Loose Leaf Notes

I. A couple of weeks ago I laid my husband’s yoga mat out in the middle of the yard at night and stretched out on it to do some stargazing. Watching the night sky made me feel timeless, vast and minute at the same time. Then, the phrase WE PUT STARS IN POEMS popped into my mind and became the jumping off point for a stream of consciousness poem. I spoke it out loud, repeating each line as I added new ones. When I had enough lines to convince myself it was a worthwhile poem, I went in the house for paper and a pen.

Writing the poem was a discovery. It wasn’t until it was done and I read it to my writer’s circle that I understood what the poem was about. Loss. Loss of innocence. Loss of culture. Loss of loved ones. Even loss of virginity showed up in this poem. I knew while writing it which lines matched up to the feelings I had while looking at the night sky, and which ones didn’t. The poem came in one giant whoosh of a couple of hours and took me on a wild ride. The next day the feeling was gone and I couldn’t recapture it. The portal that opened to allow the poem to come was closed.

II. A week later I was walking across my living room to shut out a light. As I clicked it off, the phrase “Paper Cut” lit up in my mind like a game show player’s buzzer. “Paper Cut” was the right answer, but what was the question? I recognized it as the title of a poem, but no other information came. For this poem, I had to sit down and brainstorm a word map like an artist would sketch a landscape.

Right away I was pulled by the soft and then hard sounds that made up the words “Paper Cut.” The meaning was intriguing, like an oxymoron, I thought as I considered how such a thin wisp of lightness can actually cut you. I pondered how paper is the tool of a writer and how editorial cuts can sting.
But I was hesitant to write the “Paper Cut” with only a title to go from. It felt like having to mine for a diamond that I knew was in the ground but didn’t know where. I knew it would have to be found and faceted to shine and that the labor would likely be messy. I didn’t want to write the poem, but the way the title came felt like a message from the Muse. A prompt. A directive. A challenge.

So I started from scratch and wrote a poem that got long pretty fast. Extracted from that one, came a second poem. I brought both to my writer’s circle and everyone there thought the first poem was a warm up for the second, and that the second poem, much shorter and sliced to the bone, was a better match for the title. It didn’t carry the emotional weight for me that WE PUT STARS IN POEMS did and I didn’t know how it fit into the body of my work. But it was an interesting exercise, well worthy of the labor.

So where do poems come from? Some you have to look for. Others just come to you.

Post notes: WE PUT STARS IN POEMS can be read HERE. Tomorrow I’ll post Paper Cut. More Where Do Poems Come From HERE.