Loose Leaf Notes

I save old pieces of poems the way a junkyard owner saves old cars for parts.  It makes sense that poets recycle, since poetry is a form of conservation, a shorthand of language.  Writers use everything around them. They draw from what they know, and conserve their words to make their writing more efficient.  We “whittle life down into manageable parts,” is the way the writer, played by Meryl Streep, in the movie “Adaptation” put it.     

You can’t stick old pieces of poems anywhere though.  You have to wait for a perfect match.  A poem is a family of words that are all related, either directly (rhymes, assonance, alliteration) or remotely.  Dominant sounds fade-out and re-emerge like ancestors passing on traits. One word is born from the other. 

Sometimes you can get away with adding a line to a poem that comes from somewhere else, but it has to belong, like a long lost relative.  You can’t add a line to a poem just because it sounds good, because you’re looking for a place to put it, or because you like the meaning.  You wouldn’t add a complete stranger to a family and expect everyone to get along right away, would you?

I wrote the above while out on a walk, after being reminded by the muse about the importance of outdoor spaces.  I know enough not to go out without stuffing scrap paper and pen into my pocket. I didn’t get very far before I found myself pulling them out.  Leaning against my neighbor’s mailbox, as though it were a desk, I scribbled out the gist,   imagining that I looked very official, like someone taking readings.  (Or, as my son Josh would put it “taking names,” which means “I’m really serious now.”)  But then I walked back to the house, talking out loud to myself, something I don’t imagine that official people do.

I went out on the walk because my writing was stuck.  I couldn’t find an ending to a story before this one.  I went to find an ending and found a new story instead.  I’m not surprised, though, because I know that one story leads to the next, just as one word in a poem is born from the other. 

I don’t try too hard to make use of old poem parts because I know that the source where writing comes from is ultimately limitless.  But I don’t take a good line for granted, either, and whenever one turns up, I feel a sense of wonder.  Some I recognize right away and know exactly where they go.  Others, I file away in one of my journals, to be dug up at a later date.

“Our real poems are already in us and all we can do is dig.”  Jonathan Galassi

~ From Muses Like Moonlight, a collection of poetry and essays from 2004.