Saignée
Tung-Hui Hu
They chew on flowers to bring color
back to their faces. Inside the rows of
bougainvillea they eat the purple and the
ochre that climb up the walls, and I want
to say I too know the solitude that divides
blood into bright cell and plasma
that leaves a fluid pale as the eye of a partridge.
I too know no cure for it except to keep eating.
At dawn sunlight stains the city the blush
of onion-skin and the muezzin’s voice
rings out over the rooftops. He is the foghorn
that pierces the heart before morning,
rising from the ocean’s octaves to burn off
the clouds, and yet it terrifies me, to think
early some day you will wake up to see me
standing by the balcony as if I and my legs
and my robe were part of the railing,
you will put your arms around me and ask
why I stand there and I will have no answer.
You do not stir, but I know you have seen
men tumble out of the sky, and with
every ululation your body trembles in sleep.
Though we lie next to each other we are
in different countries, one with water,
one without.
I originally thought saignee a city, but it is a process of bleeding the tanks in the production of rose red wines. I love a new word and the terrain it brings! This new knowlege of the meaning of saignee sent me back to the poem with a different focus, and of course the poem changed, because I had. Read more about saignee in Zinquisition blog-a blog about the wine industry.
This poem reminds me of an unnamed fish at my work,(let's call him Saignee from this point forward, and assign him male status). In the fish tank in the main office where I work is Saignee, a strange vermillion red fish with black accents around the eyes. Saignee is unlike the other fish in the tank. Instead of constantly swimming about or hovering in place, Saignee finds a rock or shell on which to perch, and essentially plays dead, until he feels your eyes upon him, or you place a finger on the glass, and darts away to another location and perches, motionless. Everytime I go to the office I have to check where the Saignee is. Sometimes I stare a little too long, and off he goes. I like the game, but try not to play it too often. I know I intend no harm, but I'm pretty certain Saignee doesn't.
Two years ago,Saignee was transparent. The main secretary said she thinks the fish was clear-colored because in the tank there used to be an aggressive fish that bullied and attacked all the other fish. Perhaps the aggressive fish was territorial, or maybe its aggressiveness was just in its nature, but it didn't matter to the office staff, it had to go. Once the aggressive fish was gone, Saignee transformed from transparent to opaque by slowing starting to pink up until he was a vibrant orange red.
It makes perfect sense Saignee would try to become invisible so he wouldn't be a target. I may be projecting here (so okay, I am), but perhaps becoming transparent is a useful strategy to blend in with the other "fish", so differences, say in temperament, world view, or belief systems aren't so apparent. Or, so that no one really sees you for your imperfect self, like the speaker in the poem, so afraid his lover will see how different their worlds, "one with water, one without", are, see his sadness, his solitude, and leave him to his imperfect self.
Artist of the Day: Dive - Elle Moss
Dive Elle Moss ellemoss.etsy.comI am drawn to images of half-submerged women. I think I love the image of suspension, being seen and unseen, because it illustrates how unknowable we are to each other. I went to hear Marilyn Robinson speak this past weekend, and she said that this very thing, the unknowable, the mystery, is at the core of each of her characters.
In your own life, your circle of friends and family, how well do you know them? I don't mean the obvious preferences or temperaments, but that which flows like secret water under the surface.
I analyze everything, even minutia, to death. I think this is why sometimes I'm so slow-moving in my decisions, but then, there are times when I make critical decisions like a lightening flash. Why? I don't know, other than it's a visceral thing. Now, analyze that.
I've admired Elle Moss's work ever since I first discovered it. Now that the holidays are approaching, I am inspired by her work to create my own photo essays as gifts, (not of myself-that would be just weird). I think I'll collect images like treasures and then compile my favorites.
Artist Bio:
I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. rida Kahlo
Recently seen on Mal Pearsons "30 Days of Giveaways" on The Daily Buzz.
