TRACKING THE MUSE
Anna Journey | Because Everyone Needs A Little Thanatos
In order to avoid bloviating abstractly about my writing process, I dug up a few drafts—from my initial handwritten scrawls to the final typed version—to see if I might describe how I write poems in a tangible way.
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Initial notes for poem and word/image clusters. |
My initial notes for a poem look more like spiders or black chain-link than a poem. At this beginning stage I’m messy. I’m I-haven’t-swept-my-hardwood-floors-in-a-month messy. I’m crazy-arrows-and-little-spokey-stars-on-the-loose. At this point, there’s no editor-angel (devil?) perched on my shoulder hissing, “Goddamn, that’s a cheesy floral image,” or “Girl, you just ripped off So-and-So with that title’s wonky syntax.” These word and image clusters are as free to be as sloppily ridiculous, as ill conceived, or as apt as they happen to be.
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Early handwritten draft. |
Okay, now things are beginning to pick up. I’ve found an entry point: a couple of tentative titles and a first line or two into the poem’s world. Sometimes this gearing-up—this focusing and streamlining of word/image clusters—requires scribbling out other less promising attempts. Sometimes a scribble is important in order to isolate which images and actions resonate and which ones need to go the hell away.
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Later typed draft. |
The editor-angel-devil is perched on my shoulder for this draft. Punch up those flabby verbs. Nix those convoluted lines and present the imagery and action with utmost clarity. In my pajamas, I say professorial things to myself like, “Clarity is never a vice.” I scribble out whole passages and rewrite them. I think the long title is too “explainy.” I decide to chop it down since the tooth fairy pillow is already wacky enough. I listen for clunky rhythms and add a spondee toward the end to rough things up. I decide that having an overtly severed thumb-tip in the poem is probably too yucky.
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Final manuscript draft. |
Finished…for now.
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Home office with Jellybean in the foreground. |
Jellybean: the half-psychotic Siamese mix with a gift for stepping on drafts of poems. Because everyone needs a little Thanatos in her writing process.
Contributor’s
notes
Tracking the Muse
Introductions: A Reading Loop