the word imagination, i just noticed is made up of the words image and nation. the nation of images, the homeland of visions. 

perhaps then, the purpose of art is to incite this nation to invade reality. 

The idea for this poem came from being sick of American politicians talking about the fact that there wasn't a 'silver bullet' solutions; instead, they say, complex and nuanced issues require complex and nuanced solutions. They would say this, as often as not, before bringing up their own silver bullets solutions: simple answers that they either thought would get them elected (cynical) or that  they actually believed in them (to be optimistic). I thought it was ridiculous. Of course there are silver bullets; it's just a chunk of metal. The problem is, they don't do anything all together that special because they're made to kill myths. So I emailed to myself, "i believe in silver bullets, it's the werewolves i don't believe in. / silver bullets are hope, hope is good and tangible.  but we can't forget that the hope is often based in myth." I filed the email in the creative - musings section of my gmail and forgot about it. Then, over a year later, I found the email and wrote this poem. 

...

SILVER BULLETS


i believe in silver bullets
as the way to kill a werewolf
because i believe silver 
shaped like a bullet
etched with a cross
loaded in the hunter’s gun
fires tangible hope
against real fear
if one squeeze 
of one trigger
may release a light
much brighter than when the moon’s full face
shines on the vain hunter’s path
otherwise empty
he visits it tonight as he stalks his prey 
with his one silver bullet

i believe in silver bullets
a silver bullet yes without a doubt in mind
but werewolves? 
werewolves don’t exist

...


I didn't think much of it at the time. I felt self conscious about my own sincerity and presumed it was more pithy than powerful (maybe it is, i honestly can't tell, although i'm trying to trust my own feelings on matters like this). But, about six months after I wrote it, I was doing a lunch break reading for Southwark Playhouse: Secrets. I chose the poems to read by having  audience members pick numbers from one to a hundred (out of a hat originally, then i had them choose a number from their mind), and would read the corresponding poem from 100 Poems Written at Work. Someone picked the number 5. After I read it, someone gave a very audible, "hm." I thought, wow, someone really liked it; i made someone think. I don't know if he actually liked it or just responded that way, but I took the poem seriously from then on. Thus far, it's my only poem to win anything resembling an award and it was the opening piece in my Oxford application. So, there you have it.

"...find an idiom that would not make a fetish of the local but would rather transpose the parochial into the planetary." Seamus Heaney said that to describe the live long mission of Scotish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (real name Christopher Murray Grieve).

He was famous for, among other things, his poem, A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle. I couldn't understand the poem itself because of the thick Scottish speech it was written in, but gist resonated with me. It's about looking at this symbol of a country, and seeing it as more than kitsch designed to leech money from tourists. The drunk man sees something which defines him. MacDiarmid wanted to find a something that can be to the rest of the world what this thistle was to this drunk. 

I bring it up because it touches on one of the big questions i've been stuck on for the past few years. Is there a more potent way to foster identity than uniting behind an enemy? Having enemies define us leads to all sorts of silly things, like hatred and war. If we can come up with a better way (and by better, I mean one that is more successful to the end of tying an individual to a group), then we have a formula for world peace. Transposing the parochial into the planetary is one such possibility. 

For it to work, however, it'll have to be a very good poem.

I have a question about when, not just to record an idea, but when to think it. 

Reading a thought provoking article, or a thought provoking line within one, often sets me off on a tizzy of reaction. I imagine myself explaining to a Ellen what I'm thinking (with unsurpassed eloquence, obviously). Or i imagine myself writing a reaction or blog post about it. The focus being on the substance, though. I'm prompted to have a thought, therefore my mind is distracted to develop that thought.  And so I develop it at the expense of the rest of the thought provoking article, as my eyes flick upon words that i'm not taking in.

The question is, when do i do the actual developing? Do i put down the article? Or do i put down the reaction/thought?

My impulse is the former. Put down the article and record the thought. Express it in as fully formed a presentation as possible. Don't risk losing anything that comes to mind! Thoughts are precious! Don't let them go! If i don't write it down right away, it could be gone forever. Whether or not it's a thought worthy of immortality, i won't know until later. But better to write something that will be forgotten, then to forget something that could have been groundbreaking. 

This, i think, is wrong thinking. It's creating from a place of famine. I can see the comic on a date with his dream girl, ruining his chances my jotting down every good joke in his notebook. 

I'm going to work on the latter possibility, letting the reaction disappear into the ether of my subconscious. I'd like to practice to focus on the moment i am in. Make a note in the margin, underline a passage, perhaps even read it aloud to someone -- that I'll continue to do. But then, let it go. I want to learn better how to take in fully the inspiring idea and trust that what is worthy will stick, and re-inspire me when I have the capacity to record. 

It also makes it possible to be a writer in the world and live in it at the same time. 

The metaphor I had, which distracted me from my latest Seamus Heaney lecture, is as follows: fill the tank, trust it's full, and then use the fuel. Perhaps the answer is a return to meditation, or maybe this is the meditation. 

...