My work has been published in these magazines:
The Portland Mercury (cover image) - October 2011
SHOTS magazine - Dans Le Jardin - Autumn 2011
Maeve Magazine (Cover Image) Issue 5 Spring 2011
ElleGirl Korea: September 2010 and April 2011
Prism Magazine (Cover Image): June 2010 (issue 48:4)
Maeve Magazine (Cover Image): Issue 1 Winter 2010
Carpaccio Guide to emerging illustrators, photographers & artists Vol. 3 (December 2009)
Itaú Cultural Continuum Magazine Oct/Nov 2009
Capricho Magazine (Brazil) September 2009
Somerset Digital Studio Magazine Autumn 2009
File Magazine
Carpaccio Magazine issues #5 & #7
Antler Mag May 2009
Parasol Mag March 2009
Marie Claire Italia March 2009
F-Stop mag issues 28, 32, 37 & 40
Group Exhibits:
Torpedo Factory Art Center/Target Gallery, "masks", Alexandria, VA October 2011
Ann Arbor Art Center All Media Exhibition, Ann Arbor, Michigan September 2011
SAPAC "rEVOLUTION", Ann Arbor, Michigan April 2011
SAPAC "rEVOLUTION", Ann Arbor, Michigan April 2010
"ARTsquared", Powell, Ohio April 2010
YES Gallery, Rhode Island Sept-Oct 2009
Getty Images Gallery, London England Sept-Oct 2009
Louisville Art Association June-July 2009
"Idea of Self" The Center For Fine Art Photogaphy, Louisville,Colorado, February, March 2009
"Through the Looking Glass" Northwest Cultural Council, Chicago, Illinios July 2008
Projekt 30, June 2008
Daisy Lake Art Gallery, Dexter, Michigan, May 2008
Solo Exhibits:
Whittaker Branch Library, Ypsilanti, Michigan, August 2008
Book Features:
Photographer's Forum Best of Photography 2009.
She Took Her Own Picture
In Her Own Image
Visual Candies the book
Poetic Terrorism
Female Photographer's of Etsy book, "She's a Rainbow"
Book Covers:
1. La Rosa Escondida' by Reyes Monforte (2009)
2. I Love You When Im Drunk' by Empar Moliner (2009)
3. 'Darker than Midnight ' by Salvo Sottile (2010)
4. 'Das Madchen im Pelzmantel' by Amy Bloom
5. 'La Restauratrice di Matrinoni' by Donatella Diamanti
6. Christophe lamert - La fille port-boheur (france)
7. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (italy)
8. Attachment - Isabel Fonseca (Portugal)
9. Grace Williams Says it out loud - Emma Henderson (UK)
10. The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove - Lauren Kate (UK)
11. Hondred lliefdessonetten - pablo neruda
Websites:
Elle Decor
Marie Claire
hgtv
Oprah.com
Decor8
Poppytalk
Creature Comforts
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/torchlightlms
BLOGS: http://ellemoss.blogspot.com
http://diaryofamodhousewife.blogspot.com
EMAIL: email: ellemossphotography [!at] gmail.com
This Moment: October 20 2011- 7:24 A.M.
The dog is on the bed, curled into a pillow. He leaps up suddenly, and stands defensively at the end of the bed, barking at some unseen enemy. Minutes ago it was pure darkness, but now familiar shapes are beginning to reveal themselves in the early light. The dogs are in the kitchen lapping water from their bowl. For a weekday, traffic is slow. Color outside my window is evident. The apple tree is green and heavy with fruit. It will be only a few more days before the pear tree's cache will be ripe for picking. Fall always fills me with a sense of loss, even while surrounded with such abundance. I know the sun light is diminishing, the snow and ice are coming. The old dog is barking a half hearted warning. She is quiet now, her old head resting on crossed paws. She looks to me as if to grant me any wish. The rumble of a truck grows as it nears. Traffic is growing steady. Far away, a train traverses tracks and I can feel it's sideways rocking motion and I imagine running along side it, reaching up and hoisting myself into the car, settling in, eyes closed, my face in the wind.
Artist of the Day: Behind Plastic - Caryn Drexel
Behind Plastic Caryn Drexl lightleaks.etsy.comAutodidact photographer Caryn Drexl's photographs are exciting and disturbing. Looking through her online portfolio, I felt like I was viewing work from another era, (save for the very few art school type images - and yes, I know she's self-taught, but thought this an good example). I saw references to Julia Cameron, Sheila Metzner, Man Ray, Sally Mann, even Diane Arbus. Perhaps I'm projecting my limited photography knowledge here. See for yourself.
