Alien

One of the conversations I have had with my mentor recently, after of course the five pages on syntax was the weakness of modern poetry. In truth, she has these conversations mostly with herself and I sit there in fear thinking she’s going to tie my name into it some how.

We forget to write how we talk. The ticker tape in our head which really is a beautiful poem does not always come out on the page. We transform it into what we believe a poem should look like and I do know that most harmful thing in any art form is preconceived notions.

I am thinking of this b/c I do not see the prose poems at all in my work. I don’t know how to do what Emily did and pull them out of posts and there is a part of me that is a little angry that they are not coming out in “poem form” my poem form and yet I have a distinct feeling they need to stay as there are.

When I take my students out to paint I tell them to forget everything they know, this is not really a tree, I say but some creature who has landed here and now is beginning to grow. You are the first person to paint a tree, describe what it really is.

I tell my students, if we approach things as alien we can finally see their beauty.