Poetry
begins in the head. The day had gone gray and I’d pretty much
given up on fetching new stuff to celebrate the occasion. I was just settling
into the fact that all I was going to do that day was set up a customized blog
header when the line, ‘I wish you knew
the man I called father’ blew in on the breath of inspiration. Details of the
poem, dedicated to the memory of my father who passed on some twenty odd years
ago, sorted itself out with the introduction of the phrase above.
Writing a poem can be either exciting or
pretty much like cutting rock with an ax. It all depends on the angle of
approach. Wordsworth took his cue from this when he said poetry “takes its origin from emotions recollected
in tranquility; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the
tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion kindred to that which was
before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually
exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition gradually begins.” Underneath
every good poem a carpet of refined
emotions sustains the poem’s resonance, molding and loading it with deep
meaning heavier than the metaphors presenting them.
Wordsworth composed the entirety of his
poem, “Tintern Abbey” about 159 lines
in all, in his head while taking a
rather long stroll. “Not a line of it was
altered,” he said. “And not any part
of it written down till I reached Bristol.” How a poem begins and takes
form in the mind; how the poet recognizes
it for what it is and starts rubbing words together to kindle the flame; trying
for consistency says a lot about the role intuition plays in its creation. When
a poet tries to force a poem it often than not produces a composition which,
comes off raucous to the ears like the sound broken glass makes trampled under heavy
boots.
Poetry works best when it comes as a
result of a free association of words in the mind, when it springs from an idea
and develops through emotion that has been refined in the heat of tranquility. When
I wrote the poem about my father, I’d had years to mourn his passing—the emotions within had blossomed from pure grief
and outright bitterness to one of clear perception. And when the muses
whispered those lines to my heart, the tranquility had traded places for recollected emotion. I knew what I was
writing about like I knew my own heart.
Magic plays a prominent role in the
writing of a poem. It is impossible to create one without help from the muses. Ask
anyone in the know and they will tell you that, “Poets who have written successfully have done so largely through
intuition. Poets often do this without being able to explain how, just as readers
may respond to such rhythms without knowing technically, why.” A quote from
Robert Wallace’s ‘Writing Poems’ which
still rings true to this very day.
Keep your pens bleeding.
Akpan
Posts