I love the titles of her photographs, especially, Oh, Slyvia (allusion to Slyvia Plath's final moments), Conjuring, Her Very Own Sea, and You Don't Sing to Me Anymore.
Aritst Bio #1:
Self taught photographer in Florida, taking [mostly] female based "conceptual" photography. You can view a larger portfolio of my work at www.caryndrexl.com
Artist Bio #2:
I'm Caryn, newly in my 30's, living in smallish Palm Coast, Florida. I love my dog. Sometimes I love my cat. I definitely love my girl of 11 years [who I should probably start calling my fiancé since we put rings on each others fingers.] I love my family, though I often don't like most of them, [exception being my sister Michelle, whom I adore!] and I lovelove the color green. The love list also includes old houses, old clothes, new england, lace, tv [oh yeah, I love me some tv] depressing music, long hair, books, eco friendly stuff, Joss Whedon, fresh baked bread, coke slurpees and chocolate chip cookies. I could go on for a while, but I figure cookies is a good place to stop. My ideal evening would involve being on the couch in my pajamas with Brianna and my sister, watching some ridiculous but funny movie and drinking coffee. Also, while my images [and my taste in music] might tend to create a specific image of the type of person I might be, I'm actually pretty bubbly and light-hearted. Goofy even. I'm always trying to make people laugh. So, yeah, don't judge a photographer by their images.
Now, the photography and images part. A popular question is if I went to school for photography, and the answer is no, I did not. I've never even taken a class. Everything I know I learned through trial and error or the internet. Equipment wise, I currently use a Canon T2i, and in the past I've used a Canon 400d, Canon 10d, Nikon d100, Nikon N80 and a few vintage film cameras. I have girly little hands and a dislike for big heavy cameras that'll break my wrist or my neck, so the littler rebels suit me well. And while I love the look of film images, I'm not the most technically sound photographer, and I'm definitely not patient, so digital it is. Lens wise I tend to stick to my 50mm, but I'm trying to break out of that habit and become knowledgeable on that whole bit. [Any help would be appreciated!]
In the past I've gone on about how I hate titling images, and how when I do title them it shouldn't mean much to the viewer, and that has changed, a little. First though, here is exactly what my old bio page used to say:
"I hate putting titles to my images, but when I do they usually mean little to nothing at all. My images are meant to be whatever you think they are, not what I tell you. Sort of like choose your own adventure books, only it's choose your own back-story instead. And so I prefer to present them to you at face value and nothing more, that way you can react in whatever way you will, without my influencing you with an explanation of why [or how] I've done what I did and what it all "means"."
Generally speaking I still have that attitude. I, for the most part, don't want people to worry about what I mean, but to pay the most attention to what the image says to them. At the same time though there are times where there is something I'm trying to convey, or something specific I had in mind, so I kinda, sorta, try to hint at that through the title in hopes that it won't be overlooked completely. But that's not always the case, so it makes this whole thing sort of difficult. =) I come up with every idea differently, I approach every image differently, so my hopes and expectations are always different. So I guess now I'm a little more careful, when it comes to titles, to cover all these points. I want the title to hint at something, if there is something to be hinted at, but to also remain vague, in case there isn't something I need to hint at, or just so that my "message" doesn't smack someone in the face. There are now even family pow-wows when I've taken an image and don't know what to name it. Thesaurus.com is also my good friend, because often the titles the girls come up with suck!
And that's entirely too much talk about titles. But I guess some insight on my "process" and how varied and murky it is. The second most popular question I get is where I get my ideas from the answer is [I assume] always unsatisfying and unhelpful. "Everywhere. Everything." Sometimes I sit down and look at old paintings online for a few hours. Old photos from the 20's through to the 50's. Those often give me light ideas. Sometimes I'm in the hardware store and something weird jumps out at me and I think "that would look awesome on someone's head!" Or I'll be window shopping online and I'll notice a pretty dress and get a flash in my head of it moving a certain way and something grows from that. Often it's just random. One second I'm chasing the dog around the couch and the next second there is an idea in my head that seems to have come from nowhere. And every once in a while I'm on flickr or tumblr or deviantart, looking at other people's work, and I'll see something I'm kinda grumpy I didn't think of first, and from there, instead of abandoning the idea of ever doing it myself because "it's already been done", I figure out how to make the idea mine. Of course I don't mean stealing, because I would never, intentionally, repeat someone else's idea down to every last detail. I just figure out what I like about it, and how I can incorporate that into something that's more my *mine*.
