Remember the opening lines?
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils
For me, that's at the heart of every line I've ever written.
If not for the sudden burst of creative joy in taking a packet of words and forming new thought and occasionally music,
why ever put pen to paper-- or fingertips to keyboard?
Each time we venture onto a the blank expanse of lonely space that's
an empty page, we enter 'No Man's Land'. There's a desolation
we permit that's cleared for nascent thought, and yes, it is indeed a solitary undertaking, but it's the
necessary beginnings
for awkward, interconnected words that will form, then clump together, becoming clearer and clearer~ and if we
succeed, it is here that we may encounter our own field of
sudden daffodils~ in the immediate rush of joy
when we're onto something.
Subject matter notwithstanding, if the words click, the mind slips
into a Zen-like bliss that is not unlike meeting up with Wordworth's
'pot of gold'~ a field of flowers that a moment before were not there,
and now are. Poetry is full of 'ah-ha' moments. I compare them to
coming over a crest to be confronted with a most intense beauty~
that field of fluttering petals~ a sea of moving blooms, and rushing out of one's own creative spark.
I've written an editorial about how writing can be therapeutic
when it comes to facing one's grief, and yes, it certainly can release
elements that make it easier to look at~ feel viscerally~ and move
beyond those depths eventually. But since writing is always
a journey of self-discovery, it can also help you stumble
upon joys you have hidden inside~ you may not even know
are there~ until you tap into them with words.
Although I've never considered myself a 'morning person', I
cannot count the number of times I shuffle to the computer
just before dawn and begin to type, to find what comes out is
nothing less than an honest to goodness Ode to Joy of my own
making, and it always surprises and delights me, because ordinarily, I have no idea the depth of my gratitude in rising
and being alive is there- and skipping, just behind a scrim
of dreams still floating on my consciousness.
And that is what I mean...those surprising times when it
seems to bubble up unbeckoned, simply because you allow
the words to come, the hill to be crested and the daffodils, yellow
and happy, to rise right up in sight where you never
suspected.
Poetry is joy.
Or it can be. And it starts by
giving in to the lines and letting them lead you to
a place where perhaps you might burst into song
