About Writing Poetry, first thoughts on writing poems, on being a poet
I wrote a lot of poems in 1998, during the summer in the aftermath of the XWP season three ender, Sacrifice II. So much of my work came out of that same period of writing, a time when every thought I had revolved around or spiraled out from my obsession with all things XWP. And every line I uttered (or that I heard anyone else utter) seemed fraught with meaning and with meter and with messages from the Muse, telling me to grab my quill and capture those words and the images on my scrolls. For me a poem usually begins with an opening line, heard dimly as if spoken softly from afar. Sometimes I hear the cadence first, and am only able to make out the words after playing the rhythm in my mind for some time. I feel the poem first, only sensing the words later. Sometimes much later, but generally within a day or two. Sometimes it only takes a few hours. Sometimes only a few minutes and I write the words down in a white heat, quill scribbling across the scroll in a blur as I hurry to copy it all down before the moment passes and is lost.
Poems such as Nights are for nightmares, Darkest of dark nights, and Beauty had been hers came to me like that. A voice whispering in my ears, an urge burning like fire in my fingers until I staggered to my scrolls and grabbed my quill and copied the words down, as surprised as anyone else to read what I had written when I finished. Writing is often like that for me. The times I struggle to write are never nearly as good as the times when the words flow into and through me from I know not where.
This makes it hard for me to give an intelligible answer when asked: How do you write a poem? What inspires you? In truth, I find the second question much easier to answer than the first. I can be inspired to write a poem by seeing colors in the sky or in a painting, or by seeing images passing on a television screen or by hearing sounds, whether of music played by humans on instruments or by the wind or the thousand sounds going on all around us on any given day. Or by hearing of, or experiencing for myself, any of the ten thousand wounds we receive at the hands of our friends, family and passing strangers. Or the just as numerous kindnesses we receive. Though, to be truthful, I am not generally as inspired to write poetry or songs about the kindnesses. I may blog them and share them with others, to be sure. But I generally am not moved to poetry because of them. And that is how poetry affects me and how the event or what have you that inspires poetry affects me: I am moved to poetry. I am prodded, pushed, shoved to write it. I am ignited to write it. I cannot not write it; I simply must.
And that's the way it is with me with most writing. Almost all of it. If I am not burning to write, then I generally cannot. And that is probably why I have not written more than I have. That, and the sad fact that I once allowed someone to stand in my way of doing the one thing that has the deepest meaning to me, to my life, love for my friends and family and beloved Abby Dawg notwithstanding. Writing poetry and songs, and generally sharing my thoughts in some way, is part of who I am, and I am never more fully human than when I am happily tapping away at the keyboard (or putting together a song, no matter how the audible version pales in comparison to the way I hear it in my head).
Poetry, then, is not something I try to do; is not an artform which I have studied or for which I can claim any special or technical knowledge. Poetry is something akin to the air I breathe and the blood humming in my veins. It is primal and visceral and I cannot imagine a life devoid of it. I do not understand and have never understood those people who so loathed studying poems in school that they hate poetry to this day. I loathed studying poems in school, too, but not because I hated poetry, but, rather, because I hated what happened to poetry in that situation. To hand on a love for something, you must love it yourself. There is no other way. To hand on a mind-numbing hatred for something is, perhaps, a bit easier, and seems to be what many "teachers" and parents are so capable of doing and are doing to those in their care. Lucky for me I've always been hard-headed and in my own little world, oblivious at times to all that was going on around me. Chances are, when anyone is trying to fill my head with stuff and nonsense, I am busy listening to other voices, other sounds...
Reaching for my quill and a blank scroll and hurrying to scribble it all down.