short poems and stafford {poetry thursday}
Another Thursday filled with poetry!
We are having a snow day here out in the Tacoma area. Those of you in snowier parts of the world might think that means we have a foot or more of snow. Nope. Not here. It just takes a few inches to close down schools. It is nice having my husband home though as I work.
Speaking of work, I am finding clichés everywhere as I edit this week! My cliché radar is in full force after this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea. It looks like people have had fun with this odd prompt. I can’t wait to spend some time clicking around to Poetry Thursday participants’ sites later today.
I have been working on several poems lately, but I find myself getting stuck. I was on the phone with Dana last evening and was telling her how I think I need to write short poems for a while. I explained how I keep getting stuck in the wordiness and my own amateurishness (which, I guess, is a word).
I thought about this conversation today and decided to just write a few short poems. Here is one of them:
Where you live
Though you sit on a mantle
in the house you lived in
for almost 40 years,
all that you were is folded
into this windbreaker
resting upon my lap.
This is where you live.
This feels like the beginning of a poem, but maybe it is just a thought I have been having wrapped up in the form of a poem.
I have started reading The Answers are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life by William Stafford (edited by Paul Merchant and Vincent Wixon). It is a collection of his essays, interviews, writings, and so on. As I struggle with my writing, he finds a way, as he always does, to remind me to keep going. In an interview, when asked if he has an audience in mind when he writes, he said:
No, it’s just for myself. I’m very indulgent at the time of writing. I’ll accept anything, any old trash; it can never be low enough to keep me from writing it. You know, the process of writing is kind of a trusting to the nowness, to the immediacy of the experience. And if you enter into the artistic endeavor with standards, already arrived-at ideas of what you want to do, you’re not entering creatively into the immediacy of encountering the materials.It’s almost as if an artist who enters into the process with this determination to meet standards, achieve quality, is not trusting the self that’s doing the writing. That’s what led me to say once, writers ought to let themselves write bad poems. Not bad from their point of view, but unacceptable from another’s.
I read Stafford’s words.
I read my own.
I keep writing.
I keep writing.
I keep writing.
poetry
Reader Comments (18)
Wow- I loved those words from Stafford- they are so true. We must allow ourselves to write what comes to us, whether it is bad in anyone else's eyes, it should not matter.
And I agree, Liz- sometimes we do get lost in our own wordiness but that's only because those of us that write love words- perfectly natural, I guess.
Thanks for your lovely little poem- and I am glad you have a nice snuggly day with your hubby!
As someone who wrote a shoddy poem for Poetry Thursday (one that is so bad, I can't even allow myself to post it) I've gotta get my hands on the Stafford book. I need a little nudge like that to remind me to keep on going.
You little poem is gem! xo
Stafford's words are good and honest; we need to preserve that energy, that immediacy that comes with the first (and often final draft). I thought your short poem was great and immediate; poems are thoughts and novels wrapped into one moment. BB
Those few lines are definitely something. I love:
"all that you were is folded
into this windbreaker
resting upon my lap."
And I am also VERY jealous of your snow day.
Your snow has come here, or will come tomorrow. We have about six inches--the roads are slick as a snotty doorknob out there (how's that for a cliche?) so I'm more than happy to stay inside and sip hot lemon tea.
Thank you for the Wm Stafford quote. I think I told you I had many classes from him. I treasure my poems which have his comments written on them!
Blessings.
Liz~ I love this line...."It’s almost as if an artist who enters into the process with this determination to meet standards, achieve quality, is not trusting the self that’s doing the writing." If that does not sum it all up, I don't know what does. Write and create for yourself, for afterall, who else are you doing it for? If you are true to yourself, in the moment that you are creating, then I believe that you are achieving what you set out to do.
This was a lovely reminder and lesson.
xoxoxo
I love Stafford's writing on writing - I have a couple of books of his essays. And I think your passage is beautiful - it is more than twice as long as a haiku, after all, so why can't it be a poem? What's length got to do with it?
I understood it even better when I scrolled down and read some of the previous posts. Very moving.
Hi Liz,its nice to come across your blog. you have some lovely posts out here.
I will come again to your blog later.
keep blogging
all the best
Oh, Liz, thank you for posting the Stafford excerpts...it's about something I posted on one of my blogs yesterday. About the gratitude I feel at getting over my fear about writing poetry...about letting go of anyone's standards when I write...being willing to let it be crap. I've really reached a point where it honestly doesn't matter to me what others think of it...it only matters to ME that I'm doing it. And I have YOU to thank for that. So xoxo. And I love your short poem...because often the sum of a life DOES seem to be contained in an object imbued with a representation of someone's essence.
I find I write only little poems,,moment poems,. Longer and I'm afraid I would be lost. I enjoyed yours very much....and as for the cold...I too wrote a sentence on it...but not so fondly. Cuddle up and have a good day.
What is this snow thing of which you speak? ;-) Seriously, a single flurry--on the rare occasions that there has been one--is all it takes to shut this place down because we all rush out into the streets and stand and stare into the sky in wonderment.
"Where you live" already sounds and feels like a complete poem to me. Your actual experience with your grandmother's windbreaker was immediate, simple, intuitive; a simple and direct poem like this reflects that beautifully. I think it's a very nice poem just as it is.
I'm so glad you keep writing! And the short poem speaks volumes.
beautiful words - from you, and from Mr Stafford. i will buy this book... my words are a little shy at the moment :-) xo
Was it Stafford? I think it was Stafford who said, when asked how he could write a poem every morning, "I lowered my standards."
Thanks for this post. Boy how I needed to read it!
Your poem is so, so lovely. Truely.
:)
Keep writing my dear, keep writing.
Your poem is great. Simple. Clear. Honest. Evocative. It does everything a poem should do. And it puts us there with you in the poem. It's powerful. I see this piece as very meditative, very much your strong, clear voice.
I'm a bit late in finishing reading last week's PT entries, but your was definitely worth the wait. I think the simplicity and elegance of your small poem is breathtaking - and it's definitely a poem.