Horace

The hardest part of any writing trajectory is being overly pregnant with the idea and utterly incapable of articulating it. Imagine feeling the ancient aches of a poem and not being able to wrestle it out of the body and on to the page. The opposite sensation is brimming with an idea and being incapable of writing it down fast enough. Creative incontinence is as awkward and inconsolable as bowel incontinence. Honestly.

The good news of course is that the body is to be trusted. This is a kind of safekeeping it performs. Let it alone and sure enough the body eventually releases its grip on the work and like oil to the pan the work simmers on the page without much effort. The work not “polished” by any means but is delightfully littered with powder and excess. The vital early shapes as the promise of an eventual masterpiece - your masterpiece - will emerge.

I wonder if ghazals feel right these days because of the predetermined shape. The refrain and prescribed repetition. The idea that you have to circle something. Just choose the something. Ensure you can pinch and cinch and prod and knead and recast the something for each couplet. Look back after each new line to behold it as a new poem each time.

The poem growing tall, the poem flowering, the poem arranging itself.