 |
| Discarded Bells |
Imbolc is the Celtic holiday associated with Brigit, the
Irish patron goddess of poetry. When bound inside by the rigors of winter, many
ancient peoples turned to poetry as a way to brighten their long, harsh nights.
A friend and I were discussing poetry a few weeks ago. She
described it as the veil words between the indescribable and you. I like that.
I think of poetry as a sheer curtain that gives form to the wind. How do you
describe the wind to someone who can’t feel it on their face?
Marcel Proust is quoted as having said, "The real
voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new
eyes." For me, that captures poetry as well as my initial process for writing.
Because I only write poetry occasionally, I don’t usually
seek out inspiration. It usually finds me. Moreover, it clubs me over the head
and drags me by the hair back to its cave.
When inspiration strikes, I usually find myself confronting
something I’ve never seen before. By that, I mean never paid attention to
before. People who know me have seen me at social gatherings, in a park or on a
trip studying something seemingly ordinary, almost enraptured by it. It could
be something as simple as the sound of wind sighing through pines, a lizard
challenging me with its territorial push-up dance, or the rise and fall of
conversation at a party.
And then sometimes it really is something I’ve never seen
before. A few years ago, we were driving home on a cloudy, late afternoon and
saw sunlight bouncing off the Gulf onto the underside of the clouds with a strange
bronze light. Or another day after a week of fog where the clouds rose to a
high, thick haze that took on a platinum color that used to be very popular as
a metallic paint for cars.
What I’m thinking when I have that thousand yard stare is,
how do I capture what I’m seeing and put it into words?
The key for me is to try to capture the essence of what I’m
seeing right then. To somehow make the moment set in my mind. If I wait too
long, I’ll lose it. That means jotting down notes. Notes of lines. Lines of
description. Metaphor and simile. I don’t dwell on getting them exactly right,
just capturing an impression. One impression leads to another, and another.
Before I know it, I might have eight to a dozen lines in my notebook.
As soon as I get back to my computer, I type in what I have.
When I first review those lines, I don’t think they are very good or that many will
survive, but most do with just a little tweaking. I clean them up to deepen each
impression just a bit. If Karen was with me and took pictures, I note where
they were. If the lines form a narrative, I create a file with a title I put in
a folder called Working Poetry. I write down everything related as notes,
including where and when I wrote them. Sometimes new lines come to me then. Sometimes
not. But those notes are indispensable. It could be weeks, months or even years
before I get back to them.
If the lines are one-off individuals (like when we are out running
errands), I stash them in a file of random lines for future use. As a college
roommate of mine is fond of saying, I file it under “I” for “I might need that
someday.” Right now, I have scores of them tucked away. I could probably sit
down and compose several poems from just those pickup lines. I don’t always use
them in poems. Sometimes they go into descriptive essays, sometimes into short
stories.
If I’m particularly fond of a line, I’ll post it on social media.
A risk, but it forces me to finish the line before (or soon after) I post it.
It gives me a little feedback as to whether people like it, whether it
resonates. It also keeps me thinking about what it represents, setting the
impression and emotion further while allowing me to view it from another angle
if people comment.
At that point I usually let the lines or piece settle. This
is critical. My first impressions with poetry are not always right. I have to
let my subconscious chew on it intuitively for a while. I see this step as a
settling pond where the murky sediment drops out to leave clear water. This is
a step I repeat again and again before I finish.
When I finally sit down to finish a piece, I start by
rearranging the lines into an order that supports whatever secondary theme I’m
going with. On the surface, Water Falls (a recently posted poem) is about the various waterfalls we saw on a trip with
a secondary theme of the water’s life journey as it falls. Often when I start,
I don’t know what that underlying theme might be. So I arrange lines in an
order that seems to flow. With poetry specifically I can’t finish a piece if I
don’t know the underlying theme, the tie-in that weaves throughout, or at least
closes it.
While I wait for the secondary theme to emerge (if I don’t
have one in mind), I start playing with the lines and words. For me, this is a
meditative process. I get lost in it. In this step, I use two vital tools, a
thesaurus and a dictionary, both of which I have as throwback standalone
programs on my computer which will be impossible to replace when I upgrade to a
new operating system. I like the standalones because I don’t have to wait for
load times or see annoying ads on Dictionary.com (though I use it, too). The
thesaurus is convenient as I can click my way through a chain of words and
meanings very quickly.
