POETS

Linda Bierd's, First Hand, was my reading this morning. Wonderful poet, every word a chisel stroke on marble, that sense of releasing a form inherent in the stone, releasing an impression inherent in the title, but entirely unknown to the reader until, line by line, it forms. Multiple metaphors, like various sections of the symphony taking up melodies and counter melodies. I want to write poetry like that.

It seems it would take more quiet than my life allows, to go deeper, uninterrupted, into the meditation of word and sensation that writing is for me. Poetry isn't the goal of late, it's a by-product, an eruption.

(A bird shadow dances on the gold-papered pane of our sideboard cupboard, the gold glowing in the early sun. I need to feed the birds today. They feed me in their fragility and dedication. Oh, and their continual state of checking for predators between pecks at the feeder. Predators are few in our yard, but they're hypervigilent.)

So the elements of poetry I need to cultivate are sound (crispness), rhythm, sensual impression, economy of words, precision in choice of words, multiple metaphor, and a deep faith that I am bringing the reader into greater awareness with each line (and even deeper awareness with the last line). Briefly: sound, rhythm, sensation, meaning. Professional poets must lead lives of quiet desperation: always searching, receiving impressions and willing them to greater meaning. Mystics too. Quiet exultation. Both worshipping the mystery of inner being, of form arising from formlessness, of life from apparent death.