is right, the pear is always
askew at the brink, always in danger of falling
straight out of the world of sphere
toward the floor we don’t often see, that might be
painted a rosy brown or gray green and still tilt
into the landscape that needs brushstrokes
to complete it, to fill in—but he doesn’t always—the blanks.
Browsing category: Creativity
How to be a Poet (to remind myself)
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill –more of each
than you have –inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
A three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Invocation
O pen, open poem.
O paper, pave the way.
O ink, give me inklings
in your dark tongue
what to say.
O letter, let me draw you
out to shape us,
close to hold.
O word, breathe me onward
into mysteries untold.
O sound, sing me deeper
where the soul is so inclined
that if pen open poem,
poem will open
heart and mind.
How Poems are Made, A Discredited View
Letting go
in order to hold on
I gradually understand
how poems are made.
There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
of the too full cup
and runs and hides
its too full self
in shame.
I gradually comprehend
how poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
hearts.
I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
that season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
that crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.
There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.
For The Young Who Want To
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re a certified dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get down on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp in the bookish dark.
As They Are
And what if my words,
my fledgling poems,
were children, were toddlers
trying first steps,
tumbling, skinning knees,
squealing with glee,
splashing mud,
making a mess,
discovering themselves?
Would I hold them
at arm’s distance,
disown them, hide them,
say what I imagine
others will think—
that, after all, they
really aren’t very good?
And could that be
a way of protecting them—
shielding, holding back?
I know the mockery
odd children can face.
Instead, could I let
them ramble along weedy
paths only they know?
Lean close to hear
them whisper secrets,
learn what they
need from me?
Could I love them
as they are,
give them room
to grow, a chance
to shine?