How does a poem begin:
As Madame Moore said, “Ecstasy affords the occasion and expediency determines the form.” I know when something is happening, time gets sticky and I feel both small and large at once. A dead rose on a bush can offer entry. It’s a textural thing. The small thing leads to the big space that I understand as freedom; I let my mind sort of fan out until I feel like there’s a hinge or a hatch, a feeling of another world behind whatever image or bit of music afforded the poem. This is not symbol making. Despite the feeling of space and freedom, I do impose a lot of strictures on myself. Poetry is a special kind of thinking, poetry is thinking that is bound to feeling, not tiny personal feelings, but to the larger archetypal feelings of human kind—love, confusion, anger, grief, horror of death, joy—whatever river the poet is in. I’m fascinated by prehistoric Man and I try to imagine what their connection to the world was like which is impossible to know; they are our first poets. The work they did—making sense of the world through stars, rocks, vegetation, animals, water and forging rituals and ceremonies—that is the poet’s work writ large. I am very careful to keep myself in the Cloud of Unknowing for as long as possible when writing, every line needs to flow from the feeling of wanting to know but not knowing. As Frost wrote, “way leads on to way.” I keep poems “open” for years because I love the feeling of potential, or re-entering the mess of words and being in that place of suspended time. I am always asking myself, is this room big enough? Can I see all the corners? If I can see the corners then I need to open a window or find a tunnel out of there, or I need to build another floor. I wait for a feeling of overlays. I believe that poetry is “the best words in the best order,” but I also absolutely don’t believe in perfection of any kind whatsoever, at least in regard to anything produced by Man. I love imperfections, ruin and all examples of Wabi-Sabi in the world.
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