poll dance: we’re friends, right? you’ll tell me where you find all your good poems, right?
Published by Carolee May 20th, 2008 in Carolee, Discussion Thread, Poll Dance.
The idea for my most recent poem came from a dream I had about being tempted to sit in a tiny, fragile chair. I knew it was too small for me. In the dream, someone even told me so. A high school boy. In a “that-chair-is-really-old” and “your-backside-is-very-large” sort of way, gently suggestive of the fact that I may want to find another chair. It’s a miserable dream.
Even worse, it probably relates to recent failed attempts at weight loss, and not to my belief that I just don’t fit (think Goldilocks and the three bears) in my own life. But I wrote it down in my journal, and when I decided to make a poem out of it, I indulged my need to find something “just right” for me.
It’s the most recent poem I have, and it came from a journal entry about a dream.
It’s fascinating, really, how ideas come to us. I don’t know if we take a lot of time to think about it, but it’s fun to attach images to the quest for inspiration and information.
I imagine people digging. Archaeologists. Paleontologists, Anthropologists. They sift soil through fine screens to capture fragments of other lives, cultures, creatures. When they discover something large, they carefully scoop away the dirt and brush away the dust until it’s revealed, little by little. The last thing they do is yank it out before it’s ready.
I imagine a corporate board room. Twelve suits around the table. Chinese take-out spilling on file folders. Nobody leaves until they figure a way to fix whatever it is that’s wrong.
I imagine a woman in an unsatisfying relationship. She also has a crappy job. Her apartment rattles when trains go by. She decides to start over in some other place. She makes lists — pro’s and con’s — to decide between New Mexico and Wyoming.
I imagine a scientist squinting into the eye piece of a microscope. She develops helpful, reproducible ways to influence how things work. She may try 100 theories. None of them may pan out. She’ll return to the lab every day for the rest of her life. She thinks about slides and samples even in the shower. Especially in the shower.
I imagine some lucky soul waltzing along the sidewalk with a light bulb glowing over his head. He’s happy. He’s contented. Mostly. Except that he’s jealous of the poet on the other side of the street onto whom a piano just fell.
Tell me a story. Where did you find your most recent poem? Answer the survey and then come by and chat about how it happened. Pure inspiration? Your journal? Current events? A prompt site? Read Write Poem? A photograph or image? Another poet’s words? A book prompt? Is the source of your most recent poem a reliable one for you? Do you typically work from the same place of inspiration or do you get messages from numerous methods?
I’m a “let’s-talk-about-our-process” junkie. Whether you are or not, indulge me. Help me get my fix. Stop by the comments and tell me how your last poem happened.
~Carolee.
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Here’s how the poll dance works: We post a poll and let it ride for a week and a half, and then I’ll talk a little bit about the topic and the results. The poll will stand for a few days after that to allow additional participation. The rotation gives each poll two weeks in the white-hot spotlight.
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Maybe I should have answered “pure inspiration?” My last came from being unhappily in love. Lots of poems come from there.
For journal writing at school I give my kids a prompt from A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves and I write along with them. Today’s for first block was: Someone said, “Can I see you in the kitchen?” I give each class a different prompt so I don’t have to write on the same one three times.
I also try to respond to a few of the online prompts each week.
In the summer, I get inspiration from sitting on the beach and just letting my thoughts flow. It’s weird, though; when I have all kinds of free time, I don’t write much. I guess a period of hibernation is good because I always feel refreshed and ready to write again once school resumes.
And sometimes, I just listen and observe the world around me and something pops into my head that insists on becoming a poem.
I’ve been in a sleep-deprived I just want to sit in front of the TV place for a little while now (special thanks to my three year old and six month old boys for that) so I’ve been doing random exercises from Behn and Twichell The Practice of Poetry or Addonizio and Laux The Poet’s Companion. But yesterday’s poem came from an old (1958) black and white of my mother as a young woman on a trip to Italy.
There are two often overlapping ways I get poems. The first is doing something onerous like laundry or trying to get to sleep. A line or a few words that sound good together or sound like each other will come into my head. I write it down and come back later.
The second way is seeing something or being in a situation — seeing the houses in my “neighborhood” or being in hospital or reading something in my journal — this will cause a line or a few words to pop into my head. I write it down and come back later. Sometimes later is much later sometimes its half an hour.After I write it down I copy it out over and over. It changes each time.
So I guess my poll answer should have been inspiration. I answered “my journal.”
my most recent poem, black and bleak as it is, was written from my current frame of mind, somewhat depressed, i guess i could say…thinking about some regrets and unrequitted love and just plain CRAP in my life that is going along just GREAT but i often get myself STUCK in my head thinking about things from my PAST (and i’m a counselor. don’t come to me when you’re down!). hmmm.
I recently reviewed ‘Unleash the Poet Within’ and was inspired by their focus on which poetic forms suit which situation - so that’s given me a lot of ideas for the future (I’ve already written my first ghazal!). I like prompts, they can push me into stretching myself. I write a lot of haiku which mostly directly arise from observations.
Its interesting to think about where inspiration comes from, because we may find that there are pockets of potential inspiration that we don’t really pay much attention to but which could offer us rich seams of poetry
oh, this is wonderful! i love hearing about how you all write and process information you may want to use in poems.
dale: you always leave us wanting more. “unhappily” in love. oxymoron? you’re holding out on us.
jennifer: i sometimes have trouble writing from photos. something about them begs me to tell the actual truth, the facts, the nuts and bolts of the event being captured. and i get stuck there. i know i need to look at it like just another prompt but i have a lot of trouble, especially if it’s someone i know. what permissions do you give yourself to make it work? i think i’d have to pretend i knew nothing about the person in the picture.
nathan: i do a lot of what you describe — write it down and come back to it later. that works very well for me b/c often i just get a phrase or a couple lines. and it’s not always convenient to park my butt beneath an oak tree and craft a piece around the snippet for an hour.
linda: i like that you write along with your students. i’m sure it makes them feel part of a process instead of just students being observed. (and bonus! you get some ideas, too)
jan: i have learned that depression can be a place of great reflection. for one, it keeps me away from numbing out (can’t be numb and write at the same time). i personally find that i don’t allow the whining and self-pity to remain in the poems i keep so that editing process is helpful, too.
