I lost a seed that was given me
to plant in my springtime garden.
I let it fall through thin space
onto a dark and ordinary place
away from light or the need to find.
I did not plant it straightaway
when bright was the sun
and fertile the ground.
Only in hasty scribble penned:
“Write about a lost seed.”
Today I found my hasty scribble
had turned to dry husk
bearing neither flower nor fruit
from that moment it came to me:
“Write about a lost seed.”
Portland, Oregon – March 30, 2020
I began this site in December 2015 after many years of writing only occasionally. During those years I would, from time to time, dash something out on paper and quickly abandon to a box without taking the time to sit with it, work on it or, as often happens now, trash it because it simply was not satisfying and I could not think how to make it satisfying. In those days I thought to myself that, after all, I am not a poet because I do not write or only so rarely as to not qualify even for my own sense of what calling myself a poet might mean.
Since I began In Cascadia I have written at least one poem every month, for four years. My average output per month is something over three poems. Quantifying poetic output doesn’t go well with the poetic sense, I know, but my reason for doing so is simple. It means that I have been writing consistently and for a number of years. This gives me confidence to say, at least to myself, that I am a poet. While I know that the innate desire was part of me, patiently waiting since at least my high school days, it was not until I began to write with some consistency that I felt I could claim to be, in earnest, a poet.
Now, there is no need to go into whether I am a good poet or not. There are far too many subjective and objective qualifiers to go into here. I have, however, read a few “how to” books from “real” poets, enough to understand that the quality of my work will not likely bear the hard scrutiny of established critical standards. So be it.
My own standards are these:
Yes. To all, yes.
My conclusion is that to be a poet means that I must write poetry and with some regularity. This is no different from any other writing form. One just has to sit down and write and see where it takes you. I do not think it has as much to do with meter, rhyme, line break, or any other of the many qualities that are ascribed to poetry. All these are important of course but writing itself is the finest teacher I have – always there for me.
I am very grateful for those few who follow my work here. I never expected to reach many readers so I’ve not been disappointed. I greatly appreciate your expressions of “like” for my work.
Peace,
Tom
Why did you stop writing
when I know you have the words?
Your blank white pages
wait for your return.
Are you there?
Are you well?
I lost many words
during years I did not
believe I could find them
out on the tender and vast
landscape of my own living being
stretched across the years.
I did not know they were there
waiting for me to find them.
They did not call with loud voices
but lay silent all along
the paths of the green fields
of my one and only life.
I am gathering them up now,
words along the wayside fallen.
I will arrange them in lines
on the forbidding white page
making, fashioning, creating
a poem from me to you.
Our words – we string them together
as best we can – a gift
we were given from birth.
They help to patch holes
we’ve left behind us.
They help to create the way before us
into the green fields of our lives.
Portland, Oregon – June 23, 2019
I follow a few poetry blogs but noticed I’d not seen writing from some for a long time. I wonder what happened that they stopped writing? There may be very good reasons. I know that it took many years for me to start up again, so there is hope for all writers out there. Just start again, I beg you!
This piece is my reflection on the concluding line of my poem “Continuous Awareness” (January 23, 2017). I published it but did not know precisely what the line meant. It simply “felt” right.
Words entered my fingers without thought
in the evening cold, begotten
as if from the pregnant and shivering air.
“Tender repose of our ancestors…”
where forgotten times and stilled loves
become created life again, speaking.
Words work themselves out of our past
try to say who we are, what we mean,
speak of roads we might travel
remind us of those we must travel alone.
They stumble, fail, fall short of the mark,
tell of promontories seen only in dreams,
memory shards of orchards in spring sunlit bloom,
cold light of blue dusk in a wintry wood.
What did I mean when I wrote the words?
They. They live in my presence
suggesting words for remembrance –
what they saw, wished for, passed on
so to live in the light of the glory world.
What might I do for them this night
but write as they tell me in words?
They fall to me, drifting into time –
nothing more but to catch them when they come.
Portland, Oregon – February 3, 2017
Waiting…
Waiting…
Wind flutter on fading coal
in this longing season –
shrouded sun hanging low
over the gauzed and furry horizon –
the reaches of self and the world.
Wind, tree rustling cold bare branches,
thrilling spaces between dark limbs
quavering deep reaches
of space beyond our pale light,
trilling starlight gleams while stellar grains
float broadcast in cosmic fields.
Poetic dream to be wind brushed
hushed into warmth of words
from within, hidden in heart shadows,
the heat of breath on cold winter nights.
