I haven't had the time to think, or to write, lately. I may have mentioned this before. Anyway. Right now it feels like I'll never write a poem again. Writing is so mysterious. I have ideas, but I'm just not writing (which apparently now I believe in, having no choice).I found out last night that I am not alone in the sense of oh shit, maybe I can't do it again ever, and the last poem I wrote was my last.
I know this isn't really true. But ugh.
And now, back to grading (and not writing) I go.
11 comments:
From 1999 to 2001 I didn't write a single poem. Not a word, not a line, zilch, zippo. And then it suddenly came back. It will come back to you as well.
No, I don't believe in it. I wouldn't know how to define myself.
Well, I guess I just needed to write this blog post.
Just finished one new poem, and a couple of halfsies.
Ha.
Well done!
Each time I write a poem, I am never sure I will write another. I am always hopeful, but I never feel confident in my own writing pattern because I have gone months without writing anything.
I would not allow myself to write on May 1st. I had to have a break from NaPoWriMo. Then immediately after that it all seemed like crap. I finally this weekend began putting together stuff that might actually work.
It really does come and go, doesn't it? Sometimes, it's a struggle to "realize" this idea I have in my head. Others, it's just knowing that I don't want to write. Or not understanding why I BOTHER writing (at all).
Oh, and that cup in the parking lot is very much a (visual) poem.
I find that for me it goes in cycles, or something like. Periods of constant almost frenzied writing, alternating with "dry" periods when I write maybe a line or two or a few words once every week or so.
It took me something like 15 years of just keeping at it before I finally started to understand that it wasn't going away, that the dry times are part of the process, that I need them in order for unformed poems to germinate in the ground, that the poems will always come back.
For the first ten or fifteen years after I started writing poems, whenever I would write a poem I would wonder if I'd ever be able to write another one. By now, every time I write a poem I know I will be able to write another one.
I take my poem notebooks with me everywhere, or at least anywhere that they won't get wet or on fire or whatever. So I'll always be ready to write when a poem, or a line, or a word or two, is ready to come out. I've been really amazed, at times, by how much of a sense of sustaining life that can give.
This happens to me all the time. I find it helps if I try to write other things--essays or fiction or short-shorts...or to just take a break and enjoy reading for a while.
Mary, if I know you, you will always find time to write and have things to write about. Think of it this way: it's just time catching up to your brain.
I wish I could say that I don't know how it feels. Hang in there!
Silence is a natural part of any creative cycle: we have only to look to the seasons to understand this. I have sometimes gone years without writing a poem. There are times when my psyche simply isn't receptive to poem making, and can't be forced. But, as others have said, poems always return, in time. Keep the faith.
Mari L'Esperance
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