On poetry, and leaning into the dream

As a younger writer, I merely told people that I wrote sentences. Now and then, I could write a decent one. That was something I could stand behind.

Perhaps because poetry was a household joke. I had no desire to out myself as the writer that I was — someone who (very secretly) had a lot to say, and at the same time needed, even for just a sentence at a time, to feel free.

There are so many reasons why a person may need to be free. Whatever the case, poetry offers respite.

The poem makes reality optional. In fact, as poet/writer Richard Hugo argued in The Triggering Town, the unreality of a poem is exactly what concretizes its own becoming. Write by rote and the poem is doomed.

The poem is a place where imagination meets with memory and desire. It is a sublime place, regardless of the features of its terrain.

The poem conceals and reveals. In the lovely A Horse At Night, author Amina Cain talks about the work of ‘haunting the sentence’ — the writer’s continual reckoning with what to show and tell. She explains how shades of truth enable an idea to be glimpsed rather than grasped, thereby made ghostly.

Finally, the poem is honest. At least, it is for its writer for the length of the dream. The process of writing and revising poems is one of reconciling truth, and one that brings you deep into the heart of things.

Portals is a book of poems. Ten perfumes conjured them into being, portals to the divine. I like to think of these poems as ten scented dreams. For me personally, Portals served as a place of refuge during a period of loss and mourning. It was a place to go when few things in the world made sense, a truth I imagine might haunt the work.

As we move into another chapter of political insanity, poetry is still a place we ourselves can go for pause, even for mere moments at a time. It’s a place where reality is still optional. I invite you to give yourself permission to turn to the blank page and let somewhere else take hold. Write a sentence on your terms, and keep it just for you. (Hint: this is how the best poems begin.)

And if you have perfume at hand, let it be your guide.