Anyways! A little more history on me as a photographer: I fell in love with photography as a fluke when I was 10. I went on vacation with my family and came back having taken the only properly exposed images out of everyone. I have photographers in the family, and people were impressed, so I got all chuffed and went on to take a bunch of crap snapshots that even I couldn't bother to care about. I stopped for a really long time, until I was a teenager, all the while still claiming I'd be a photographer when I grew up. [Though back then, I was first thinking I'd be a concert photographer, and then strictly fashion, which I've always had a thing for.] And then when I started again, because of the things going on in my life at the time, it was more of an outlet than anything, a way to deal with things. To vent. It wasn't photography in a traditional sense. First I would turn my scanner on it's side and take self portraits that way. Then we got a free webcam from our internet provider and I used that to capture stills. All these images would immediately be put online, included in the online journal I kept. The positive response I got spurred me on, and things just grew from there. Eventually, when I was 20, we spent 100$ for a less than 1mp camera, which quickly broke and led to lots of out of focus images, or insane closeups because it would only focus within a few inches of the lens. Around 21 I got my first film camera, and though it was fully automatic, and I loved it, it was still frustrating because I had grown too accustomed to instant gratification. At 22 I started stealing my "mother in laws" 2mp digital fuji and that when I really started to set up little shoots and "create", so to speak. It was still mostly self portraits, though friends and family would participate too. At 23 a nikon d100 was bought for me and that's when it all really started. From then on it was less "just for fun", or to use instead of a therapist, or to cure boredom, and more my seriously trying to be a photographer. And I do still take self portraits, for a few reasons. For one, it's still convenient. I'm typically the only one available at 3am when things are quiet and I'm alone with my head, and certain pesky ideas are getting louder. Other times my ideas seem a little too cruel to do to other people. And others it's just about control. I know how to give myself what I'm looking for. And one day, when I'm older, I hope I can have a show that includes a self portrait from every year, age 15 on.
Lastly, because of most of what I've said already, I consider myself an artist the internet made. It molded me and propelled me farther than I would have gone without the resources and support system it gave me. I am still not the best technical photographer, the way I started out kind of ruined me a little in that way, but at the same time I feel it allowed me to go where I wanted with my ideas without any fear. I try my damndest to hold onto that, regardless of what progression I've made. Maybe one day I'll be able to say I'm a "pro", whatever that means, but until then I'm fine considering myself an amateur, while maybe, sometimes admitting there are things I could teach others as well. Maybe
Poem Therapy at 1:22 P.M. : A True Poem - Lloyd Schwartz
A True Poem
Lloyd Schwartz
I'm working on a poem that's so true, I can't show it to anyone.
I could never show it to anyone.
Because it says exactly what I think, and what I think scares me.
Sometimes it pleases me.
Usually it brings misery.
And this poem says exactly what I think.
What I think of myself, what I think of my friends, what I think about my lover.
Exactly.
Parts of it might please them, some of it might scare them.
Some of it might bring misery.
And I don't want to hurt them, I don't want to hurt them.
I don't want to hurt anybody.
I want everyone to love me.
Still, I keep working on it.
Why?
Why do I keep working on it?
Nobody will ever see it.
Nobody will ever see it.
I keep working on it even though I can never show it to anybody.
I keep working on it even though someone might get hurt.
Arthur Miller said that writers really aren't writing anything of worth unless they felt like they are transgressing against themselves. I feel this way all the time. I also feel like I'm exposing myself, not to ridicule, but to danger. Seriously. From whom or what? I admit that sometimes I can be a wee bit paranoid and horriblize and make giant leaps to worst possible scenarios. So if I am fearless and write what I really have to write: a poem, or short story, or a novel, what could happen? Sigh. Nothing. Flannery O'Connor was wracked with guilt about her material and thought her writing a sin. Thank God, Flannery wrote in spite of her guilt.
Lloyd Schwartz
I'm working on a poem that's so true, I can't show it to anyone.
I could never show it to anyone.
