On [Not] Writing

It’s been over a month since I sat down with the intention to write seriously. I’ve been overcommitted, struggling to learn the music for my violin recital and for the cantata at church. Instead of writing and publishing my work, I’ve been making art, or crocheting, or even cleaning the house.

I feel empty and dry. This morning I tried to read a poem by Louise Glück, but it was too subtle for a quick reading and I’m tired. Oh God, I am so tired. I’ve been sleeping at least six hours a night – which is a lot for me – but for some reason it isn’t enough.

Today I brought my coffee upstairs, cleaned the glass on the French doors, and wrote about not writing. Because sometimes, what I need most is to see the sky clearly. To be honest with myself. To sit down, pick up a pen, and begin.

Photo: Guian Bolisay  (Instant Vantage)

This was a really fun workshop to teach, so I'm posting my handout and lesson plan here. 

Read the poems and try your hand at writing a bop or a tanka. Or teach the workshop yourself, if you like. The materials are here for you to use.

Link to Handout

Link to Lesson Plan

Crossing the Great Divide

Editing and revision may be the bane of a writer’s existence. Ted Kooser wrote:

“Revision, and I mean extensive revision, is the key to transforming a mediocre poem into a work that can touch and even alter a reader’s heart.  It’s the biggest part of the poet’s job description.  I’ve published hundreds of poems, most of them less than twenty lines in length, and people are always surprised to learn that I might take a single short poem through twenty, or thirty, or even forty versions before I think it’s finished” (The Poetry Home Repair Manual 16).

He reminds us to be patient:

“Don’t worry that the process of revision seems slow.  The writer’s tools were developed early - paper, pen, and ink; a watchful eye; an open heart - and good writing is still the patient handiwork of those simple tools.  A poet who makes only one really fine poem during his life gives far more to the world that the poet who publishes twenty books of mediocre verse” (ibid. 148).

Why should we bother to work so hard, for so little reward? Kenneth Koch in his discussion of “poetry language” concludes by saying:

"The last inclination of the poetry language I'll mention - though there are more - is specifically addressed to making whatever is said into a work of art. Without this one, of course, you may be writing, but you're not writing poetry" (Making Your Own Days 69).