How does a poem begin?
I love the quote “writing isn’t waiting for the lightning to strike, it’s sticking the fork in the socket.” (If anyone knows who said this please tell me – I’ve searched everywhere!) For most of my life that’s what I’ve been doing – sticking my nose into things that are gonna hurt me. I gravitate toward intensity and am always digging into something electric or toxic or dying or on fire. And poetry was the natural outcome of that for me. So I just thought: poetry is made of that intensity.
But now I am finding the softer sides of poetry where my process actually does look like just sitting and waiting for the storm to gather, hoping the lightning will strike. It might even look like laying in the grass and watching frogs in the pond, hoping they tell me something secret. Thankfully, that’s quite a bit easier on my adrenals. I’m finding sticking forks into sockets as a pastime is not super sustainable. Plus I live off grid so outlets are harder to come by. Maybe I should stick a fork in a frog? I’d definitely cry if I did that, and poems often come after I cry.
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