HOW TO WRITE A POEM

The poem is often elusive, slipping like a shadow in and out of being. Words come and go, embracing one another and then imploding into a meaningless mess onto the page. Thoughts interrupt one another pointing us in a dozen different directions at once as words whirl, uncontrollably, in the storm of our need to write.

How often have I heard a would-be poet tell me, I don’t know why I can’t write, I have a million ideas and I want so badly to put them down on paper, to turn them into poems. And there’s the problem, poems are not born of ideas, they are born of feelings.

I have discovered that I am the most prolific poet when I am least intending to be. I become a poet in the grocery store when I see a child crying and a mother ignoring them. I become a poet when I am walking in the woods with my husband and I hear the distant calling of an owl, and it awakes in me a sense of sadness, of loss, of emptiness. I become a poet when the wind whines through the pine tree outside my bedroom window, arousing in me a sense of all that was, all that is, all that may yet be, and all, that will never be.

I become a poet walking the beach at Cape Cod. The sea whispers or, sometimes, shrieks at the shore. Gulls squawk and sand scrunches wet and grainy between my toes. I can feel memories tugging at my heart – yesterdays when my children were young, and the world was waiting… Yesterday when the sun shone brighter, and the wind was sharper, and the sea was at peace with itself. Yesterday when everything seemed possible and there were no shards of loss scarring my heart. Yesterday, when life was whole…

A poet does not so much “write” a poem as “feel” it. Something happens triggering a memory, a need, or we are reminded by something we see or hear or read, of something we had hoped to forget and suddenly – there is a feeling, intense, and impossible to ignore. And because feelings demand acknowledgement, words come, perhaps in a rush or perhaps, shyly, one word at a time and, as our feelings flow or drip, the poem, like a held breath being expelled, happens on the page…

I wrote a poem once

long ago that came to me

the way the scent of flowers

stain the breezes

of a summer day vague

unclear but near enough

to tease the senses

mutilating my defenses

insisting that I feel…

I wrote

a poem

when I was still connected

to the past a blossom dying

on the vine

sharp relentless thorns

of time abraded by the pain

the loss your name a curse

a prayer reverberating like an echo

everywhere…

I wrote a poem the day

you died dutifully cried

tried to simply let the moment

own me accept the hole

your dying opened hoping

I would not fall in but the ground

beneath my feet was thin

and I tumbled and I scrambled

and the words became the brambles

cutting scratching hurting

until submissive

I gave in…

I wrote a poem to say

in the only way that I knew how

I was sorry

for the times I failed you

the limitless mistakes I made

betrayed my oath to be

the me you needed me to be

and simply flowed into the ocean

of my own discord

aboard the ship that was my life

sinking in a sea of disapproval

and despair

wondering

if you thought

I didn’t care…

I wrote a poem words

happening into rhythm

into rhyme tasted time

a bitter pill upon

my tongue remembered

being young

I wrote

a poem I think

to say

my poem’s

the only way

I know

to pray…

Susan A. Katz (All rights reserved)

Post Views : 8