Portland, Oregon – December 14, 2016
“Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within…”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, In Defense of Poetry (paragraph 39)
Thanks a lot! I started reading your book
On Poetry – Oh, what I’ve been missing!
But I knew I should take a second look
after many years I had been dissing
the need to take my work more seriously –
you have many excellent things to say
and in a way not imperiously.
I must begin to look without delay,
following on my many disasters,
at forms employed by the artful masters
who knew what they were doing when they wrote.
Of Maxwell’s many lines in brief I’ll quote:
“Line break is all you’ve got” on the white page
to separate your poem from your prose –
the time, the beat, the rhythm of the stage.
A poet yet in time I’ll be, who knows?
Portland, Oregon – April 22, 2016
This wreck of a rhyming pentameter poem is “inspired” by beginning to read Glyn Maxwell’s book On Poetry published in 2012, Oberon Books. It’s a good choice to begin my more careful look at the meaning of poetry, how to read and write it. I recommend it. One problem is that, as I look at poetic forms and how poetry works, I’m more challenged in actually writing, worried that I’m not “getting the form” correct. Well, there’s a balance thing I need to live with as I try to learn some things.
Creativity and learning need each other.
I have been creating lately and thankfully, but I haven’t been learning, at least in the poetic sphere, and I now understand that I need to learn more about this essential craft – how others write poetry and think about it. While I trust my instincts, the wisdom and experiences of others will inform my growth as a poet and elevate the quality of my work.
I began to write as a senior in high school, inspired by Mrs. Evans and her teaching us about poetry and poetic forms. So, I’ve long known about formal classic methods, such as rhyming iambic pentameter, but I rarely paid attention to them in the years since. The question is, should I? Should I pay more attention to and practice formal poetic methods? Well, that is what I am now exploring. There are, of course, many poetic forms, classic and modern, and the discernment of what forms will work for me could take some time. What I know is that I am not too old to learn and the continuing search for knowledge within the creative life is important.
There are many voices expressing their thoughts on what they believe makes for good poetry. How do I know who to listen to? Well, I guess I’ll just explore the field a bit and see what comes of it. For those of you who have read my work, liked some of it, and maybe are following, I want to let you know I appreciate you and hope my explorations will help me to be a better poet in the future. Knowing that even a few people are interested in reading my work is very exhilarating to me. I welcome your thoughts on the matter. Again – my thanks! Tom
Portland, Oregon – April 14, 2016
The Van Gogh painting shown here (“Kornfeld Mit Zypressen”) accompanied an article in Pacific Standard Magazine entitled, “Come All Ye Failures – Though we wake in fear of mediocrity, let us cease to be crippled by it.” (http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/epic-fail)
“…the ambitions of our work, our projects, aren’t ours to impose. They are for us to discover. They are best discovered from a place that doesn’t self-judge or self-denigrate, a place beyond our own worst fears of not being good enough. That’s where we find meaning. And solace. That’s where we stop feeling like failures and start feeling like human beings.” (Christopher Cokinos)
As one who writes without expectation of formal publication or remuneration, I found this article by Mr. Cokinos helpful. I have come to believe that my creative life is the expression of a gift and that, for myself and others, it needs to be offered to the greater community. It is OK that my gift is simple, imperfect, or even just mediocre some of the time. It’s taken me quite a long time to believe that I have this gift and that is enough.
The Van Gogh painting is appropriate. He, among all artists, created to save himself. In doing so, he saved so much more for posterity. Van Gogh is, for me, as I suspect for so many of us, one of our greatest Muses.
“We can’t predict the fruits of our labor; we can’t even know if we’ll really go through with it. Gratitude requires an unpaid debt, and we will be motivated to proceed only so long as the debt is felt.” (pp. 65-66)
“Having accepted what has been given to him – either in the sense of inspiration or in the sense of talent – the artist often feels compelled, feels the desire, to make the work and offer it to an audience. The gift must stay in motion….Mary Sarton writes: ‘There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one’s gift to those one loves most…The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.'” (pp. 188-189)
C
From The Gift – Lewis Hyde
Mr. Hyde’s book is a “defense of the value of creativity.” It is not only for the dedicated writer or artist, but for any of us who believe that creativity and gift is at the heart of our being and flourishing in our circumstances. When we cease to create, in our own unique ways, and when we cease to offer our creation or give it away, we lose our heart, our compassion, and we begin to feel that there is not enough anymore, so that we must hoard what little or much we possess. Creation is the understanding that there is more, always more, and giving it away brings the increase.
In Cascadia 