How does a poem begin?
I’m going to go with practicalities for my answer here – so many people tell me they wish they could write poetry, or they wish they could start a poem, or they wish they could get their ideas on paper. To all of them I say: there is nothing stopping you. A poem begins when you write a word: be it on paper, on your computer, or on a napkin. It starts when you get out of your own way, and you put that idea that’s been floating around inside your body and mind down in some format that other people can absorb. Start with one word, one phrase, one sentence, and go from there. Write it down, leave it alone, come back and write more. So, I guess my real answer to this is, a poem begins when you believe it can.
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