Because it says exactly what I think, and what I think scares me.
Sometimes it pleases me.
Usually it brings misery.
And this poem says exactly what I think.
What I think of myself, what I think of my friends, what I think about my lover.
Exactly.
Parts of it might please them, some of it might scare them.
Some of it might bring misery.
And I don't want to hurt them, I don't want to hurt them.
I don't want to hurt anybody.
I want everyone to love me.
Still, I keep working on it.
Why?
Why do I keep working on it?
Nobody will ever see it.
Nobody will ever see it.
I keep working on it even though I can never show it to anybody.
I keep working on it even though someone might get hurt.
Arthur Miller said that writers really aren't writing anything of worth unless they felt like they are transgressing against themselves. I feel this way all the time. I also feel like I'm exposing myself, not to ridicule, but to danger. Seriously. From whom or what? I admit that sometimes I can be a wee bit paranoid and horriblize and make giant leaps to worst possible scenarios. So if I am fearless and write what I really have to write: a poem, or short story, or a novel, what could happen? Sigh. Nothing. Flannery O'Connor was wracked with guilt about her material and thought her writing a sin. Thank God, Flannery wrote in spite of her guilt.
Artist of the Day: Bento Box - Crystal Smith
Bento Box Crystal Smith crystalmmithfineart.etsy.comI am starving at this very moment, but that isn't the reason why I am drawn to this gorgeous print. I love the expressive rendering of the sushi rolls, the interplay of opaque and transparent, love that the architectural plan drawing is the ground for this mixed-media collage.
Smith's Bento Box is from her Traditional Food in a Modern Home series.
I agree with Maggie Mason of mightygirl that No One Cares What You Had For Lunch. I get it, but in case you do, I'm having Chinese chicken salad. What about you?
Artist Bio:
Crystal Smith of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, loves the small and beautiful ordinary things that make interesting subjects in photos.
How Do You Begin A Poem - 2011 Poets Forum in New York City
I'm enrolled in a weekend fiction workshop with Judith Freeman, author of Red Water, Chinchilla Farm, The Long Embrace. To prepare, I'm reading up on poetry. Okay, it may sound strange to focus on poetry rather than prose, but not really when you think about it. Each word in a poem has to work very hard to convey the precise message and tone. I've always looked to poetry to teach me to be a better fiction writer.
I haven't written much for about four years. Sometimes we lose our way, get sidetracked or distracted, involved in things that are not our business at all. I have reasons why I haven't written, but they don't matter, really. I'm taking this class to get back at it.
I found this article on poets.org. To begin, (or begin again), you must start at the beginning:
How Do You Begin A Poem? from poets.org
Six poets featured in the 2011 Poets Forum in New York City participated in a six-question interview in which they were asked about their own poetry, what books they're reading, and how they engage with social media like Facebook and Twitter. Check out excerpted answers to the first question posed to them: "How do you begin a poem?"—along with their answers to five other questions.
Cate Marvin in Conversation by Cate Marvin
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Cate Marvin: All poems, for me, are rooted in either a title or a line. I fall in love with a phrase I've read somewhere, overheard, or come up with on my own, and can't let it go, ever, until I've done it justice by encrypting it into a poem as a title or a line.
I like to think of poets as moving through the world with their minds poised like nets, intent on capturing scraps of language, resonant images. Thinking as a poet means viewing the world as a poem; thus, the poet is prone to existing in real space and time in a most vulnerable manner. This means being super-observant wherever your physical self takes your mind, as it requires being terribly receptive to light, images, movement, conversations between others, oddities many might be inclined to overlook in newspaper headlines, heatedly intimate conflicts overheard in public places, disingenuous directions offered by advertisements and street signs, etc.
Sometimes a poem comes over me like weather, feels like an itch or impulse. It's a near physical sensation. At that moment, there is nothing else to do but move to the typewriter or computer to pound the thing out.
