Thoughts on the Future

Rather than lamenting the inability to live in a bygone past, we should be looking forward to a better future. I realized tonight that my point of view towards life, that the future can always be better than the past, has not come through in my work up to this point. No matter what has happened, there are always possibilities for what may happen. A present and future world can still be viewed through a lens that appears to echo the past.
This most certainly does not mean that the past is made superior than the future. To the contrary, the best of the past may be taken to the future while that which was not successful or healthy can be left behind. Therefore, there can always be improvement.

August Thoughts

It's been quite a while since I had a true thoughts post. I've decided I may use this as more of an actual blog, not necessarily cataloging my daily occurrences but my "deep thoughts."
This was in a recent National Geographic:

"Do you know what saved me from becoming a cold-blooded murderer? My language saved me. There is no way for me to be hateful in my language. It's such a beautiful, gentle language. It's so peaceful." Then White Plume started to speak in Lakota, and there was no denying the words came softly."

The power of words: Their importance cannot be stressed enough. A whole language can change someone's outlook on life. My biggest regret in writing poems so quickly and publishing them with little time to think them over seriously or fine tune the word choice is that the diction is frequently "off" or slightly skewed. Selecting the right word is imperative to the success of a poem. If I could, I would look up the meaning of each and every word I use and ensure that the connotations and denotations are in line with exactly what I wish to convey.
On the other hand, this would not produce results and would more often than not end in many unfinished poems that could probably pass as acceptable. On this subject of poems languishing until a final form can be finished: My latest poem, Ballad, is a poem with a composition date stretching back to the first day of the month. Entirely unintentionally, I completed the poem on the last day of the month. The poem could certainly be taken as being superficially and figuratively symbolic of my July poems: Anxiety about originality, increasing wordplay and experimentation, but eventually returning to the same formulas that kept me going in the past.

Musings Courtesy Harold Bloom

From The Best Poems of the English Language by Harold Bloom:

There is a benign haunting in poetic tradition, one that transcends the sorrows of influence, particularly the new poet's fear that there is little left for her or him to do. In truth, there is everything remaining to be thought and sung, provided an individual voice is attained.

 Having suffered several crises on this very subject, I have managed to pull myself from complete, ridiculous despair by different means. When I read this quote, I a, comforted, and I feel that developing a distinct style and facility is more important than having original ideas. The old maxim, "nothing original is good, and nothing good is original," seems to apply, but I feel that this is an oversimplification/derogatory saying that can't be applied to every work. I hope that sometime in the future I may be able to develop my own distinct style and be able to write with a facility that will allow me to speak on any subject, contrived or fresh, in a new shade of light.

Musings Courtesy Oscar Wilde

From The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (1890):

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

 I read this novel in the fall of last year, but as with any good book, some of the ideas keep rattling around in my head. The idea from this quote in particular stuck in my brain because I consider myself somewhat of an artist (not that I give myself the label of "Artist", but that I make things that could be considered "Art" such as paintings, music, and poetry). I wonder which I might be - the poor artist, living the work that I wish I could make? Or am I living such a boring life because I am putting my everything into my work?
Of course, Dorian Gray's character may be completely wrong, and there could exist some sort of middle ground, where neither the artist or the art is very interesting. At this point in my life, I am most likely somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Inspiration

I guess the most important thing about a poem (or really, any creative work) is that it really shouldn't be forced or contrived. Slamming your head into a desk and willing inspiration is not a good way for natural inspiration to arrive unless you want to write a natural poem about slamming your head into a desk. The nice thing is that inspiration usually comes when you start to walk about or even do something as simple as take a walk outside. Experience is the greatest fodder for inspiration: Even if you haven't learned anything new, sometimes seeing something in a new light unlocks new connections in the brain.
In any event, inspiration is also a learning process, as the things you think of as inspiration increase the more inspiration you get. One thought leads to another, sometimes leading to three or four ideas at one time. When inspiration runs low, there may be more ideas left waiting around from previous brainstorming sessions.

On the Writing of Poems

Poems are curious things to me. They are one of the few works of art that I can reliably and continuously create. They are not things that need to be forced (and they shouldn't be labored) and so my writing process always begins entirely by chance - I will receive an idea from something that I saw or thought that day and write down my thoughts. When I have an idea of where I want to go, I begin to write out a rough draft and I try out different rhymes like some people try on clothes. I sometimes write down multiple possible rhymes and try out different lines, but if it sounds forced or inauthentic, I just dispense of the structure.
The most important (and enjoyable) stage of writing, however, is the rewrite. My preferred method for writing a poem is to write down my ideas, begin to shape them, and promptly forget about them. Then, in a month or so, I can happen upon the poem hidden away on a piece of loose-leaf paper or in a computer file. Much in the same way that the initial inspiration arrived, an editing inspiration usually appears, and I reorganize, edit, and remove whatever I find necessary. If a poem doesn't feel right, I can just leave it to be re-rediscovered someday. This helps keep ideas fresh and means that there's probably a fragment of an idea lying around somewhere when I can't think of any new ones.
My incessant rhyming is a result of my four or five years spent trying to compose songs. It has its time and place, but I try not to overuse it.

The Thing About Poetry

The thing about poetry, and writing in general, is the absolute nature of words. Sure, a word can mean or suggest many different things, but for the most part, the physical word itself that is written, printed in ink, or even displayed on a monitor is unchanging. The same cannot be said for music, because while instructions are given for rigid forms such as Classical, music is such a live experience that two recordings of performances by the same group of the same piece will not be the same. Music asks to breathe with its transience and its "in-the-moment" qualities. The improvisatory and human qualities of music are what can make it so compelling.
I much prefer to give my poems to people to read over reading them myself. I don't want the experience of my own reading (which, to be quite honest, would not do my own work justice) to affect how the reader feels.