Writing a poem -- a look at the process

This is an explanation of the process of writing a poem, and not a defense of outcome. I
don't usually do this sort of explanation of process because I think it
is at best, irrelevant, and at worst, defensive. But in the spirit of
being more open with the secrets of craft as modeled by Gene Fowler in his
tell all book, "Waking The Poet," I'm revealing some of the moments of
making writing decisions that are typical when attempting to balance
the nonverbal right brain (muse) with the oh-so verbal left brain
keeper of words. First, the poem, as originally submitted to MOAPG ( a discussion/feedback group for poets ):


Tilden Park

bonfire

in the far flung
sparks
burn

oceans
splash
sky

brass trumpets and merry go rounds

raucous clatter and bangs
punctuate around
around, around
and around

explosions light the moon
birds fly
above the eucalyptus
darkness and bright wing lights
flutter

painted nostrils carved to flare
ears swept back to stiff curled manes,
hooves and hard saddled horse backs
pierced with brass poles
whirl

brass trumpets echoing
the power and glory forever
in important small ways
an unseen bass drum
is beaten in the park.

there are no riders now
no waving hands
coming in and out
of view looking for father
for mother
for
someone
to see
someone
to applaud
some reason
to be

in the far flung sparks
of remember


On May 23, 2005, at 1:28 PM, Gene Fowler wrote the following as a suggestion for revision:

“I also dropped "sparks" down as in the opening. I put the vision-
sparks "on" not "behind" eyelids, keep an ambiguity, all those
painted eyes, open or closed, that might be on a carousel ...so, more vision,
or the birthing of vision...? Both. And, it is anti-climactic, forces
thereader back to the stanza just before it ...while closing the poem,
making it a gestalt, a whole ...or holy. As vision should be.

in the far flung
sparks
on closed
eyelids.”

I responded, saying,

“I like the "on" because it keeps the image exterior, and the dropping
down of *sparks* is one of those obvious things I should have done and
most likely would have done on the next visit. The location is "the
far flung" which is where the sparks happen to be. It is a noun a
sort of "squinting subject.", not a series of adjectives. So you're
right on the money with that shift.

I also like the image of eyes painted open, as they are on a carousel, and
the juxtaposition of closed eyelids. But it doesn't *sound* right to
my ear/muse, and of course there is no explicit image in the poem that
sets the combination up as well as it should be. What intrigues me
the most is that the last stanza, particularly the word, "remember" is
a "live spot" for several readers. In terms of actual statements, the
last stanza paraphrases really more like:

in the far flung
sparks
of remembering/remembrances of things past/passed.

But none of those words felt right and that's only a paraphrase.
It narrows the focus of meaning too much. It's the kind of glibness
that is accessible, but reductive. That's how cliches are birthed,
snatched from the close-enough pile of meanings that are so handy in
every day speech. I tried a number of combinations to close the circle
and decided upon "remember" as it might be used in the infinitive, "to
remember," as it might be used as either a subject or object.


The central image of the poem is a merry go round in Tilden
Park in the Oakland Hills, and a specific memory of watching and
listening to it with no one around except perhaps an unseen operator.
No children, no other adults. It's one of the "places that linger"
images, memories that keep surfacing, and those are often starting
points for a poem. If I were writing prose, the exposition and
exploration of those moments would be much as I have written here,
fairly clear and easy to comprehend. But, that presupposes that I
started with the memory and wrote a "picture" of it. Now, here's the
secret, the memories often come from the opening words that may have
started out as something else. The "working title" of the original
lines was "Genesis"

Genesis

bonfire

in the far flung
sparks
burn

Then the poem was set aside, with several attempts to pickup the
thread that the muse threw out there. But they suffered from too much
consciousness of theme and became wordy and philosophical, and I'm
really not comfortable with the poet as guru role. It was a poem that
was going nowhere fast. But I stopped trying to think it out and let
the images come as they might, turning the universe into a backdrop to
a moment in time. Then the lines, describing the "lingering memory"
jumped into focus, a place to gather energy from and to use as actual
models of composition, much as a painter might finally after a series
of sketches decide what the painting was going to be.

It is the still, yet energy laden quality of a moment that mattered
in some non specific way. It is the spark from the fire that flares
and fades to dark, even though the fire is undiminished and burns on,
an infinity of lifetimes, of sparks, like when you stand under the
stars and try to visualize the great explosion of existence that is
eternal because it is moving so fast that it stands still in time. And
even that doesn't quite get at what I sense there. That's simply a
prose approximation of what I can sense. The spark lingers in memory
which is just as real as anything I see today. But rather than tell
all of that, I try to present the stimuli in words that evoke rather
than explain.

Best,
Stephen Morse