Teachings from Writing Poetry Every Day for the month of April
Day 1
Poetry can’t be rushed. In my bed, before falling asleep, I think about what I may write the next day. There are a few ideas, a few words I play with in my head. But I also know that I cannot be sneaky with words.
Poem We Weave
Day 2
One day at a time. Of course, I forgot what I thought I would write about. I am reminded of the times when I was collecting key words from the thoughts before falling asleep to remember them the next day. For some reason, thoughts before falling asleep can be very elusive.
And then I did something I couldn’t foresee: I sat under the redwood tree to knit. And a verse visited. And I wrote that verse down. And I could have turned it into a poem. Maybe I will one day. But I am afraid that I will exhaust the well that holds my creativity when I scoop from it too often. I am attempting to trust that this well will never run dry.
I am also observing the trend of writing more in the mornings. As a teenager, evenings held the right mood for writing. Melancholy and darkness were the ingredients I needed. Hermann Hesse seemed to feel the same in his poem Abends. But nowadays, I am too tired at night. There is more time to myself in the mornings. And tea. And light.
Verse
knitting under the redwood tree
in rose gold and malachite
colors complementary
Day 3
When grief strikes, it wants to be honored and expressed. When met tenderly, it will stay for as long as it needs to remind you of your love that was lost. But then it also wants you to be yourself again, open to receiving love.
Besides, I tried to play with other words and verses to see if anything would come from there, but nothing felt right. Nothing did unravel. So I returned to my moment of grief. It was captured and released in a poem.
Poem 27
Day 4
densetress.
I am playing with the German word group dichten, Dichter/Dichterin, Gedicht. They are derived from a word in Middle High German (tihten) that means to compose artwork with words.
The German word dicht also means dense, tight, thick in English. I like to think that poets make life more dense by finding meaning and magic in mundane moments. Does that make me a denstetress?
Day 5
An authentic first. I do not feel like creating something new, so I sieve through my half finished poems. I find three lines that I convert into a Haiku. I learn that a Haiku has 17 syllables. Three lines. First line with 5 syllables, second one with 7 syllables and the last line with 5 syllables. I acknowledge that this is a first attempt and not my finest piece of poetry.
Haiku
Have you seen the tide?
ever so low, on a breeze
the pelicans bow
Day 6
This is getting hard. I am struggling with my value of quality over quantity. I feel stuck. Am I at the point where I feel like I am forcing the words? Does it feel performative to return to writing a poem every day? Is there something else that needs to be expressed before I can move on to poetry? It is also Frederick’s birthday. Wasn’t giving birth to him enough beauty for each time it is April 6th? Last week, while processing his birth before falling asleep I thought that I would write it up into a birth story, which I haven’t done so far.
When inspiration strikes, bask in it.
An emotion from the past visits me and at night I am trying to put it into words. I don’t even know what that emotion is, or what to call it. So I start to discover that emotion. I want to capture it in a poem. I start word doodling.
Day 7
A call for perseverance. The day starts with tinkering on yesterday’s poem. From another starting point, it wants to be rewritten. But the right first line remains hidden. I will continue my search and trust that the poem will reveal its true self. Who said that it had to be a NEW poem every day? I will be coming back to this one for as long as it needs me to.