what poets want | part 3
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When it comes to those ethereal factors of being a poet, beyond the external validations and desires to communicate, to make connections, to find an audience for what you write, is a dark little space . A tiny attic at the top of the stairs. A why poetry? Or maybe just a why?
That is, of all the things, of all the means of expression, or ways of interpreting the world. Versus fiction, or visual art, or film. Versus making arty Instagram videos or tiktoks. Versus essays and songs and journal entries. Why this?
I've also been thinking about "content." Mainly how I bristle at this word, especially since I make my living writing it now. But it feels like art shares a border with content, as creative content anyway. I write a poem, I share it, wherever that is, web or page or in-person, and its out there, being consumed, much as content is. I was reading something a while back about content is different from art in that art isn't trying to sell you or get you to do something--to buy something, subscribe for more, support the artist. But then that's where things get fuzzy. Or maybe a painting or a poem is less like content and more like a gift. A scream into the universe, meant to be heard or not, with no clear aim.
Either way, what is this thing and what do you want it do? I've written often of my desire to carve out stories, but also to build worlds that don't exist. In this way, I am more akin to most fiction writers I suppose, to novelists or screenwriters. And yet, poetry is the genre I chose. Sometimes it feels like I do many of the same things as a fiction writer, creating a reality and something of a plot. Building a world, even if it's a fragmented one, and creating characters that move around disjointedly within in it.
If a novel or a story is like a room with a window, the woman who just left the room or will be entering, the poem is the fly on the windowsill. The cracked perfume bottle on the dresser. The scent of jasmine that could be the leaking bottle or could be wafting in from the windows. The poem is all these things at once. The moment that is happening yet doesn't really have a beginning or an ending. And the larger projects are really just collections of those moments that form a fragmented whole.
Or that's how I write anyway, toward building that broken world and then flinging it out onto the page, the internet, the stage during readings. Of building a world which is also sometimes building the self or an interpretation of the self. Or looking at its reflection, but not getting too Narcissus-like about it (because that happens.) Because, really, it could be anything but poetry and be much easier going.
And because its poetry, formed so long ago as a storification of song mostly, sound plays a role. Rhyme, rhythm, meter. Less important in free verse than they once were, but still guiding that musicality. You can pay attention to these things or not. Master them and wield them or leave them behind. I do more now than I once did, letting the music of the poem drive its little machine.
So all these I suppose are what the poets want, or at least this poet wants in a general sense, That's of course complicated by visual art, by video these days, which I want to do similar things, but are less beholden to words, to language, which is a trickier beast than image.
So maybe the poet wants the room with the window, but also the bottle and the jasmine vines climbing the trellis. The woman and the fly. The house and its silence.
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