Poems About Writing Poems

About making other things, too.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

It’s getting a little meta in here, I agree, but this is the deal: for every time in my life that I’ve been told “write from your own experience” or “write what you know,” I get to write a poem about writing poems. What do I know better than that?

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WHEN WRITING A POEM IS LIKE COOKING SCRAMBLED EGGS


When everything you mean to add 
has been folded in.

When the heat has been on
for long enough to matter.

When parts are still gooey
and other parts want to stick.

When you wonder if you should toss this mess 
and start over.

When you keep stirring and stirring.

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WHY THE POET PREFERS TO KNIT


Because yarn loops to yarn
more easily than word to word,
one strand’s fibers friendly to the next.

Because wool and the click of needles
bind sense to experience between your hands
in ways words only describe.

Because the result
is sure to keep someone warm,
and if there is no result,

if everything accidentally or on purpose 
unravels, well, instead of tense lines
rubbed thin, frayed to tangles

on the page, you have with a tug
a lapful of soft resilience, happy 
to be wound and looped again.

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poems using the little widget above the photograph.]

I wonder if that first poem will make sense to anybody who cooks scrambled eggs on a regular basis. I … don’t. I know how, and I do it now and then, and sometimes it works — but if I was asked to make scrambled eggs for someone else to look at and eat, I’d get very nervous very fast. Not a confident cook, or a frequent one; what I feed myself at home is pulled from a short list of meals that taste good to me and cover the nutritional basics and need the bare minimum of preparation. I am not anti-cooking. I love it that other people love to cook, and I love watching cooking shows on TV. (“America’s Test Kitchen”? “Great British Baking Show”? Yes, please.) I make frequent resolutions to buy more foods and learn to cook more things. And … it never quite comes together.

Contrast that to my life with yarn. I learned to knit in grade school, and promptly forgot about it for several decades. Twenty or so years ago I had occasion to pick up knitting needles again, and was amazed to discover how much my fingers remembered and how natural the motions felt. By the time I’d finished a simple scarf I was ready to start another one, and by the time I’d knitted three scarves in a row I was ready to learn some stitches and techniques beyond grade school. I got myself a couple of decent how-to books and started trying stuff … and it was fun. Even the ripping-out that happened (still happens!) two or three times at the beginning of each new project, even the long rows of one plain stitch after the next — none of it bored me or scared me or exasperated me. It was, is, all part of the making … part of me making cloth, making soft things for people to be warm in. When I finish writing this post, I’ll pick up my knitting. It’s part of every day for me now.

Where does poetry fall in this continuum of making? I don’t think I’ve ever been as unconfident, writing, as I am scrambling eggs; certainly, though, I’ve made nearly as many resolutions to spend more time writing as I’ve made to do more cooking, and avoided both projects with similar skittishness. Gradually, though, I’ve come to approach my notebook more like I approach my knitting needles — and, in an odd way, starting to knit again helped with that. Here’s something for which I have an aptitude, something that’s fun for me. Sure, I make mistakes, but how tragic is that? Fix, start over, move on; I have options. Mostly, I have the chance to make something … and enjoy the making, even when it’s a challenge. A regular knitting practice — based on a cheerful acceptance of my affinity for pointy sticks and yarn — is one thing that’s helped me develop a regular writing practice, based on a new, more openhearted understanding of some of my other affinities.

Do parts of your creative life inform and teach each other? Do they compete, or help each other out? If you’d care to Comment, I’d love to hear about how that works for you.