NaPoWriMo, How to begin: The Art and Beauty of Your Poetry Work
“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.”
There is a little voice inside me that surveys the distance between what I aspire to do and what I am doing. Where I’d like to be, and where I am. Everyday she whistles in the large gust of wind blowing between all I imagine for myself, as writer, as poet, and where I stand.
But, I don’t concern myself with the air up there—where I stand there are children growing, nasturtiums blooming in hot yellows and oranges of sun, lizards doing push-ups alongside silvery green curry plants, a husband wickedly loving and handsome, clouds running east in the sky, lemons waiting to be zest and baked into sweet bread, and mushrooms, carrots waiting to be stewed then sopped up with cornbread. There is a bee swarm of memories and healing I need to grow through, a silent child of a voice learning to unquiet herself.
I have no business up in the air, less there is a poem asking to be pulled from some fat rain cloud, or the sun, sky is calling me to work.
My business—the work of poeming and writing—is digging feet, knees, navel, elbows, chin, forehead into the beach shore and drinking from the life lake at my eyes. It all is in front of me, wave lapping at my face, and it is all I can do but drink from my eyes.
So, I am minding my business.
Writing poetry can often feel like slapping the wind and asking someone in the distance if you’ve hit your target. Yes and no. All at once, you’ve hit all of your target, yet touched nothing. And, no one but you can ever be fully sure if your palm touched it at all.
Poetry is about transforming the unmouthable, untouched, unnamed pieces of living—often unknowable and defying understanding—and forming those pieces into breath and color, light and sound, that can only be touched with another breath. True poetry is rooted in the heart’s ether.
This all means that our poetry business is in chasing the heart’s ether, and with out surest, most honest language breathing it into some other heart’s ether.
We are the only ones able to know if we’ve adequately slapped the wind. We are the only ones able to know if we are holding what we could not mouth—if we have gotten closer to touching and naming the life lake at our eyes.
When you begin, the first time or the three hundredth time, do your business. Your writing and poetry business of eye drinking and swallowing at the lake, so that within, you may come close to mouthing, touching, naming your own wild, precious life.
Do not scent the roses or add indigo dye to the lakes or skies. Let the clouds rain where they may, even if the sun is still shining. Poetry tastes all the life parts with all your eyes and ears and whispers it out the center of your throat.
Live that; begin there.
Cheers—to [a month of] drinking poetry from our eyes and whispering, shouting it from our throats!
kiandra