The Ride

Emerson & I went for a walk this afternoon with my friend Kathy, who will be my new mother-in-law in less than six months. We charted a robust route through the neighborhood streets to maximize our sun exposure...the crisp warmth cozy on our sweatered backs, our cheeks, and sunglassed eyes as we maneuvered back towards home. It was rejuvenating.

I needed this walk in the sunshine, not only for the exercise but because I needed to clear my mind after the intense reading, writing, and self-introspection that had occupied much of today. Emotional purging always heightens my senses and helps me tap into more creative reserves of imagery and language. I don’t know what physical, biological, scientific processes are at work (if anyone does, please let me know), but it is a satisfying experience, albeit not without a little discomfort, displeasure, pain, and even heartache. It sort of feels like riding a wave. I can take a writing idea that has been stewing in my mind, or start thinking of an image or thought that is particularly intriguing and start mulling it over more openly when I'm in those moments. Really concentrating on the triggering subject, as Hugo would say. And just let my imagination travel from there. This wave carries me over a landscape of imagery and details as I try to focus on all the small details, the colors and textures of the scene which is building in my mind. As the poem develops through imagery, I just write. Just get it down. I often like to type the first draft, when available, because I type faster than I can handwrite, and can also type with my eyes closed—better able to focus on the mental picture, and just get it all down, without worrying about staying on the lines.

As I write out and develop the image, and the associations that come with it, the thought transforms into an idea, leading me to another idea and image, and this is the Wave. This is the smooth ride that I enjoy. The twists and bends, like river-rafting…the rapids of writing, then the gentle flow as I pause on a certain line, then the flow picks up again and I continue the ride. I’ve been river rafting quite a few times in the North Cascades, and this is an apt analogy. This is when it is extremely fun to write. However, sometimes writing a poem is a little more like hard work--forcing it out, really wrestling with an image or idea, frustrated when a poem is stalling and I’m trying to force it into being a certain thing or conveying a certain message. When this happens, it usually is not a successful poem. It lacks surprise. It becomes predictable. But when I can find the voice of the poem, and let the poem ride on its own creation, then it is successful. The voice takes over. And the imagery and ideas are fresh, engaging.

Robert Frost said a poem “must ride on its own melting . . . Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance” (from his essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes”). He also said, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” How contemporary his ideas, and aesthetically accurate.

It’s not always easy to achieve what he describes. It’s sometimes really hard work to create that space in the day, to have everything working together to create that mental, emotional, and physical readiness for artistic creation. To weave language together to become a poem.

But it is so satisfying to do it, to have it, to know when you are in that zone—that moment when you can honestly say to yourself, “Damn, I’m a good poet” and you know at least one other person would agree with you.

To know that this process exists right here, right now in my life as a writer...I feel honored. I’m a writer. And I actually feel like one. It’s not a hobby, it’s my livelihood. It’s my work. It’s not bringing in a paycheck, but that’s not the point. The point is: it is my vocation—one that has chosen me as much as I have chosen it. A calling. And I need to show up and make the time.