May 12, 2004

Last night my Writers Group met.

I feel much better now.

I brought a couple of poems instead of prose this time. Although working on a short story can be like slogging backwards through a marsh at night with dark glasses on, writing poetry always feels to me like a nice hike on solid ground in a well-lit world.

There's a particular state of being I enter when working on a poem. I'd call it a mood, except that it often encompasses several emotions at once. I'm sure this is a common phenomenon for poets, and I know other people have talked about it. About their muse, their vision, their gift. But that's not going to stop me from talking about it too.

Making a poem joins two aspects of my personality in a kind of dance. There's my creative, emotional self - the self that loves to throw metaphors on the page with wild abandon, use words together that normally don't give each other the time of day, bind and braid lines with sound and image. I get a high off of doing all of that, especially in a first draft. But then there's also the analytic editor who gets a kick out of checking the rhythm and rhyme (if there is rhyme), cutting like a surgeon through what I don't need or what I'm not trying to say - basically tweaking and excising until the right poem is what's left over. Okay, I like doing that kind of thing too. So there.

Writing poetry feels good. It's about the only thing that will keep me so engrossed that I forget to eat, I forget to sleep, I forget my children's names or even the fact that I have children.

It's not like I'm transported to a peaceful place and am One with the Universe when working on a poem. I've been known to bark at the innocent people who try to interrupt me before the final line is really nailed down. But so far, writing poetry is never ever a chore. It's a joy.

I worry a little - because I chew worries like a cow chews cud - that the reason poetry is so - dare I say it?- easy is because I'm not really working at my craft enough, not reaching or learning or developing. Maybe it will get harder as I dig in deeper. Maybe not. As it is, I feel like I'm getting away with something when people praise my poems. Do they know that they don't take long to write? Do they know that it was play, rather than work? At worst, a poem is a puzzle I put together or a problem I have to solve. But I enjoy those things too.

I guess I'll just stay grateful that so far, no one has caught on and so far, it hasn't been painful. And in the meantime, I'll keep dancing.