Almost Daily Refraction #2

 In yesterdays post I made a commitment to publish "poems" which I have been constructing over the past year.  These were written spontaneously as part of the daily morning meeting I have with my wife. I started writing these a year ago after attending a poetry workshop at my church (Thanks Kate Thorpe!)

In the workshop I was instructed to write quickly with very little thought or control.   I was fascinated by the process but I wasn't crazy about the results. which I thought were often pretentious, sophomoric, grammatically sloppy, etc., But I liked the way it felt and the idea of somehow trying to unleash my expressive capacity.  It was more like therapeutic and spiritual work than writing.

Allen Ginsberg would call this an exercise of poetic candor (For a fascinating deep dive into Ginsberg's perspective read this)

I found the more I could let go of trying to control what I wrote the better/truer it seemed.  I remain fascinated and intrigued by the interplay of elements that shape what I write. 

Here's what I wrote on April 4, 2023 

“Time was once just a clock to me, life a book a biography”

John Prine is dead. But he lives on in so many lives. I am indebted to him. Such a humble, straight shooter.

What became of the wisdom I once had. The sense I knew the way. In the back of my mind I still feel some guidance, but this is often hazy, and no longer a function of my philosophical constructs.  In fact its voice is stronger the less I  try to impose my reasoning on it.

I woke up today feeling as if I had been to a party, drank too much and was worried about what I might have done.

Why had I made this commitment?

The fact is many of these daily exercises. in poetic candor are pretty bad.   It's just that I somehow, somewhere I embraced the idea that its important to put myself out there even though that can get pretty damn uncomfortable. 

Hell I'm 76 and deaing with a boatload of health issues.  Playing it safe would be just plain dumb. 

One of my hopes is that this exercise will be a springboard to higher  quality work.

Here's a poem by Ranier Maria Rilke which captures some of what I'm feeling

Shining in the Distance

Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunlit one.
The way to it, barely begun, lies ahead.
So we are grasped by what we have not grasped,
full of promise, shining in the distance.

It changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something we barely sense, but are;
a movement beckons, answering our movement...
But we just feel the wind against us.
                                                - Uncollected Poems