343.366 - 2016 project and writing a poem

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

writing a poem

take all this with a grain of salt, maybe half a pound.  at the time I am writing a poem, I cannot really observe or take notes.  I am writing a poem.  that is all I am doing.  I cannot write a poem and listen to music or carry on a conversation or look at pictures.  while I am writing a poem I am writing a poem, that is all.  while I am making a story, I am similarly but less intensely just making a story.  if you interrupt me while I am making a story, I can stop and do whatever you want me to do instead of making a story, but I cannot do that and make a story.  while I am writing a poem, if you interrupt me, you have probably killed the poem.  I may be able to "finish the poem" but that is writing an ending to the poem I had started, not the same thing as writing a poem.  this is how I think I write a poem, but only how I think it happens.  as I said, I cannot do it and observe at the same time.  first of all, I can't just write a poem.  it isn't a skill like fishing or taking a test.  first I have to find a "place".  it is no physical "place", of course, it is a mental space, a from-ness, a way of seeing the world or me, or maybe an escape from the world into which I carry my concerns about the world.  I think of it as "the space in which poetry can happen".  I don't know the way, every time I get there by a different path, a different technique.  I have learned some ways that almost always get me part way there - reading someone else's poems often gets me almost there, so does puzzling over a Zen riddle, sometimes imagining myself in a historical incident does - somehow I get there, and when I do I nearly every time have a first line with me, or part of a first line.  I have no idea how that happens, but it certainly does not happen that I hear or make up a good first line and carry that with me into that space where poetry can happen.  no, I "step into" that space, and the line forms, and while I write it down or type it into the computer, the rest of the poem begins to form.  sometimes it requires a bit of unscrambling - I think the poetic mind works differently from the rational mind, but the listener needs to hear the poem through his or her rational mind, but that may just be an excuse for my editing.  in any case, sometimes I unscramble the poem from the way I first hear it to the way you first hear it.  sometimes I need some connecting lines between parts I "receive".  so I write down what tumbles into my mind, work at its order, work at its connections, then come back to my usual mind, and work on the spelling and grammar and sometimes my choice of words.  and then I'm pretty much done.  sometimes, rarely, I can go back and fidget with the poem, but usually that just messes it up.  no, I sit down, find that "space", and write my poem, then leave it alone.  I do not know how or why this works, only that it does, for me.  yes, I appreciate writing a poem, but I do not know how.