Working Through
It should have been heaven. An ice storm closed me in the house but left the power on. I had heat, food, five kinds of tea, and uninterrupted time. I wanted to plunge into the novel-in-verse that's now past the halfway point - turn some of those ideas into finished poems. (To read one, click here . Six more poems will appear in The Missouri Review this summer.) But the poems wouldn't come. I edited some earlier poems, work that needed doing, but it wasn't new work. I kept myself in the chair, doing other bits of writer-biz, putting myself in the place for writing to happen. But that doesn't mean it will. So I gritted my teeth and plunged into the half-formed ideas. It wasn't sweet inspiration. It was that other kind - perspiration, like loading wood. One chunk after the other. Slowly, the poem took shape. It's not finished - the language isn't singing yet - but it has a shape. And the second poem is starting to round into reality as a call-and-respons...