Yes indeed. Such a strange balance of ego to tell yourself that this thing isn't going to amount to much and isn't worth any more effort. My Mom used to paint these things and I would ask what it is and she would say, "I don't know. Maybe it's just something I'm doing on the way to something else."
I like your mom's comment. It's easier for me to see when something isn't going to work. Or I've actually been surprised and gone back to something I set aside for years sometimes and I see it differently and it's not so bad.
It’s a curious world this creative one. Really fairly new to me. Prior to retiring in January of ‘23, I wrote very few poems, about 40 or one per year, which hardly counts as a life of writing creatively
Sounds like my process creating a quilt! Many moments of walking away, and returning to rearrange fabric squares. More often than not my final result is quite different from where I started - yet with the same fabric, just rearranged.
How fun that we share this goofy process. This is what I like best about sharing poetry, finding out how much we all share in these common experiences.
Excellent description of the back and forth of the creative process.
thanks Stan. I'll bet you're very familiar with it.
Yes
Well said!
lol!! “ here comes that heartless bastard.” I enjoyed the hell out of this, you made your poem a living entity.
Thank you Sea, for that comment, because that was my intention-"Make 'em laugh."
You accomplished it!
Very fun piece ☺️
Thanks Brian, that's what I was mostly shooting for.
Whittling away with the editing knife
a carpenter and
a poet and
a way of life
Thanks Jonathan, that sums it up.
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
-W.H. Auden paraphrasing French poet Paul Valéry's quotation
That's good. Or you say, "I can do no more."
How can this seeming brutality console, but it does. Love this entire play.
Editing is a brutal process, right?
Nothing harder than correcting a very loved child I think.
So true.
This is great fun. I had a professor in grad school that said you always have to kill your darlings.
There is a lot of truth in that for me. For every poem that sees the light of opening night, I quietly end 10-20.
I have to write a lot of bad poems to get to the good ones.
Yes indeed. Such a strange balance of ego to tell yourself that this thing isn't going to amount to much and isn't worth any more effort. My Mom used to paint these things and I would ask what it is and she would say, "I don't know. Maybe it's just something I'm doing on the way to something else."
I like your mom's comment. It's easier for me to see when something isn't going to work. Or I've actually been surprised and gone back to something I set aside for years sometimes and I see it differently and it's not so bad.
It’s a curious world this creative one. Really fairly new to me. Prior to retiring in January of ‘23, I wrote very few poems, about 40 or one per year, which hardly counts as a life of writing creatively
I do never edit
I cannot take credit
A poem well written
Could be sitten
In a can
Next to a fan
On the floor
Never to adore
Never to soar
I don’t write poetry
I write rhymes
We all have our skills, right Jack?
Truth. Preach.
Thanks Mary.
Sounds like my process creating a quilt! Many moments of walking away, and returning to rearrange fabric squares. More often than not my final result is quite different from where I started - yet with the same fabric, just rearranged.
How fun that we share this goofy process. This is what I like best about sharing poetry, finding out how much we all share in these common experiences.
I’d like to see that, can you do a video of it?
My working life as a carpenter would, at moments, have looked like a combo of the 3 stooges with Laurel and Hardy