At the moment I can’t just decide to send poems to publishers and that’s been the way, give or take, for three or four years. Well no, I do decide, but then I change my mind. More than before I want to wow myself. And that’s not happening.
I think I should over-reach myself. In fact, I think everyone that’s involved in creative arts should want to over-reach themselves. Those who don’t, flirt with smugness and that’s a quick route to bland average work.
I have managed it a small number of times: to write better than I’m able to, and it’s a great but very rare feeling (for me at least). But I think it’s the measure to keep at the back of one’s mind.
Goya is one of those poems in which I think I've written beyond myself. I suppose good luck is involved: the right words, images etc come to mind on queue.I suppose that's the difference: great poets don't rely on luck.
Goya.
Of course not!
Of course no one that ever cracked open a head
has seen a symphony pour out.
No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside
with its intimate and tangling caresses
drain from the split skulls of lovers
nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes
seen rafts of memories spilling,
carrying the children, the birthdays, the orchards,
the dances.
When they shot the poet, Lorca,
the bullets sailed in a universe,
yet when the blood spurted it was only blood
to them.
2 comments:
Excellent poem. That is truly what makes the great stuff.
I never finish any poem unless I feel it has acheived a world beyond me. Still, I admit that the only poem to completely acheive that was "Valhalla: blue" and it would not exist without you. THank you a million times over.
I will not be satisfied in any real sense until another such experience, even though it was so exhausting creatively that I wrote nothing but childish dribble for a year following.
I agree with Sabne re the poem. Re over-reaching oneself I think it's exhausting. For me it happens when I live with an image that has moved me for a certain period of time, allow it to speak, wait for the words that it demands. There are those poems that just come from nowhere, of course, and that work with a few edits.
It would be nice to see more of your poems here. Maybe you are judging yourself too harshly, aren't able to detach enough from what you are writing to see it clearly.
I like your blog. I'm adding a link to it on mine. I post some of my work in progress there which probably isn't a good idea as I edit like crazy and delete like crazy and people get to see the original mess. Oh well.
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