The Problems With Poetry

The problems with poetry begins with a book of it that might be good but you're not sure. You've read it once. You're reading it again. Lying in bed. Winter only a few stanzas away in the night. You're too tired to read the next poem with all the wondering whether the book is good or not. So you open Mark Strand's Man and Camel, a thing of certain and exquisite beauty. So good it solves all problems. You read six poems. Each a gently impossible wave brought to shore by invisible forces, celestial bodies on elliptical paths. Too much wonder. You need to share these poems with someone who would understand enough to simply sigh and smile at finding the divine on these pages, inside these brief poems, between man and camel. But you don't know anyone who reads poetry. Not that way. And even if you did, they'd prefer some other book. Not that Mark Strand stuff, they'd say. You'd tell them how wrong they are, but the camel has spit all over you and the man has climbed up to ride away. A real poet's exit. The kind of poet you see in your sleep, his book of poetry open on your chest rising up and down, as though pulled by some celestial and poetic force, the other book lying next to you filled with questions a mere mortal such as you hopes someday to answer though the poetic part of you knows you never will. Those are the problems with poetry.

Prose Poem: You're Not A Bird

In the dream you are at the top of a tall building. Sitting on a wet ledge. Not exactly perched. You’re no bird. Birds don’t read. And there you are, on a ledge at the top of a tall building, reading a book. You hold the ledge tightly with one hand. Birds aren’t afraid of falling. But you’re no bird. Wind doesn’t lift your wings. It pushes your heavy body. Your solid bones. It catches at your book. You need to hang onto the ledge with both hands, you think inside your brain. The one that’s bigger than a bird’s. But the book. You treasure books. Even in dreams. You can’t surrender it to the wind and gravity. The ground so far below is wet with yesterday’s rain. How you see that from this high up, you don’t know. Neither do the birds. The wind gusts again. Maybe it makes a sound, but your dream is silent. You only feel the wind and your hand slipping from the ledge. You will fall. Even when you let the book go and your reading hand clutches the ledge it’s no good. That wind. It flings you from the top of a tall building, from a wet ledge on which you werne’t exactly perched. You soar through the air. Not like a bird. Like a stone. You’re overtaking the book, its pages flapping like wings, letters and punctuation black against the off-white pages and come down at the end of a sentence on the bottom of a paragraph that ends a chapter. You come to rest wondering if the book can fly with you inside. Like a bird in a dream coming rising into morning’s first light.

Maybe Just Go

You wake and have plans. Sure you do. You write pages of words that would feel like nothing if you didn't know better. Quit your whining, you tell yourself. In the workshop, you apply another coat of poly to a project and wash the brush in thinner. The laundry tub could do with a bit of a scrub. You scrub it but just a bit. You go upstairs thinking you might go for a run. But the cat insists you pick her up. She purrs. You scratching that purring cat. Summer heat is rising. Bugs whir like tiny machines. You move in and out of the world, the whir and purr bringing on a trance. Then the cat has had enough of you. She jumps down. You pull on running shorts and shirt. You take yourself out into the heat, stand in the driveway, the world before you. Infinite choices of direction and distance. The map of who you are and might be. You stand, trying to choose right or left, as if it matters. As if anything matters other than putting a foot forward, bringing the other along, and so on and so forth. You can have your plans, write your words, coat a project in poly, hold the cat while she'll let you, and stand in the driveway forever, but it's getting so very hot, the world is moving on with or without you. Maybe just go. No, really. Go.

Manure

Yesterday I had a good idea for a prose poem. I grabbed the computer and typed it as best I could. It came together quickly and I followed the thread through to the ending.

At which time I realized it was complete crap.

Creative people too often complain their stuff is terrible when they no better. I find such people tiring and tune them out, which is why I want to be careful in saying the draft I wrote, about a guy I knew in college who sang aloud, despite being born from a good idea, is absolute manure. I've written good stuff and bad. I know the difference. That and I'm not looking for anyone to build me up about this. I'm not stopped by the failure. I'm not even slowed down. Why should I mind manure?

Manure can be useful. Spread it just so and things grow, so I'm told. Sure it stinks, but we get over that. If we can make use of it, then manure might just smell sweet.

(Manure, by the way, turns out to be a fun topic about which to read, if done right. Donald Hall, whose essays are done right, wrote often and delightfully about his grandfather's manure pit. See Life Work and Essays After Eighty. Check that shit out.)

In creative work, failures far outnumber successes, so there has to be some benefit to the creator that goes beyond failure and success. In other words, creative people have to appreciate the turds as much as the roses.

That last sentence certainly felt like a turd.

More than just accepting when things go awry, I have to enjoy having written these things and then use them as fodder of some kind. I'm not saying that I smile and dance every time something falls apart. More often than not I pound the desk and swear a lot. Still, there has to be something more to creating than being successful or else things just ain't gonna work out.

Some failures can be rewritten, if the idea is that good. More often, the idea lies fallow and comes up in some other piece, some other context. But most of the time, the idea fades away. Another one comes along.

When I was a writing teacher I would write a page, share it with students, then shred it in front of them. "I can always write more," I'd tell them. Getting too attached to something I've created, well, that's a big old mistake.

Just to make sure of the crappiness, I've just re-read the draft prose poem. Yep, it's bad. This is the best section and even it disappoints me:

His face was always shadowed. His smile a white surprise. His eyes ready to break into song. I'd hear him in the showers. His terrible voice echoing off the tile walls.

Like a bad car wreck, I've totaled that poem, declared it a loss. It wasn't insured, but I'll still get something for it. I've already gotten this piece and probably more.

By now I'm well adjusted to the sweet smell of all this manure I'm creating. There's no telling what might grow from it, but something always does.