How does a poem begin?
It begins because I need to hold something dear or turn over something troubling. It begins with an image, an opening, a dislocation of knowledge. With motion through landscape as much as because my emotional landscape needs to do some unfurling or shifting. It doesn’t begin until and unless I come crashing into one of these. I don’t write at a set time of day or even every day. I’m not interested in simply filling a blank page. I want what T.S. Eliot wrote, “the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” I don’t write to begin. I write to continue. I know this will be a journey because I want the poem to be sensuous even if I am writing about what is not easy or what is, by nature, messy, miserable, or uncontrolled. Every poem is a challenge and every challenge could be a poem. I love that—the sanctuary of such possibility. The uncertainty is a fine motivator.
No comments:
Post a Comment