The thesaurus I mostly use so I don’t repeat words too often
unless that’s my intent to create an impact. I try not to use complex words for
their own sake, though using unusual words is a weakness. I almost always look
up the words I choose in my dictionary, mostly to ensure I have the meaning (or
meanings) right. And as much to examine their etymology. Sometimes nuances in
the meaning only emerge from knowing a word’s origin and history. As well, both
tools often lead me on little games of hide and seek where I know there is a
better word out there but it just won’t surface. Sometimes I come across a
completely different word that I really want to use.
I play with words. I repurpose them. Sometimes I make them
up, or transform nouns to verbs, or vice versa. I repeat this process one word
at a time, turn of phrase by turn of phrase. Internal alliteration is important
to me. As is the cadence.
Once I get the words into some decent shape, I starting
reading stanzas or the full piece aloud. I pause anytime I feel a burr in a
stanza, word or rhythm. While I never write rhyming poetry or lyrics, rhythm is
very important to me. I don’t focus on anything formal like measure or meter, I
just see how it flows from one word to the next, from one stanza to the next.
After I reiterate that process to get the piece into
something resembling a final form, I let it settle again. That could be an hour
while I take a nap, or a day, or a week. If I feel the piece is close to
finished, I’ll let Karen read it then to get her impressions. Or I read it to
her.
Once I feel it’s ready, I embark on the final read-alouds
and edits. Again, I focus on any burrs. I also look for opportunities to
simplify the language, where simpler words or phrases will do. I try cutting
out adjectives and adverbs, or whole phrases if they don’t really contribute
anything. I spend a ton of time changing one word, changing it back, rearranging
the stanza one way then another. Moving stanzas up and down. Swapping lines
between stanzas so they reinforce each other and make better sense.
In Water Falls
Throughout the process, I pay carefully attention if I feel
any point of resistance. That resistance can crop up anywhere in the process
from the initial choice of a word, to the flow of a line, all the way to the
final read-aloud. How any given line feels is very important to me. I know it’s
right when it gives me chills. Not all of them do. Like almost everything I
write, I try to lead with an impression to set a tone and close out on a strong
note. In between, I’m mostly looking to transit from point A to point B.
Transitions and lead-ins from stanza to stanza create that sense of journey.
Reading this, most people might think I do this all as a
deliberate, logical process. Not exactly.
As we were watching a series of lectures on Strategic
Thinking last month, the instructor described how true strategic thinkers
think. As a rule, they don’t identify the problem, then come up with options
for the solution and evaluate them one by one. True strategic thinkers see the
problem and the solution all at once. I looked at Karen and said, that’s the
way I think, whether when I’m designing software, war-gaming or writing. It’s a
weird feeling that is really hard to describe.
I’m pretty drifty in the initial phases of the process.
There are a lot of conditions I feel I need met to work on poetry, which is
probably why I don’t do it as much. I need a lot of space and time where I
won’t be interrupted. At times, writing poetry is an oddly non-verbal process
with me. If I get interrupted while trying to sort feelings and impressions
into words, everything derails. I need to feel safe, and that my
responsibilities are taken care of. It helps to feel comfortable, nice
temperature, breathable air, maybe a little sun, but that isn’t a requirement.
Some of my best or strangest lines have come to me while I have a headache that
borders on a migraine. I think because those proto-migraines sharpen my vision
and force me to see the world differently. Almost like synesthesia (the
overlapping of one sense on another).
As a way to cultivate this in people not quite so
neurologically cross-wired, I offer an exercise. Write one line a day. Just
one. Take the time to sit on your porch, or to look out your front window and
describe the thing you see, the thing that initially catches your eye. Like in
drawing, you need to really see it, to study it, to make sure your mind doesn’t
shortcut it and make it a symbol. That’s the difference between describing a
chair and describing the particular chair you are sitting in. Make the line the
best you can. If you need more structure, make it fit into a Tweet (144
characters) or some other arbitrary limit. Do this every day for a week, a
month, a year. A few years ago, I posted a line every day on Twitter for just
over a year. It’s harder than you might think (as at least one of my readers
found out). Not everything I wrote was great but I still have a few of those
lines that stand out in my mind.
That’s a quick and dirty look at how I write poetry. At the
Spring Equinox, I’ll talk about essays. Until then, let’s get out there and
write.
© 2016 Edward P. Morgan III
© 2016 Edward P. Morgan III
