It’s Tuesday, Day Four of the ice storm that’s paralyzed the Pacific Northwest. I haven’t left the house since Friday, except to tread very carefully on the three-inch thick layer of frozen snow in the backyard to feed my six hens. The hens, showing a level of intelligence hitherto undemonstrated, have refused to exit their coop since the storm started late Friday night. On Sunday, one of our ash trees came crashing down across the driveway. Luckily, no one was hurt and no property was damaged.
This weather fills me with a strange, pent-up energy. I keep going to the window to view the same scene: white sky, white driveway, bits of chopped-up tree, piles of branches encased in ice. It’s weirdly beautiful. Every now and then, I hear the swooshing sound of the kid next door sledding down the street.
Forced inside and unable to leave, I turn to literature for comfort, and especially to poetry. I decided to re-read Denise Levertov’s 1984 collection, Breathing the Water, and found to my surprise and delight, several ekphrastic (art-inspired) poems in a section called “Spinoffs.” In the Notes section, Levertov writes of “Spinoffs:” “These ‘span off’ from photographs by Peter McAfee Brown when I was preparing to write an introduction to his work for a forthcoming publication.” I love the way these poems begin: “Much happens when we’re not there,” (“Window-Blind”); “Everything was very delicately striped,” (“The Spy”); “The wind behind the window moves the leaves” (“Embrasure”). Even though I can’t view the photographs, the poems paint a picture in my mind.
Ekphrasis is one of my most-trusted sources of inspiration. Today, faced with a full-blown case of cabin fever and lacking any real inspiration, I unexpectedly find it in a random book of poems. “Spinoffs” contains so many exquisite lines: “light / awestruck again at its own destiny,” from “Athanor,” is an example.
Ekphrasis is just one way that poems arrive. Another way is in Gary Snyder’s “How Poetry Comes to Me:”
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light
In this poem, poetry is a shy, half-wild creature easily scared off, an entity needing the proper approach. It’s like when I wake up with an idea in my head, but as I’m fumbling for something to write with, the idea disappears.
Ten years ago, I collected poetry-writing prompts into a little book I called Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets. The book includes chapters written by poets Dave Bonta, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Ellaraine Lockie, and Eileen Malone, among others. It has some very nice blurbs from John Amen, Serena Agusto-Cox, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, and Al Young. In honor of its tenth birthday, I’m offering copies at $10 (plus shipping) each.
So much has changed in my life since I published Vibrant Words. I’m a lot older, for one thing. I live in Oregon now instead of California. My kids grew up and now live on their own. But one thing has not changed: I still actively seek inspiration for writing.
Poems don’t always come easily. They might be hiding in a photograph or a sculpture, or just at the edge of the campfire. Or even in another poem.
What inspires you to write? Please share in the comments. Thanks!
I often say that I don’t write a poem, but rather a poem speaks to me and I just write it down. Sometimes a phrase, a song, a smell, a view from a hill, or a feeling sticks in my brain and won’t leave until I get it on paper. It’s hard to describe the real process – it just happens.
Yes that often happens to me!