the painter and the poem

On weekends, my Youtube viewing schedule is largely plus-size fashion or thrifting hauls, a smattering of van and cabin life programming (aspirationally), some weird paranormal and urban legend stuff, and artist studio vlogs.  All of it happens while I am working on other things--cleaning, folding books, etc, so my concentration is rarely focused,  but Sunday  I was watching a painter do a study of a flower, kneeling carefully on the ground in her yard and it occurred to me how I very rarely attempt to render what is there in the physical world.  She would begin with a sketch, then moved closer to do more detail work.  While ultimately her pieces were a bit abstract and not true-to-life, it was definitely a different approach to creating that abstract object. While I have painted many flowers and trees and landscapes, they usually come not from something observed in the real world, but much more, the imagined. Or the developmental, what appears and can be finessed from whatever happens on the page when I start raking the brush across it.  Much is experimental and more about process--drips and smudges and color variations.  So much more about color and mood and a hint of realness, but no real efforts toward verisimilitude.

It occurred to me that my approach to writing is very similar, and poetry, by it's nature may be as well. So much is color and shade and music, maybe a hint of  story pulling it along like an engine. I've often thought about how my work is definitely split along the demarcation line--circa 2004, when I began my first attempts at visual work.  The poems before were like trying to paint that flower but always feeling like I came up short. I knew exactly what I was trying to do, what I was trying to say, but like that perfectly rendered flower, I failed. I was never happy with the work.  The writing process, while I liked to have done it, was tolerable, but scarcely enjoyable.  More like kneeling in the sun on my heels uncomfortably for hours, only to get back inside and find I'd done the bloom no justice whatsoever.  And so it was like this poem after poem--all the way through my first book manuscript.  I'm not sure I would have stayed in the game had it always been like this book after book, poem after poem. 

In 2004 and 2005, something shifted.  The process of writing became much more like an assemblage. Of words, of images, of feelings and fragments.  I did a lot of collage-style writing and incorporating found texts then.  Would keep a notebook close to me to catch the stray line or images for later.  I would pluck a few and stick them down on the page and move them around to see what developed.  Some of it was word-salad, but some of it took shape into solid things. The best part was never knowing what I was going to get, so I was always delighted when I got anything at all. It didn't have to look like a real flower or say the thing I most desperately wanted to say, mostly because it would create even more beautiful flowers, say things that i would never, with my intentions, think to say.  Sometimes, the most interesting narratives and themes came from the subconscious or the happenstance. There was a certain flow that made writing, if not always easier, highly enjoyable. Without expectations, everything was a success, no matter how small.

I could possibly argue I've entered a third era in my writing style the past few years.  I am not always as collage-writing driven as I was, nor do I need as much  material to make something new. And maybe this feels more like painting than collage--putting the paint down on the paper and then figuring out what is there that is of substance. When I was working on the honey machine Plath centos, this was the process, but that was probably the last time I worked with found material.  I still have notes jotted in my notebook, words and phrases and ideas, but I need them less now when I go to write and only turn to them when I'm stuck for a way to begin.  Typically, if I can get the first couple lines, the little machine of the poem will start turning enough to bring it to some sort of conclusion. Lay down the first few brushes of color and then keep going.  I don't necessarily know if this coincides with adding painting to my creative practice, or printmaking, which feels like another mode altogether. But I like it.  And it makes poetry more about process and discovery--and which I typically mostly happy with many, if not all,  of the things I create.   Sometimes, a flower fails to even resemble a flower, or a landscape is just lacking something, but each attempt makes the next one better.