What Well?
Where Do YOU Find Inspiration?
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Why do you write, and won't you run
out of stuff eventually? Hasn't it all
been said?
We each have a little 'dipping pool', some niche inside the brain
that is that spot that captures and ferments what will eventually
come out as poetry. We all know that place. But besides being a
place, it's also something that is fed from somewhere else. What
kinds of things end up there? What stokes the fire that will anneal
everyday thoughts into something as wondrous as verse?
For each of us, it's different; I can only speak personally here,
but one thing I am certain of: nothing, absolutely nothing has
been 'done to death', for that would be a contradiction in what
makes poetry so 'wondrous' to begin with.
There is not a moon hung in any autumn sky quite like the moon
you see. There's not been this moment, this particular aligning of
feelings to memory, the exact color of silver on the moonlit bark
of trees or the way breeze smells. Never
before.
Each constellation of elements, each time that one-armed-bandit
spins, there's a new combination of cherries, oranges and bananas,
and the poet's task is to tell it like it's never
been told before, and
tell it truthfully, with art. Back once again we come, to the
question of 'what kinds of things will find their way there'?
In a word: feelings.
Corny as it may sound, whether you are writing a narrative
poem about historic events, or a lovely lay about the lilacs in
your grandmother's backyard, you'd better damn well have strong
feelings about the subject or I guarantee, they'll be no poem,
perhaps a facile use of description, but no impact.
A poem is meant to 'jolt'...so what jolts you? I find I'm being jostled
daily by the news, by what I see out my car window when my mind has
taken it's 45 minute vacation on the way home from work. I discover the
most amazing first lines while sitting on a commode, thoughts quiet
enough to pick them out of the stream of consciousness flooding
through while perfectly relaxed and alone.
I think the word 'alone' is key. You cannot write in cacaphony.
You can be inspired then, but you cannot fold and cradle and
shape that mess into a poem until you have some silence.
Pay attention to your feelings
anger, fear, love, jealousy, tenderness, nostalgia, joy...
each and every one will have events, remembered images, smells and
textures you can call up to make it real for someone else by the
simple telling. Enter into it, and you will have it.
The final answer to 'what well', is: everything.
Everything that touches you, that pierces the membrane of
each day is the 'secret' pool of poetry. There is no magic, only
observation, only honesty and the ability to hear music
as you tell it. Only that.
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