We poets often speak of listening to the muse. While there have been a very few times when a poem comes to me thta is rare. The last time that happened, I dreamed I was in Berlin riding the U-Bahn amazed by the neon lights colored-coded by the actual line. The next day I wrote the poem in German, because I dreamed it that way. When I included it in Places and Times, I translated it into English.
More frequently, I see something that either cries out to me to be included in a poem (to that extent I am an Imagist), or Something comes to my mind and I have to think it over. By no means do I have th eluxury of stopping everything else while I do my pondering, even when school is not in session.
Rarely I hot it down; I have always figured that if it is meant to come into a poem, I will remember it. And should that happen, I might change it somewhat.
Right now I am thinking of a few poems. Two I worked on a week or two ago, and actually have word-processed them, changing a little from what I scribbled down. One I did a rough draft of tonight, but have not word-processed it. This one came form a panel discussion I heard today at a conference. The other one comes from a conversation with someone at church last week. It was my first of three Sundays in this particular parish, and someone asked me a question bout my background. This is a nice question, and certainly in order. As a result, I got to thinking about some things. Oh, there have been times, usually not in church, when the question was not so nice.
Eventually all of these poems will appear int he manuscript for my second book, but I am at least a year away from completing it. But then again, perhaps the muse will visit be, and it will not take that long!
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