific prompt was about using a single central word in the poem, allowing the rest to be a series of different images or definitions built on that central term.  In this case, I used salt, and some of it, I think, does work, but I am not really certain about the ending.  Honestly, I didn't know where exactly that was going when I started it, which sometimes works out quite well, but not always, and I don't really know which side this one falls on right now.

The third poem, which I just finished, was a recollection of helping a home-bound elderly woman who had gone blind.  It is more personal, and I wrote it at night, which contradicts my thinking last night.  Indeed, part of me wonders if I would have thought of it tonight if I hadn't written that yesterday.  I do think some part of me pays attention to my interpretation and analysis of the work I'm doing and picks a path that will make me reconsider.  That is, I think, a positive thing, as it is me fighting against having real rules for my work, and reminding myself that I am not bound to any one ideal.  I can write about anything, at any time, and in any way.  That does not, of course, mean that I don't, as a writer, have a voice or identity on the page.  I have my obsessions and interests, and of course a way of expressing the ideas that I hope is my own, but all of that is organic.  I don't need rules to see it happening, or to nurture the best parts of a poem.  I actually think this, of the three I wrote today, may be the best one, and it seems to me like one of the better pieces from that confessional vein that I have written of late.

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