Apologies, been away a bit, teaching, making poems. Thought I’d post a most recent one. The process I’ve been working out, I take a transcript of a dream from my journal, streamline it a bit, and type it up as a column of text about three inches wide. Looks something like this:
Across the water to an island ∙ I’ve left my
clothes in a woods a road runs through and
forget where ∙ a woods full of the light of an
inmost summer ∙ feeling naked on my way to
town I backtrack and find myself in a tent of
translucent fabric full of that same light ∙ a
young woman comes in ∙ we’ve not ever seen
each other ∙ Hello she says and lies down beside
me ∙ I put my arm around her and my hand
comes to rest on her breast ∙ she moves it off
with a kindness that seems to mean our love for
each other is ∙ but is not that ∙ it was recalling on
waking her kindness that made me so awfully
sad ∙ now I have clothes on and have hitched a
lift toward town with a trucker ∙ we go up and
down hills ∙ through mountainous sunsoaked
landscapes ∙ we come to a stop ∙ the road is an
upward rocky path with breaks and ledges at
skewed angles ∙ I’d like to get out of the truck
but stay seated ∙ The better way ∙ I say to me ∙ is
to be right there for what’s given ∙ what’s really
up though is I don’t want to look a coward ∙ the
driver takes a deep breath ∙ starts the engine ∙
we crash forward to the other side ∙ at another
spot the path is a notch between a boulder and
a rockface ∙ I or my mind am or is outside the
cab ∙ a post with a box on top blocks the path ∙
and now I’m at the ferry terminal where my
friends have made it over in their large toy cars
∙ mad how long it took to get here ∙ they mean
to turn round and get the next boat home ∙ Wait
I say we can all go to my place now ∙ that cheers
us up ∙ though evening the light persists in me
It’s far from being a poem. In fact, speaking of feeling naked, I feel quite exposed posting it! But I know we’re all friends here.
Given a source text, I burrow through, finding phrases that please or scare me. It’s pretty quick and quite intuitive … things go wrong when I become deliberate or try to make “strategic” choices. Starting at the bottom of the column, and hewing mostly to the left side, I get to this paragraph:
Up I say to mad friends and now stop ∙ stay
seated ∙ turn round ∙ spot the ash river a sad
king thought to face at a right angle and be wed
to war in these rockscape hills ∙ to each angel
comes a kind of rest ∙ a Hell no lucent woman
or man may be other to ∙ so I own that inmost
forge where in woods a road runs to an island
Not awful. Could stand on its own as a prose poem maybe. But I feel undone with it so I burrow through again. Here’s, this evening, the poem I got to:
EAST
Comes war to forge a man.
Eats up to king.
Hell, so a road.
Hills, right at the stop end.
Sad,
stay sad,
a woe angle.
I know it’s a downward poem and that’s about it. There’s an upward poem in there too, its complement, next to be writ.
the art of compost 