Yesterday’s poem, ‘washed up‘ is one of my first poems on extraplorer where I feel like I have not quite got to the proper form of the poem.  Most of the poems I write here seem to write themselves a little bit.  They slide out onto the page, and I usually work to some kind of internal rhythm as I write them, a kind of inner knowing of the form which I can pay attention to, and there it is.

The idea of washed up has been stolen by the Emily poem.  I had an idea for a collection of poems called ‘washed up’, and I might still try to make this because it is a glowing idea still.  But I was also very impatient to used the idea of washed up and somehow the Emily poem came along as I wrote the title.

I like most of the poem (and thank you readers who also liked it), but I think that it has got more to come.  I can tell that what I would really like to do is to make the poem more formally restrained than my normal very fluid writing.  The first stanza captures the feeling of this.

‘She set sail
for distant shores
from home.
She stayed indoors.’

The 3/4/2/4 syllables in each line I think set the pattern for what the other stanzas should be like (maybe with some variation).  For me, this rhythm emulates the rhythm of the sea.   I like the idea that the formal restraint could also emulate some of Dickinson’s writing (for example), while the sea rhythms would make it embody the idea of it being washed along the currents.

Another thing that maybe needs to be sorted out (I have only just realised) is that there is a clash of imagery between something in a bottle ‘Glass bottled / tears’ and a notebook which is what I originally envisaged.  I would like to think about these more and see if they should both stay or only one.

As with the formal constraint, I think the use of some rhyme here and there (‘shores’/’indoors’, ‘tread’/’instead’) makes it also have an element of homage to Dickinson’s writing.

I would also like to work out whether I really like the repetition of ‘small hand’ ‘distant shores’.  I think it might be too heavy-handed.

At the end of the day, I was too impatient to post the poem.  I really wanted to have written something, which is a very different feeling to feeling something is ready.  But also, I feel excited that the poem might be something I could craft. For me this is progress because until now I’ve been scared to do too much crafting in case I get self-conscious and can’t write.  Instead this poem is giving me a little gift because it wants to be crafted!  Amazing!  Maybe there are some poems that want to be and some that don’t (poem as a pet  metaphor has snuck in again, hooray, my favourite).

The poem is teaching me how to write a poem.

Awe.

(I would say ‘back soon’ but it might take me a little bit of time to work this out…)