(a small note. i had two ideas for posts inspired by the latest lectures i'd been reading. i wrote this one first, and forgot what the second would be. take of that what you will. but, then again, while writing this afterward, the idea for the other post returned. take of that what you will as well.)

 I just read the Seamus Heaney lecture on John Clare ("John Clare's Prog"). 

John Clare (left) was an early 19th century Irish poet. By all accounts mad, he spent the last twenty years of his life  in an asylum. He thought he was Lord Byron sometimes. He was often convinced he was married to both his childhood love and his actual wife. And, from time to time, he wrote stunning poetry.  He was unapologetically in the moment. He has lines like, 'I am - yet what I am none knows or cares.' His short poems are like watching the clouds go by. He has a poem about a badger that I particularly like. 

Heaney's point was that Clare didn't think twice. He wrote what he wrote and let it stick. His style, his vocabulary, his content was always based completely in what he wanted to write (as opposed to some pretension of what a poem should be). He wrote poems in the language he knew, the language he spoke. 'Focal' is the word Heaney used, coming from the Greek 'focus' meaning hearth. Focal language, the language of the hearth. We need not be masters of the Queen's English to compose breathtaking poetry, just gotta have a well lubed track from the inspiration to the page. The challenge seems to be how to build up the craft of writing (i.e. train to be a writer) without getting caught up and trapped in other people's conventions. 

I'm not comparing myself to James Joyce, but I think I know why he left Ireland. It is easier to defend who you are when you can see who you are. Away from my home country, I can see more clearly who I am against the stark back drop of a people who I'm not. So maybe I am practiced at defending that something essential as I take on new qualities. I have, after all, begun putting the letter 'u' into places where it doesn't belong while spelling tire without a 'y'.

The poem below was inspired in part by Father Sean's homily one easter sunday. In it, he followed the possibility of Jesus' lover being the beloved disciple in the Book of John through to a reenactment of the moment of Jesus' resurrection. 

After the three days, Jesus shows himself to the beloved disciple  She knows him by the way he says her name, as only a lover can. I vividly remember Sean saying, "They have taken my love away, taken my love and I don't know where he is," as he recounted that which was precious and lost in a show of faith that they aren't lost forever.

It was an extraordinary talk; as rare and powerful and haunting a moment as i've ever had in a catholic church. I tried to write a poem about it, basically steal Sean's idea. The problem i came up against was that Jesus' love life is too distant. The original poem risked being an intellectual exercise, not  a personal expression of something essential. After several rewrites over two years, the poem settled into my grandfather's death, my grandmother's grief and my attempt to touch on what 67 years of marriage might mean.  

I kept the title, "Easter Poem," because it remains about the death and resurrection of a lover.


...

EASTER POEM


I died on a Friday
In our house
In our lounge
On a bed
That they brought me to comfort my passing

You stayed with my body all night
And you called the next day
For them to come
With their van to take my body
They came almost right away

Sunday is today
And without my body
They have taken your love away
Taken your love
And you don’t know where I am

But I am here
Standing beside you
Whispering your name
As only I know how
Whispering my presence to you 

And I know your name
Because I learned your name
Under one blanket
Over one lifetime
That has belonged to us

And I know your name
As a secret we share
In our own language
Written aloud
In words we invented

And I know your name
Because it is my name
Written in your hand
In the same calligraphy I used
To scrawl myself in you

And I know your name
Sculpted from my breath
Blood’s secret ingredient
Your name is all I know to say
Because it is the shape of my mouth

So I must whisper your name
Because I know your name
And you know mine
And though you cannot hold me
I am here

"[Hope is] a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. I don't think you can explain it as a mere derivative of something here, of some movement, or of some favorable signs in the world. I feel that its deepest roots are in the transcendental, just as the roots of human responsibility are... It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." (Vaclav Havel)

This was quoted in on of the books I'm reading for my course (The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney). I really like this, especially the last sentence. 

I’m returning to taking writing seriously. Maybe I never left. Maybe the idea of returning is a lie I’m telling myself to motivate myself. But I’ve gotten into a creative writing program, to which I’m about to commit a lot of time, money and effort. The program crosses through fiction, poetry and script writing. Their emphasis is on finding the writer’s voice and, with the help of my lovely wife, I’ve decided to take them at their promise. I’m using the course to write what I feel is true, beautiful and real to me.

Expression and experience are interlinked. So much to the point that we can reasonably say there is not such thing as experience, only increasingly intimate expressions of it. Therefore, finding my voice is a project pursuing my self. (And maybe at the heart of that self, I’ll find waiting for me a voice.) I don’t expect to get there, like an asymptote doesn’t expect to arrive at its destination, but hopefully I can get closer and close and so close that the two are indistinguishable. A lofty goal, but worthy of a life.

To find my voice, I believe, will entail speaking with sincerity as best as I can as often as I can. So I’m posting stuff online. My words. My work. And an aspirational third category reserved for words and work of others that supersede the quality of my own. It’s public because I want to remember that writing is an expression.  

(photo credit: Ellen Brady. We thought it looked authorly.)