CGP: that’s interesting about pairing certain poems with certain content. aside from the more obvious cases, it’s difficult for me when people say, “let form serve the piece not detract from it” b/c form often does distract me when i’m reading and, certainly, kills my writing. i do “get it” but it’s very hard to make it work. it’s nice there’s a text that suggests a path!
More and more these days I’m finding prompts are a great motivator; they spark so many associations, bring me to places I might not otherwise have thought to travel to. I have stacks of favorite poetry books I thumb through at my desk, too–for random inspiration, kick-starting on a slow day, to remind me how a poem feels when it’s working.
I’ve been obsessing on issues of practice and process since my son was born three years ago, and I’ve needed to find ever more creative ways to find enough time in the busy days for writing. There are two things that have worked best for me. First, I never sit down to write “cold.” I’m always thinking about the poem or project of the moment, while I’m in the shower, washing dishes, folding laundry, during dull stretches around the conference table at work. I try to have a general concept I want to explore and an opening line or two when I finally have a moment to sit down to commit something to paper.
Second, and somewhat conversely, I try never to wait for inspiration. If I do have a moment to sit down and write, I spend a lot less time staring at the page and waiting to come up with something good than I used to. There’s just not enough time for that these days! I just start writing, and while I may not keep anything I started out with, the process of spinning out words is often enough, it gets me to that place I’m trying to reach.
DP: i don’t wait for inspiration, either. it’s quite liberating! (although, like you, i don’t keep everything, and i lament, sometimes, time spent writing one for the trashbin as “wasted” even though i know it’s not)
My most recent poem came from reading a poem called Rapture by Edward Hirsch. It’s about a moment. About a boy seeing his mother walk into a classroom and for just a moment she was like a constellation.
From there, I was reminded how irritated I’ve been lately that my kids always pick grumpy daddy over me. How could they!
I had an idea, I began writing and, of course, as is the case lately, some God stuff floated in.
The poem isn’t finished. It’s in pencil on the back of a face my 3-year-old drew. Even now as I’m typing, I’m thinking, oh yeah, my mom doesn’t believe in the rapture, but she believes in Jesus.
You see, poetry is everywhere, if only you can quiet your mind for a moment and let it in. But just for a moment, because the noise is half the poem.
At least, that’s how I work.
I have a pack of editors living in my head, so phrase that comes out of my mouth (or doesn’t) is looked over and stuffed in a weird little mental folder if it sounds good. I also have interesting and witty neighbors. I file a lot of their stuff too.
The next step usually takes place between 4:00 and 6:00 in the morning, which is my thinking time. (This is also when I think about prompts.) If thinking about it turns up anything, I’ll jot that little bit down right around 6:00, when I have to get my butt in gear to get to work by 7:00. Everything I write at this point sucks.
The next morning I think about it some more. And I edit. If the editing seems promising, I might edit some more in the afternoon, especially when there are people I don’t know in my house and I seclude myself in the bedroom all day. And I keep going like this, maybe posting it on my blog in the process, until it seems like something I enjoy, or I reconcile myself to the fact that it will never be something I enjoy, which is more frequent. I still keep them around, though, because sometimes I rewrite them completely as a new poem, and they don’t suck quite as much.
That’s my magical process, or lack thereof. Wake up, think, write, think, sleep, wake up, think, edit, ad nauseam.
All over the place: memories (a lot this way), sights, thoughts, paintings, photographs, newspapers, books, observations of friends/people, other poets.
I have not been writing much poetry lately. I know. Poor me. I’ve been doing a couple of projects for a CNF class and it’s taken all my writing time. Soon I’ll be back to poetry and inspired (Ahk! I hope!) to write and revise.
I usually work from a prompt, but gather thoughts from my journal or observations of life around me to write from. I have tried (unsuccessfully) in the past to use too many prompts or ideas in one poem. (Hence the lack of success; I think one poetry pal mentioned I had a lot of wheels on the poem. And he was right!!)
I chose “a Read Write Poem prompt” for my poll answer because it had been the nudge for the very last poem.
I love the prompts everyone here comes up with. I don’t think I am too biased, either!
Here’s the results from the poll (before I switch to the next one):
The idea for my most recent poem came from (check only one):
Pure inspiration (29%, 15 Votes)
A photograph (or other image) (15%, 8 Votes)
Other (13%, 7 Votes)
My journal (10%, 5 Votes)
Reading another poet (10%, 5 Votes)
Current events (8%, 4 Votes)
Another prompt site (8%, 4 Votes)
Read Write Poem (6%, 3 Votes)
A prompt from a book (2%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 52
Carolee - I actually know nothing about my mother as a young woman, so when I write poems from photos of her I’m tyring to imagine her story. I think more along the lines of how did she get to the moment when the photo was taken? What did she do next? The photo is a starting point but I end up writing about what’s outside the frame - at least, that’s the goal.
Durable pigments - I totally understand, am write there with you. I have recently been pleased to discover that I can still write poems without waiting for the bird of inspiration to land on my shoulder.
Jillypoet - I should read that Hirsch poem. I’ve been trying to describe a moment when I swear I could actually see my my 3-year old change right there, the actual moment he grew. Like a sudden rearranging of cells, but I can’t capture it, it was so ethereal.