Writer's Mind
by April Haven
I am a voice in need of hearing.
I use my surroundings as a source.
A source for vision,
To see what I've been missing
To write my story
To live my life.
April, this is disappointing. ants crawling on paper; rubber band in a pattern of twists and turns, resting on THURSDAY on the big desk calendar; noise the water cooler makes against the night's quiet; the jitneys and other buses in the dark, just before 5 a.m., beginning to go by, speeding; two-storey, red building across the road, with its white cornices. These accurate descriptions convey emotions as well as the world we occupy to who eventually reads what we've written, clear and sharp enough to cut into a reader a minute from now or three hundred years from now. This is what you have to capture, not some thought process, already faded before its written down.
When I think you've gotten it, I find you haven't. Is it a lack of talent or a lack of reading? Do you read? What do you read? You must read the best works ever written and you must know what succeeds from what doesn't. Also, you must go to art museums. Do what a painter does when you're writing, what photographers, and the very best cinematographers do when you write. Let sculptors guide you, as well as dancers, composers, as well as nature.
Where April, are you going with your art? Many who became great artist, were at your age, working miracles: Mozart, Schubert, Rimbaud. You need a jump start, a great leap. I need poems from you I can sink my teeth into like donut, like muffin, like a triple from Wendy's with extra letters, extra tomatoes, light mustard, light mayo. Let's go, love, spin the top of your poem. Split my top with yours.
Interesting how you embellish a weak, non-poem with ANGEL, sparkling, light streaming through it. This though is deception. What you've done with ANGEL your poem itself must do. The poem itself must contain the fire-works. When you write, when you create, you compete with God's creation. You are actually adding to it. Make what you write therefore as real as rabbit, rat, mouse - as real as mosquito - a poem so stingy you have to slap it and kill it and make the blood spout.
Open your pores, April, open your mouth, let the poems have wings like a flock of squawking geese, like paper-light, white and yellow peanut-butter-flies.
by April Haven
I am a voice in need of hearing.
I use my surroundings as a source.
A source for vision,
To see what I've been missing
To write my story
To live my life.
April, this is disappointing. ants crawling on paper; rubber band in a pattern of twists and turns, resting on THURSDAY on the big desk calendar; noise the water cooler makes against the night's quiet; the jitneys and other buses in the dark, just before 5 a.m., beginning to go by, speeding; two-storey, red building across the road, with its white cornices. These accurate descriptions convey emotions as well as the world we occupy to who eventually reads what we've written, clear and sharp enough to cut into a reader a minute from now or three hundred years from now. This is what you have to capture, not some thought process, already faded before its written down.
When I think you've gotten it, I find you haven't. Is it a lack of talent or a lack of reading? Do you read? What do you read? You must read the best works ever written and you must know what succeeds from what doesn't. Also, you must go to art museums. Do what a painter does when you're writing, what photographers, and the very best cinematographers do when you write. Let sculptors guide you, as well as dancers, composers, as well as nature.
Where April, are you going with your art? Many who became great artist, were at your age, working miracles: Mozart, Schubert, Rimbaud. You need a jump start, a great leap. I need poems from you I can sink my teeth into like donut, like muffin, like a triple from Wendy's with extra letters, extra tomatoes, light mustard, light mayo. Let's go, love, spin the top of your poem. Split my top with yours.
Interesting how you embellish a weak, non-poem with ANGEL, sparkling, light streaming through it. This though is deception. What you've done with ANGEL your poem itself must do. The poem itself must contain the fire-works. When you write, when you create, you compete with God's creation. You are actually adding to it. Make what you write therefore as real as rabbit, rat, mouse - as real as mosquito - a poem so stingy you have to slap it and kill it and make the blood spout.
Open your pores, April, open your mouth, let the poems have wings like a flock of squawking geese, like paper-light, white and yellow peanut-butter-flies.
posted by Obie Quiet at 6:33 AM
2 Comments:
Writing poems about writing are some of the hardest ones to master. Better to work with specific ideas, concrete things (as Obie says), practise capturing the essence of that thing at a particular time, rather than trying to write about writing.
It's a task I've given up.
I actually loved it! It wasn't written to be "rhymie". As I read i could feel it flow ebbing in and out like a building tide. It was beautiful. Genius. I loved it.
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