I used to write a lot of poetry. Over the past few years my writing has mostly been prose, a mix of creative non-fiction and fiction. Once in a while, however, poetry can be used to say what prose cannot.
I found an old notebook that had old material in it. The old material was embarrassing, and in pencil, so I decided to erase it. In the process I realized I was creating a palimpsest. A palimpsest is a document that has been erased so the paper can be reused for a new project.
This seemed to cry out for poetry. Erasing my life so that I could reuse it. Recycling myself. I began to write short poems over the older work. My palimpsest.
Maybe I had been bottling it up, because the poetry kept flowing. It felt like a day of a thousand poems. The reality was more like a dozen, but that’s a lot of poetry for one time. Instead of intentionally crafting poems like some writers do (notably Poe was meticulous in his crafting), I write spontaneously.
My poems come to me line-by-line. Often they come unbidden. This makes for a difficult time when someone has to be working all the time. I can’t know when a poem will come. Sometimes inspiration has to be put on hold so that I can get my work done.
Poetry doesn’t have to belong to the leisured class, although it would certainly be helpful to be as wealthy as Lord Byron so that one might indulge when the mood strikes. We are likely beyond the days when one might acquire wealth for poetry. It’s hard enough to find any publishers at all.
As a society, we are a palimpsest. We erase that which has made us great in order to put new material down. I miss the day of a thousand poems.
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