Hunger After Hunger
or, why I keep failing at the same beautiful problem. For the Creative Endeavor Unofficial Challenge.
I want to tell you it begins with lightning
or a visitation, some clean bolt of knowing.
It begins with irritation, with restlessness,
with the gnawing sense I should be doing something
and have no idea what.
So, I sit and write garbage
sentences that go nowhere
images that sound good and mean nothing.
I write toward it, around it
describe the room it might occupy
hoping it will walk through the door.
Sometimes it does. A line appears
I couldn’t have planned
arrived while I was busy forcing something else.
That line is a tight rope. I walk it.
Revision is realizing
I spent four stanzas clearing my throat.
The poem begins on page two.
Everything before was me
pretending I knew what I was doing.
I cut, rearrange, read aloud
to hear where I’m faking, where the music flattens
where I got precious, lazy, showy.
Then I kill the bits I love most
because they exist to impress, not reveal.
Why do this? I have no grand answer.
Maybe because the world keeps happening
and I need to make something
that isn’t just reacting, that’s mine.
Because writing is the only way I know
to understand what I think about things.
Or because I remember reading a line
that reached in and rearranged my thoughts
and I want to do that for someone else
even if it’s small, even if three people read it.
Mostly though, it’s the problem.
Each poem is a problem I set myself
How do you say grief without saying grief
How do you make loneliness feel
like a room someone could enter
The answer never works completely
so, I try again.
It’s like this, I’m building
a container for something shapeless.
Every attempt fails in ways worth noting.
The failures teach me the shape.
Someday I might see its outline. Probably not.
That’s why I keep trying.
Written for "The Creative Endeavor" Unofficial challenge. Click link below:
About the Creator
Tim Carmichael
Tim is an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. He writes about rural life, family, and the places he grew up around. His poetry and essays have appeared in Bloodroot and Coal Dust, his latest book.
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Comments (4)
-I spent four stanzas clearing my throat. The poem begins on page two.- I love these lines because they say so much by not saying much at all. Great work laying your process out on the page.
So true, Tim: "Because writing is the only way I know to understand what I think about things." (I used to make my students journal their experiences) It's also true of me...I guess I'm so visual I have to see what my feelings look like on paper or to decide what decisions should be made. But, unlike you, I just call it like I see it, sort of like J.D. Salinger trying to catch the rye. I wish I were more refined and disciplined like you...please keep using your process because it WORKS!
Exactly - how do we put it down for others to see? Good luck in challenge! I know they say write every day but many days I don’t. I look outside and at my photos and then if inspiration hits, I create.
This is me. Wow you said it so clearly. My mind is mush, I like the premises the plot yet the execution is evading me. Well said sir.