More often, the poem has lived in my head for a long while, and I've battled with the entire idea of it. It insists on being made. I resist. I try to will it away. It won't go away. This is the Real Poem. The poem not born simply out of anger, or from a fit of lyrical bliss—no, this kind of poem has a real agenda. And it happens to me. When I begin this poem, I must be humble. Because this kind of poem, which usually has a big idea in its back pocket, is prepared to duke it out with me for years until I get it right. (By which I mean, one has to write a great many very bad poems to get this kind of poem started.) This kind of poem takes a lot of time. Sitting down. Beginning it again and again. By the point you've started it, it's taken so long to get there, you can't honestly explain to anyone how you began it. It began with you. In you. And it won't quit until you've got it right, by which point it bears no resemblance to the poem you "began."
Gabrielle Calvocoressi in Conversation by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Gabrielle Calvocoressi: Often, I begin a poem with a walk, or a song I hear that begins a movie of the poem getting made in my head. That's funny to write "out loud" but it's true. I'm a daydreamer and a wanderer so a lot of my day is spent imagining the world of the poem before the words even come. Particularly for this new book that I'm working on—the poems are a real story so I spend a lot of time just imagining what the characters might do and how the light looks and the car radio sounds when they do it.
Cathy Park Hong in Conversation by Cathy Park Hong
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Cathy Park Hong:
1. I read a lot, procrastinating from actually writing with "research."
2. I go to the New York Public Library, fill out requests for books, retrieve books, read, and take copious notes in the Rose Room.
3. Sometimes, I force myself to write a sonnet a day, where I just empty my head.
4. Go to museums, films, galleries, where I steal images.
5. I unload most of this raw material into my unlined black notebook that I always buy at a tiny stationery store on 12th Street. The notebook may consist of information, data, "free writing," stabs at stanzas, to do lists, directions to places (I don't have an iPhone).
6. Transfer mess to computer and twiddle with it.
Evie Shockley in Conversation by Evie Shockley
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Evie Shockley: There is a fullness in my mind, a crowding and jostling and rumbling of ideas, outrages, phrases, and images, reaching as far as my mind's eye can "see" in any direction, and I begin wading into the crowd and trying to make a space from which to think about what some (or all) of the things in it have in common or what they might have to say to each other— if I could only create an arena where that analysis or conversation could happen.
< OR>
There is an emptiness on a page, a vacuum represented and magnified by the whiteness of the space, that goes until it ends but even in ending implies an endless continuation of that blank refusal of inscription, and I begin to muss it up, to get it dirty, to bring it into contact with the world in which it exists, to pollute it with laughter, injustice, loss, ambiguity, laundry, and any other thing that goes into the human experience of life.
Ilya Kaminsky in Conversation by Ilya Kaminsky
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Ilya Kaminsky: I write in lines. So the lines find their way on paper whether I overhear two boys insulting each other at the gas station, or see a gull cleaning her feet, or two old men playing dominoes on a hood of a car, or two young women kissing at the fish market. They become lines on receipts, on my hands, on a water bottle, on other people's poems. Lines collect for years, but once in a while they discover that other lines are sexy and, well, the poems may come from that sort of a relationship. If I am lucky. Which isn't often. But one has to have faith.
Matthew Dickman in Conversation by Matthew Dickman
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Matthew Dickman: Most of the poems I write begin with a simple word or idea. I'll be drinking coffee and think "I like coffee!" and then I'll start writing about how much I like coffee. It sounds pretty basic, I know. I suppose it's the “like” that moves me to begin writing a poem—some sort of celebration in my chest wanting some words to understand itself, some sort of grief needing a body.
I haven't written much for about four years. Sometimes we lose our way, get sidetracked or distracted, involved in things that are not our business at all. I have reasons why I haven't written, but they don't matter, really. I'm taking this class to get back at it.
I found this article on poets.org. To begin, (or begin again), you must start at the beginning:
How Do You Begin A Poem? from poets.org
Six poets featured in the 2011 Poets Forum in New York City participated in a six-question interview in which they were asked about their own poetry, what books they're reading, and how they engage with social media like Facebook and Twitter. Check out excerpted answers to the first question posed to them: "How do you begin a poem?"—along with their answers to five other questions.
Cate Marvin in Conversation by Cate Marvin
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Cate Marvin: All poems, for me, are rooted in either a title or a line. I fall in love with a phrase I've read somewhere, overheard, or come up with on my own, and can't let it go, ever, until I've done it justice by encrypting it into a poem as a title or a line.
