The Rivers That Run Through It
... my current writing that is, themes, recurring ideas, obsessions, ways I work with words. What I seem drawn to explore, what I return to, over and again. These observations were culled from work done in recently completed Part II Daydreams poetry class I took with Bob Haynes.
-- What I’ve taken to calling “threshold” moments in life—and not just the obvious ones like giving birth or someone’s death but those times when you know you are living through moments that will change you and your life from here on out.
--Eyes and what they see as witness. I try to paint pictures of what I see, what stands out to me. To push beyond the surface or to notice what is on the surface and celebrate that. Part of this is about teaching myself to pay attention.
--“Found texts” including scraps of dialogue and writing, from strangers, from other arenas of life, maybe even from other poems?
--Sound, what I can hear, the rhythmic current that runs through life, the pulse, the backbeat. The sound that’s there even when we believe we’re in silence. The way words crash into one another, making music or noise.
--Dance and movement, and words about dance. To make things move and sway that wouldn’t ordinarily do that in life.
--Textures, words that look as well as sound, that give a three-dimensional thickness to the line, the phrase.
--What’s below the surface. The rough, unpolished, raw. The pith and marrow. What isn’t easily reduced to black and white.
--My journey to where I am now. What I was willing to give up, what I have lost, what I gathered up instead.
