Where does a poem begin?
My poems usually result from an image that haunts me. Recently, I went outside and saw on the side of our house a blood colored stain that swept off to the north in a spotted trail. Another time, my husband was using a chain saw to cut logs into firewood, and it freaked me out. These glimpses I collect and either write about them shortly afterward or keep them in a notebook. Once I start writing, I try to describe what happened in detail. I basically overwrite the scene until I notice phrases that shake with energy. This is the messy place where my poem really begins. Sometimes I use a form to help find those places. Shakespearean sonnets come to me fairly easily, and if I have a mess of a draft, I try to see if containing it in a form helps. If it doesn’t, I break the form apart again.
The poem begins when it surprises me. It’s like the poem’s spirit starts speaking from its images and vocabulary. I love to find the “flow” like when reading poems such as Ada Limon’s “How to Triumph Like a Girl.” Her poems have an inevitable “flow,” which makes them so satisfying. When my poems begin, it feels like I am channeling what the poem wants to say. Actually, it looks like the beginning of the poem is also where it starts careening towards its end.
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