I like to think of poets as moving through the world with their minds poised like nets, intent on capturing scraps of language, resonant images. Thinking as a poet means viewing the world as a poem; thus, the poet is prone to existing in real space and time in a most vulnerable manner. This means being super-observant wherever your physical self takes your mind, as it requires being terribly receptive to light, images, movement, conversations between others, oddities many might be inclined to overlook in newspaper headlines, heatedly intimate conflicts overheard in public places, disingenuous directions offered by advertisements and street signs, etc.
Sometimes a poem comes over me like weather, feels like an itch or impulse. It's a near physical sensation. At that moment, there is nothing else to do but move to the typewriter or computer to pound the thing out.
More often, the poem has lived in my head for a long while, and I've battled with the entire idea of it. It insists on being made. I resist. I try to will it away. It won't go away. This is the Real Poem. The poem not born simply out of anger, or from a fit of lyrical bliss—no, this kind of poem has a real agenda. And it happens to me. When I begin this poem, I must be humble. Because this kind of poem, which usually has a big idea in its back pocket, is prepared to duke it out with me for years until I get it right. (By which I mean, one has to write a great many very bad poems to get this kind of poem started.) This kind of poem takes a lot of time. Sitting down. Beginning it again and again. By the point you've started it, it's taken so long to get there, you can't honestly explain to anyone how you began it. It began with you. In you. And it won't quit until you've got it right, by which point it bears no resemblance to the poem you "began."
Gabrielle Calvocoressi in Conversation by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Gabrielle Calvocoressi: Often, I begin a poem with a walk, or a song I hear that begins a movie of the poem getting made in my head. That's funny to write "out loud" but it's true. I'm a daydreamer and a wanderer so a lot of my day is spent imagining the world of the poem before the words even come. Particularly for this new book that I'm working on—the poems are a real story so I spend a lot of time just imagining what the characters might do and how the light looks and the car radio sounds when they do it.
Cathy Park Hong in Conversation by Cathy Park Hong
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Cathy Park Hong:
1. I read a lot, procrastinating from actually writing with "research."
2. I go to the New York Public Library, fill out requests for books, retrieve books, read, and take copious notes in the Rose Room.
3. Sometimes, I force myself to write a sonnet a day, where I just empty my head.
4. Go to museums, films, galleries, where I steal images.
5. I unload most of this raw material into my unlined black notebook that I always buy at a tiny stationery store on 12th Street. The notebook may consist of information, data, "free writing," stabs at stanzas, to do lists, directions to places (I don't have an iPhone).
6. Transfer mess to computer and twiddle with it.
Evie Shockley in Conversation by Evie Shockley
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Evie Shockley: There is a fullness in my mind, a crowding and jostling and rumbling of ideas, outrages, phrases, and images, reaching as far as my mind's eye can "see" in any direction, and I begin wading into the crowd and trying to make a space from which to think about what some (or all) of the things in it have in common or what they might have to say to each other— if I could only create an arena where that analysis or conversation could happen.
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There is an emptiness on a page, a vacuum represented and magnified by the whiteness of the space, that goes until it ends but even in ending implies an endless continuation of that blank refusal of inscription, and I begin to muss it up, to get it dirty, to bring it into contact with the world in which it exists, to pollute it with laughter, injustice, loss, ambiguity, laundry, and any other thing that goes into the human experience of life.
Ilya Kaminsky in Conversation by Ilya Kaminsky
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Ilya Kaminsky: I write in lines. So the lines find their way on paper whether I overhear two boys insulting each other at the gas station, or see a gull cleaning her feet, or two old men playing dominoes on a hood of a car, or two young women kissing at the fish market. They become lines on receipts, on my hands, on a water bottle, on other people's poems. Lines collect for years, but once in a while they discover that other lines are sexy and, well, the poems may come from that sort of a relationship. If I am lucky. Which isn't often. But one has to have faith.
Matthew Dickman in Conversation by Matthew Dickman
Poets.org: How do you begin a poem?
Matthew Dickman: Most of the poems I write begin with a simple word or idea. I'll be drinking coffee and think "I like coffee!" and then I'll start writing about how much I like coffee. It sounds pretty basic, I know. I suppose it's the “like” that moves me to begin writing a poem—some sort of celebration in my chest wanting some words to understand itself, some sort of grief needing a body.
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