I have to keep reminding myself that these poems are drafts and just get over their weakness and rough spots and recall that the drafting aspect is part of my April experiment–pushing the envelope, as the saying goes, and allowing the imperfections to go public. Then readers will perhaps recognize that every poem has to start somewhere, and it is not always from inspiration or native talent.

Any of the poems I draft this month that I consider worth keeping around for further work will move into my revision-worthy pile. For me, the revision process engages creativity in a form very different from the initial draft. Just as an example, few of my drafts use rhyme; sometimes I employ a basic metrical strategy (but not always)–and stanza structure almost always occurs during my revision process. Yet my finished poems often contain such components.

This one’s a less-plausible lyrical narrative, and I have no idea why I drafted it.

“Observatory Box,” Joseph Cornell

~

Experience of the Disembodied

What happened was a bounce
or peak in the field,
a shiver in the multiverse
tearing through cosmic shift

although maybe that is not
what happened because I was
not observing the rift,

I was entering into it with my
physical body per se

although I could not call the action
“flying” yet I did feel earth’s
gravity, that weakest of forces,
loosening until church spires
and pine trees, tall city buildings
shrank beneath me–

and my skin emptied,
a frosty altitude, a gutted sensation,
numbed spine and brain: Where am I?

In this supra-cosmos no light
of the sort my eyes can translate.
Energy vibrating. Loss of myself
while I watch myself,

fascinated, undone. Waiting
for the next shoe to drop.

~~

Re: National Poetry Month –here’s a thoughtful blog post on continuing the conversation through millennia.