Words on Walls

This week, I was struck once again by the chaos of writing first drafts.  For me, first drafts of poems have always been full of scribbles and arrows and substituted words.  I’ve learned to try my best not to stress about the quality of writing coming out when I first set words down on paper;  instead, I concentrate on identifying the themes and questions that are rising from the writing.  Often, all that remains from the first draft when I finish a poem is a few lines, but nevertheless, I need to put in the time to sit down and find those lines..  One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, explores the importance of less-than-perfect first drafts in her book Bird By Bird:

“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go — but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”

In light of her advice, I find myself excited rather than anxious when a first draft like the one below comes into being:

Coincidentally, the poem that came out of the scraps of paper pictured above came from my reflections on writing the other poems in my distinction project.  Here it is (as of now!):

At First

At first, words came

Slowly: crept out to dance on the crests

Of my fingertips, on the lines of my lips

Then fled to shadowed corners when I reached out

To catch them, to hold them

I fled too.

To desolate spaces where I could

Whisper somethings without substance

Where silence came easily

And I let it settle in because I was certain

There was nothing of worth to say

Then, just as dust began to film every hope, every thought

The words emerged or maybe

Returned

From his glance across the road

From her hummed harmonies

From our midnight conversations

Words for him: the one working two jobs

With toddler twins waiting

At home on a sun-flooded porch

And for her, who crafts notes so piercing

Her melodies bring down strongholds

And him who makes walls his stepping stones

To launch into worlds where nothing

Can hold him to the ground

Not gravity

Not weakness

Not fear of falling

So, if you rest here awhile

I will try to

Spread out words like laundry

So they will have space to dry

Space to breathe

Into the desolate spaces

You will see:

They are made to catch the light

To catch your breath

To bring down strongholds with a song

28 November 2011