Let the Heart Babble

roostermoans.org


Here is another excerpt from my thoughts in the Rooster Moans workshop (see previous post). A tangential discussion broke out, spontaneously, about whether to censor or encourage the gush of unrefined emotion when drafting a poem.



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(From the workshop "Poetry, Politics & Demagogy," Week One)


I have to admit, a great deal of awkward and over-dramatic emotion seeps into my drafts. My strategy has been to write freely and copiously, often six drafts a week. In this way important emotion is validated, and hopefully gets tempered through editing into a chrysalis of sorts.

Yes, most drafts don’t get to the stage of beautiful writing; but there is a ‘freedom of voice’ and a validation of feelings and of my being and all its flaws.

I guess for me, poetry should be about validating the heart, even if the expression is clumsy at first. I think it best to work with inner emotions, even if sentimental, not censor them--let them run like children in your words.

I don't like the pedagogic style of trying to stifle gushes of emotion in the tyro, or, for that matter, the advanced practitioner. Some of my best poems came from writing like mad and paring it down and refining later.

Another metaphor, not sure if it’s good: Sentiment is raw earthy form, a blend of anguish, love and all the others -- something needs to be mined out of the ore, cut into a jewel.

To get to the jewel, you must delve into the raw material.

That might be my tactic.

What I’ve learned is that I’m not really the author of my poems--the mind is more complex than just an “I.” To write a good poem requires that the dream-making part of the mind get involved, which is beyond the self.

By sharing the act of writing with unruly emotions and whatever forces unleash them, I can sometimes get to powerful phrases like this, from your poem, so heartwrenching:


“tape stretches like wings over his mouth”


Wow.