Poetry - the mercurial mistress

so i talked to poets the other day and discovered we’re all in courtship of - a kind of absence. 

i’ve been a painter, i’ve composed songs, i’ve written books. 
none of this is like poetry. 

the other arts are about hours. i put my butt on the chair every day and i practise until my brain leaks from my ears. for days. for years. and stuff comes out. the sludge gets out progressively, and then the tap is on. water comes out. art pours out.

it’s mostly hours. persistence. give it the truth, stay curious, sink my teeth in and refuse to let go.

poetry?
oh no. 

someone said : how do i gently persuade the words to come my way… cause i’ve been barrelling into them and trying to grab them with my fist and they just go. 

oh, relief. i’m not the only one failing in my barbarian ways. 
poetry does not tolerate being pounced on.

they say :

“i feel like i’ve been circling around the same poem for years, writing it over and over again. it’s excruciating.”

“sometimes i feel like the inner experience is so precious, of what’s being lived, that to try and throw the bridle of poetry on it is just wrong. it’s already poetry enough. words can only be cages around it now.”

sometimes i stagger in bursting and bamboozled with what happened and i write and write and it’s all trash, it all slips off without leaving the barest scratch on the surface. i have to wait in agony for 2 days and then - it gracefully descends on a random train ride or the forest track, batting its lashes meek as a lamb. 

i watched this beautiful movie bright star, where keats is spending a lot of time just lying around - but now i really get it. you have to be eating a lot of silence to hear her footsteps. 

you’re a page boy constantly on call, lest the mercurial mistress suddenly arrive. 

cause when she does and it’s 3am, there’s no “maybe later” - tomorrow the words will have vanished, with a tinge of regret lingering in the air. 

all i can tell so far is what Plath said : “No poetry is written about the quiet days”. she comes to dance when the remarkable is afoot and swishing its tail - car accidents and revelations and world-shattering embraces and complete confusion. she wants the high drama. 

she walks with fox feet the faultlines of the heart, patient and nimble - waiting for cracks.

#poetry #poem #confusingmuse #mercurialmuse #courtingthemuse