Writing Poems: Like to Hear It?; Here it Go.....

in·spi·ra·tion n. Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity. The condition of being so stimulated. An agency, such as a person or work of art, that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention. Something, such as a sudden creative act or idea, that is inspired. The quality of inspiring or exalting: a painting full of inspiration. Divine guidance or influence exerted directly on the mind and soul of humankind.

my addition to the definition: the breath of the gods

I think I started writing poetry when I was in junior high. I know I remember writing my first short story in elementary school. It was called "Christmas in a Cave"-- very topical-- about a temporarily homeless family who had to live in a (gasp) cave for Christmas. Of course, as part of the Christmas miracle, dad got a job which would save them all right after the magically lovely Christmas they had..... This sentimental bit of crap got me noticed, labelled a creative genius. I basked in the newfound glory of something I could do that others couldn't. I, my friends, was a writer!

But I don't think poetry came into my heart till a little later.

I think most readers probably write poetry (usually bad) when they're in high school, tormented by adolescent hormones and feelings of outsider-ness and terrible, unrequited crushes. That's what most of my poems were about, at least. Some of them were, for an untrained silly girl, pretty darn good. I had a bout of writing like ee cummings-- with no caps or punctuation or titles. I did this till, in college, a professor mentioned that not having a title was like a headless body. Good image. Your poem's "head" sets the stage.... sometimes, now, I agonize over the title. Does it give too much away? Not enough? Is it stoooopid?

I was terribly offended my senior year of high school that I got second place in the schoolwide poetry contest to a girl whose poem I considered severely inferior to mine (or was it third? memory eludes me... I think it might have been third, but I didn't mind the other poet who beat me out; her work I deemed worthy of being called better...) In the way that these things always happen, at my ten year high school reunion, two girls who I had known peripherally thought I was that girl and called me by her name-- the one whose poem got first place while I suffered in obscurity in (yes, I think it was) third place. Oh the agony! The terrible angst! I should have written a poem about it.

I wrote a lot of poems about my high school boyfriend (the evil ex.) He was a jerk, and since I was generally dreadfully unhappy, I wrote some pretty good misery poetry. I remember he asked me once if I ever wrote happy poems. (Every poet has been asked a question like this. If we were the gods we deserve to be, we could smite the people who ask this question with some sort of weeping, purulent boils). After evil ex and I broke up, I wrote a funny poem about our love dying, and no one noticing "until summer came and it started to smell." I read that at a poetry reading in my freshman year of college, and got quite a laugh out of the gathered crowd. Serves him right; people were laughing not with him but at him. :) Sweet Revenge.

I've written poems for people at their weddings, at their breakups, for the hell of it. I wrote this really cool one, once, about Judas & "the kiss," and gave it to a friend who later disappeared from my life, of her choosing (without any understanding of why on my part). I wish I still had that poem. Perhaps the lost poem is better because we remember it as better than it was. If you've been with me a while, you've read the two poems I wrote for my babies which I think might be some of my best work ever. I've written stuff, of course, for Andrew... but our relationship defies poetry, in so many ways, because it is, in itself, a poem of sublime beauty.

I've studied a lot of poets over the years, from Old English poems to slam poets and their little conventional rebellions. My favorites are probably now Emily Dickinson (who I hated in high school cause we read the over-sentimentalized, edited for Victorian readers versions-- you gotta read the originals before you find out how radical she actually was.) Anne Sexton--goddess of the love & death poem (this glorious poem which I read to him when we were dating, is the reason our Waterford champagne glasses are all the wheat pattern-- a moment my wonderful hubby still gets major props for initiating). I like Carolyn Forche for some postmodern influence. Gary Snyder, although sometimes I get bogged down in the longer poems. I would probably have to say that for some reason, a lot of William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens has crept in there over the last few years. Not a bad thing, really, but not expected. I still do love ee cummings, although his playing with the line & conventions of English sort of can get a little old, once you get the joke. And then what person who has studied him doesn't hold a soft spot for the old guy in a floppy hat-- Walt Whitman?

Poetry is such an important part of my life, yet I often go days, weeks, months, without reading a new poem or even exploring an old favorite. I need to fix this absence in my life. When I read a lot of poetry by other people, it tends to inspire me to write my own. My brain gets wired to the patterns of
the poetic line, the
strategic break.
When reading poetry a lot, I think differentLY. (I hate it that apple leaves the LY off. It's an adverb, people. Not a clever marketing trick.)

There have been too many sad poems written in my own life; I need to teach myself to write about the sublime things more often, and turn off my inner critic who throws poems away because she thinks she knows better than me. (She's quite the snob.) I get (as all poets probably do) a little too self-reflexive, and write poetry about writing poetry (which is like literary self-pleasure activities*.... fun to do, but not very fulfilling for others. You can do it in a room with a locked door, or with the door open, the thrill of getting caught part of the pleasure..... but it's still all about you you you. I I I. (Aye yi yi: Ricky Ricardo).

Poetry, I like to tell my students, is the bullion of language. It's condensed, a dense, salty cube of language; if you bite into a chunk of it, it can(should) be painful, overwhelming. Water it down and you can get some pretty good prose (soup!) but water it down too much and you get colored water that doesn't sustain anyone. Substantial poetry is a gift from the divine. It can feed your soul in a way that no other thing can.

*you know what word I mean here... I won't write it cause I'll get all kinds of freaks googled in here with that word as a search term. :)