w r i t i n g b l i n d
what if we cautioned you this poem might leap off the page?
would you add extra milk and eggs to your grocery list?
-
what if we left this middle intentionally blank?
will you grant this grace?
will you understand?
will you sympathize, conspire with us?
just go along for the ride?
forget what you were doing here anyway?
perhaps this really is your poem after all
and you’re just a flinch away from everything
coming back beyond slight of hand.
soon you’ll be asking for your favorite pen,
asking for your old writing hat.
close your eyes. go ahead, begin to write.
this ink might become invisible any moment now!
what if it rained and your umbrella was out of town?
would you remember you came from the sea?
close your eyes. taste summer salt.
close your eyes. write my face.
neil reid © july 2011
bearly audible 
OMG! I had given up using OMG, but OMG! This is my absolute favourite of your poems that I have read. I love the concept, the form, and above all the words. Curious: why we instead of I?
margo
How might you answer “why”?
Part what the poem wants to do. Wants you to do. But yes, still my clumsy attempt to further engage this intent. Maybe if I ask enough I’ll learn to dance.
Or why (working backwards, it’s like this) is because this poem in large part an invitation for the reader to participate. (How’s not up to me, but you.) So, using “we” carries a different emotional tone, even while the poem itself is still talking “to you”, you see. The poem does not want to be writing by itself. (It makes sense emotionally if not literally.) (Is that another rule broken here? Bad English, me?) 🙂 And leaping ahead, I cheat again, to the last of the last, “write my face”, very personal, near intimate (because that’s the emotional tone wanted there), because it had to be, because that was necessary to make whole motion of the poem, the relationship. (Maybe one could call this abstract logic?)
(Someone once said they thought my poems were really “love poems”, and not in that saccharine sense, I suppose that is my purpose here.)
Or why “we”? Because that is how the words landed for me! Simple enough. This poem really began with the two “what if” stanzas at beginning and end, and I trusted that process enough to leave them alone as is. (Is that the rabbit in the hat?) And maybe that rest (above) is implied within what’s given!
And “writing blind” as a title is also part meaning for the poem, and, reflection of how the poem began physically – another poem begun in a moving car, scribbled in my notebook, literally blind, not looking at the page (for the obvious reasons of keeping myself on the road!). (And that’s part my interest too in the real physical process of writing – what pen, what paper, where, and how does my hand and body play in the process here. Removing “sight” from the act of writing, I wonder what might then become more revealed?)
So there. And if I easily blushed, I might indeed by your generous remarks. And THAT is why I feel as I do about formal publishing. This poem don’t want to write alone, and neither do I. My thanks, sincere.
neil
You are generous. I got your entire why, which is fascinating to read through. I love process notes without ever having learned to do my own.
Clarification: You want to know how I would answer that same why [we instead of I]?
And no, no rules broken anywhere…but even if there were, my first rule is once you know the rules you can break them — you’re going to have something to say about that, aren’t you? I can already feel your brain shifting into gear 🙂
Sometimes, yes, I can be a talkie bear. Of two minds here: one that says let the poem speak for itself, and another that thirsts for conversation (at the risk of approaching vanity!) 🙂
I’ve grown more polite about “breaking rules”, not other’s but my own since meeting them with that poem yet undone. We’ll see. It’s still in the bowl.
Your own response? (we vs. I, or anything) You are always welcome (invited) to respond in any manner that suits your desires! (Do, don’t do. Ever your choice.) Shall I paint the barn door red? 🙂
Getting saucy, aren’t we? Paint the barn door red…
Your poems almost always speak for themselves, but I do enjoy the conversations! Vanity? You? Pah!
Oh, right, that poem. Hehhehheh…
The ‘we,’ now that I have really looked at it, is less intimate while at the same time it’s more embracing, if that makes sense. And the shift to ‘my’ at the end is that much more effective, bold and intimate at the same time. Huh, interesting. I like the sound of the first person at the beginning [when I try it mentally] but the shift is not as strong, or as dramatic.
You are good for me. You make me think.
Sauce 🙂
To me writing is a leap of faith and in that sense blind. It feels like that anyway. Still there’s a guiding light, something waiting to be shaped. This is “emotional” and is interesting in that everything happens in your consciousness and hence is invisible. I see you’re getting back on track of writing again, Neil. 🙂
Thank you my friend. Yes of course, it is all some act of faith (just usually we, most of us most of the time, don’t bother to notice what we’re doing that way I suspect). And maybe that (light) is not only waiting, but wanting to be expressed. You think?
And yes as well, this is a rather emotional poem, although I didn’t think of it so much that way initially. But that’s how it grew. Actually I toned back the last two lines considerably in that regard as they were taking too much away from the rest of the poem. Thanks Irene!
Oh Neil, speaking of writing love poems, this one excells on so many levels. I’m with Margo, OMG! Don’t know how to express what I felt at the end, because by then I was leaning forward and saying “Yes, and Yes, and Yes.” Love the picture you paint of the poem itself leaning out to embrace that shadowy would be audience, wanting to belong, to be already a part of whatever heart that leans in to listen. Wanting to be just another part of a completed circle. This one is magnificent and I love your conversation with Margo, because it proves that the poem has accomplished exactly what it set out to do.
Elizabeth
http://soulsmusic.wordpress.com/
Anyone who supposes reading poems is a passive participation is hereby corrected as you all have here demonstrated. (And to my pleasure I also amend!) It is an act of generosity to allow yourself to so join in with the poem, not only to receive, but reflect and amplify (stir the poem soup).
It is one thing to merely observe, and another to make real what (I think) poems really want to do. While yet elusive, one of my intents is that poems step across that line, have some breath of their own – but of course they cannot do that alone. I am honored by your attention Elizabeth.
neil