Now Playing: Helter Skelter by The Beatles
I had one of those writing days yesterday.
You know the kind where you sit down intending to write a poem and instead the poetic brain behaves like a vending machine that’s been kicked a little too hard and suddenly six or seven snacks fall out at once? (An obvious callback to my Busted Vending Machine poems era, LOL.)
Yes. That.
There’s probably a name for this phenomenon, although poets, being poets, have about seventeen slightly different ways of describing it. Let’s call it “clustering.”
When the poetic mind gets tuned, poems start crowding the pen. They don’t like to wait their turn. Actually, Word Raccoon plays back and forth in them like she’s bellying up to a word buffet.
Emily Dickinson reportedly cluster-wrote poems.
It is said that Elizabeth Bishop mentioned poems coming in bunches once the thinking had started.
And others, surely, are of the same writing mind.
In other words: once the door opens, the poems tend to rush the hallway, and WR, that inquisitive trash panda, is a terrible bouncer.
Which brings us to yesterday’s café session.
I sat down intending to write a poem. Just one. A nice responsible poem that would behave itself and perhaps wear a sweater vest. Or at least act respectable for once.
Instead, the following creatures wandered out of the underbrush:
• All These Lovely People
• Grade Report for the (Redacted)
• (Redacted) Optional
• Kreskin
• Mind Sweeper
• the kindergarten clock poem (still untitled but bossy)
• the one beginning “My mind wants a vacation”
• and the long espresso-over-Diet-Coke situation involving literary journals and goldenrod with way too many stanzas and is probably four poems in one but maybe not? I haven’t dared look at it today.
Eight poems.
Eight nuggets, anyway.
Not all equally promising, but they are welcome nonetheless. We don’t reject mind matter here.
Word Raccoon insists she had nothing to do with this, which is suspicious because she was seen earlier yesterday morning rummaging around in the mossy log of poetry muttering something about fungi and fondant. (Those things appear in one of yesterday’s poems, so I’m not sure that’s really funny if you aren’t reading it, and you’re not, because it’s not finished.)
The strange thing about cluster days is that the poems often turn out to be talking to each other. I’ve spoken of this before.
You don’t realize it at first. You just think you’re writing separate pieces. Later you notice that the same themes keep wandering through like recurring characters in a television series:
waiting
time
coffee
donuts/nasty fondant
people in cafés minding their own business while you mentally take notes like “an apex word predator wearing a sweater.” That is a line from one of my poems, so WR says back off from it. LOL.
Apparently, my brain had decided we were writing about waiting.
Waiting makes the poetic mind weirdly observant. You start noticing things like wall clocks, remembering kindergarten schedules and when clocks became important in your life, literary journals that bite your palms, and the structural weaknesses of cream-filled donuts.
This is how clusters happen.
One emotional weather system moves through the brain and suddenly every poem is looking at the same storm from a different window.
One poem examines the clouds.
One complains about the barometric pressure.
One makes jokes.
Meanwhile Word Raccoon is in the corner whispering, “We should probably write another one.”
Cluster days are messy, but they’re also strangely reassuring. They remind you that poems are less like manufactured objects and more like fungi after rain. They appear when the conditions are right.
Don’t try to force them.
Keep the notebook open and avoid stepping on them.
And possibly buy them a donut. Eh, I’d prefer a piece of cake.
At least those you can purchase without consulting the muse’s input.
Now, today.
First off, a squirrel is fussing in a tree. I love that cranky sound, like an old-fashioned car that won’t start. But who is she talking to? She’s the “young” one from last spring, I think, but she’s still moving agilely. Good girl.
I woke to conflicting weather reports. I’m just going to sit on the porch until I can’t. It’s screened in. What’s the worst thing that can happen? (I will go in if there are thunderstorms. Not sure why my weather sources can’t agree this morning.)
(Oh wait, the squirrel is fussing at the neighbor’s outdoor cat. Is she mocking it because it can’t reach her?)
The house was due for a reset, so as soon as I came downstairs this morning I started a load of laundry, turned on Helter Skelter, and began putting away the nonperishables from the specialty grocery store we picked up over the weekend.
I played the song twice before switching to The Killers. (Some mornings WR just needs loud music to get going.)
Then when Word Raccoon tried to tell me I didn’t need to wash the Dutch oven because of my bad finger (music joke too), I reminded her what rubber gloves are. She sighed and settled in to clean it and load the dishwasher. (Hey, I unloaded it yesterday.)
Not having any Coke Zero (long story), I dug out the Keurig and inserted a K-Cup. (Thanks, Zack!) Coffee accomplished. But I did spot some yummy looking cookies while putting away the groceries that I can imagine sampling with a cup of tea later. (Do you think that Kurt Vonnegut mug is auditioning to hold tea today? Perhaps.)
I was going to make a smoothie for breakfast but decided to have a deconstructed one instead: a protein shake with a banana. Done and done.
WR whined, because I was going to put peanut butter in the smoothie. I promised her (since pb is practically its own food group around here) that I will let her have some on a rice cake for a snack if she just does all the things first. A few of the things? Maybe just one thing.
(The first load of laundry is drying; the second is washing. My hand hates me today but that’s fine. We will do the things anyway.)
This near-spring opens windows in my mind. There’s a peculiar feeling, even when I’m indoors (although I’m not), that I experience.
It’s deep contentment, the feeling that I can inhale and inhale and inhale and the air will still feel and smell fresh. That no matter what is wrong in the world, this moment is sublime. It’s completely independent of anyone or anything else. A private moment with Earth. (Gosh, that sounds more spiritual than I meant.)
I submitted three packets yesterday afternoon, one to a place that I had to withdraw a submission from a few days ago because it had been accepted for publication elsewhere. I hope they don’t mind.
Writing poetry, sending it out, feels like I’m sending out flower petals, trying to spread both beauty and truth in the world. I’m trying to do my part, I’d like to think. And some of my poems are more fungi than flower, for sure.
Sitting on the porch today doesn’t feel like waiting for poetry. It feels like communing.
Why do I have the urge to write a poem called “Having Vonnegut to Tea” now?
dremadrudge.com 