There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Usually a poem takes shape accoustically - a line or a pair of lines will repeat itself in my ear.
The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.
So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.
I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum - the poem finds a reason for continuing.
Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens.
I don't really have a metaphor for how I write, but it kinda feels like chipping away at a big dark object that I can't really see.
I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue.
I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.
What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely.
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