writing about writing poetry

June 8, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i’ve been reading a book
about great poet-scientists
of the last few centuries,
and within these last few chapters of the book
the author (and voices from the past)
have assessed
that the greatest authors–
the greatest poets
are ones
who are
open
and honest
with their
emotion

and i think i am not yet there.

my poetry is very head-y.
most poems appear in my head
as something like
‘i think’
not at all
‘i feel’

and maybe that is my access to my emotions
[head to heart to body]
and, although i’d like to get there someday,
i really don’t think i am quite there
yet

even my depression
is very thought-based;
a reaction to an over-thinking mind
that won’t shut up about
all the pains and sufferings in the world
and how i could do something about it
if only i were as powerful as i
thought myself to be

so i’m not yet there
emotionally
in my poetry,
but someday
i may be

and when that happens,
y’all had better look out
(because i’ve had so much practice
with these mind-based poems of mine,
my emotion-based art will be
so great)

…(or, watch, it’ll read
like a three-
year-old
wrote it)
(but that’ll be ok
because it will be mine.
and it will
it will
it will be
honest)

June 6, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

once again
i am stuck
pondering
what in the world
i’d thought of
to write
last night
when this morning
my brain
doesn’t seem to light
up
with any words
or concepts
or phrases
just stages
of grief
over lost
concepts

June 3, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i [might] have
hit the point
where my body of work is
Prolific
[but quantity doesn’t indicate quality]
[though practice makes perfect—
or
at the very least permanent—]

and is it actually
Prolific
if i am the only one
aware
of it all?

~~~

400+ days of writing
poetry
every morning

a solid amount of those mornings
(like this very one)
Three-Poem-Days
and even more housing
multiple drafts of multiple poems
not yet seen by
The Internet

but if i’m simply writing free-form/
stream of consciousness/
‘do it but don’t worry about it’
kinds of things,
churning
but not editing/
or revising/
or analyzing/
or anything of the sort

does that not become
at some point
Junk?

~~~

my greatest poem
within this experiment
was seen by more people
but has not been posted here.

a slam poem written
from a prompt
intended for a monologue
(originally from a spell)

i learned (from that poem) that prompts are friends
and a one-week due-date
with daily revisions
and one solid subject matter
are useful in my creative process

i am actively proud of that poem
and i want to write more like it
(with the passion/
and verse/
and poetical devices/
and wholeness)
so why do i not
actively
seek out
prompts,
nor let myself
take time
to edit
any of these
anymore?

June 2, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

poems pulsating
through my mind
as i find
myself
at that coast of consciousness
trying to remember
the words as they came together
the alliteration and rhyme
after so much time
asleep

and in the morning
nothing
ever
comes to me.

May 28, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

wow.

pavlovian response to
lofi music playing:

immediate urge to poetry.

~~~

some days
(most days)
i need the poetry-writing to wake me up
(the coffee is simply comfort-waking
now
rather than an actual stimulant)

but then
some days
(rarely)
(but it does happen)
i need the coffee/the doing/the something
in order to wake myself up
before
i start to write the poetry.

today was one of the latter
days

~~~

a reference?
a reference only my spouse and i will understand?
a reference that might simply be an inside joke in poetry-form?

it’s more likely than you’d think!

May 21, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

trying not to write poetry
for the blog
and only for me
makes my writing
come to life
in a way
i want to
immediately
show off

(perhaps
that’s the key
to every success)

May 20, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i wonder if poets of yore
ever practiced writing
with mundane daily tasks.
i know they wrote of the very human
feeling of falling in love,
but were there ever any poems of
getting a bit of poppyseed stuck in their teeth,
or that feeling of falling right when you’re about to
lose consciousness to go to asleep?
there were poems with storms as metaphors,
analogies,
but were there ever poems where storms were simply storms
and they enjoyed in the moment,
and wrote in the after
of feeling the thunder
shake
and quake
the whole house?
i feel as though my poetry hits a spot
that hasn’t necessarily been hit
that hard
yet;
the mundanity of human existence.
and i can’t be the first person
to put prose emotions into poetry,
but i do wonder if the greats
of late
or long
ago
ever did what i’m doing
it just wasn’t as accepted
or expected
then.

May 8, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

most mornings
as i write my silly morning poems
i have a cat
on my lap.

since the new puppy’s arrival,
the cat has avoided all points of potential contact
and not set foot in the entire downstairs area,
save for moments when the pup is
well caged away
(crate and gates and the like)
but even then,
a cat paw on the main floor
is a rare sight indeed
theses days

so instead
of a cat on my lap
i must write this poem
with a dog by my side
barely touching
but still comforting
to have her there
as a reminder
that there are creatures around this house
(human and non)
when i get so lonely
hanging out with
just my own words…

April 29, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

so much poetry
about tired/sleepiness
about writing poetry
about grief and grieving

but where’s the poetry for me?
where’s the poetry where i actually wake up?
where’s the poetry where i analyze and create new forms/
new words/
new kinds of poetry?
where’s the poetry where i feel
(at least a little)
more healed after writing it?

where’s the poetry where i have a sense of accomplishment
post-writing
rather than a sense of
‘well, i guess that’s ok enough to stick on the poetry blog’?

where’s my big/epic poem?

April 15, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i have so much to say
(otherwise, how would i write a poem
a day
for a whole damn year?)

but so much of my time is spent
figuring out
in words
what exactly i’d like to say
and then
overthinking
how someone might
misconstrue my sentences
so i nitpick
and pick out
word
by word
by punctuation
by phrasing
adding extra notes
to prevent
misunderstanding
even though i understand
not everyone understands
where i’m coming from
and not everyone wants to
truly
listen
and not everyone
will read my words
so carefully
delicately
chosen
and not everyone
has the same associations
with words
and things
as i do
but i still
hover
over my buffet of words
hoping to make art
out of language
hoping to create meaning
where once there was nothing
but i spend so much time
figuring out how to say things
that sometimes i forget
what i was trying to say
in the first place.