Nature is My Muse
The voiceover only includes the poems. The prose part is not recorded.
I am pleased with my book, It’s Just a Phase, from Walnut Street Publishing, but I have not abandoned my two previous books. Though self-published, I hired a talented artist with The Wing and the Wheel Press to design them and provide the typography. They are small books. I see them like gems in an ornate jewelry box.
Healing and Conflict is 30 pages of poetry and color photography. I have included three poems that reveal one aspect of my writing process. I will say more about that in the comments following the poems.
We Are Water is a book of Haiku and color photography in a horizontal 3X5 format. Both suffer from low distribution due to local printing and sales.
Haiku from We Are Water: Goose with Goslings Photo Break through solid shells Warm and safe inside the nest Swim pas turtle's jaws American Alligator Photo Silent through winter Amorous alligators Explode into spring American Toad Photo Male toad fills his throst Calls from pond to woo a mate Clouds and rain arrive Poems from Healing and Conflict Introduction: Part 1 I once fancied myself a poet. I know better now. My poems are not poems at all. I borrowed that line from Ryokan who said it one of his poems that are not poems. He told his audience they must understand that statement before he could speak of poetry. I have come to understand that my poems are not poems. I stand befoe you ready to speak of poetics. Not the poetics of Aristotle, but the poetics of the earth. Part 2 What do you mean by all that? she asked. My reply: Nature is my muse. A friend once said that nature is as close as I come to having a religion. I am as an observer in Plato's cave. My poems are shadows on the wall, but here I depart from Plato's world of ideas. The true poems are not ideas. If you enjoy my poem about falling rain or about cranes in flight, I am honored. If you want inspiration, go and watch rain falling on parched earth. See it come back to life. Listen to cranes trumpeting as they take to the air. Those are the ture poems. Nature as Muse The muse is fickle as the weather. She inspires on a whim, turns a deaf ear. She touches when she pleases, calls the words, Leaves without a rhyme, a metaphor. She inspires on a whim, turns a deaf ear. Stare at the blank page. Listen as the wind in trees leaves without a rhyme, a metaphor. Blue Jays laugh from distant woods. Stare at the blank page. Listen for wind in the trees. She inspires when she pleases, calls the words. Blue Jays laugh from distant woods. The muse is fickle as the weather.
The story of the muse is only half of the creative process. I struggle with the writing. The poem or essay doesn’t come to me. I wrestle with it as long as I can. I make false starts and want to rip the page from the notebook, but I don’t. Then I awaken in the middle of the night, and the words flow through my fingers and onto the page or screen as though another hand did the writing.
Some mornings, I go for a long walk after struggling with the words. I carry a notebook with me, and sometimes the writing flows onto the page as one hand holds the pencil, and the other holds the notebook against a tree trunk. Sometimes I am sweeping, mopping the floor, or washing the dishes, and a poem I have struggled with suddenly gels.
Putting my mind in neutral seems to allow the writing to emerge, but only after struggling with the words. Waiting for inspiration without the prior struggle is pointless. That path leads to blank pages for me.