As you have suspected far too many times, no one knows a thing. Still, this much needs to be said about writing a good poem.
Creating art is a tease. You want your words on the lips of the people but at the same time, you do not want to be seen. If you want to punish me, read to me my own poetry. Even the pieces I adore, they cannot be spoken out loud. The only times I can hear it are when I’m still high from just having written it or when I have completely forgotten I ever wrote it.
Writing poetry is an act of revealing, of unequivocally stating, that yes, this is me, clear as water. Here I am, bare, for you to see.
Poems are famously a web of lies. But good poems need more than a tinge of honesty to find their legs. You need to part with a sliver of your life, and imbue it into the poem to watch it come alive. It takes something from you, to make something worthwhile.
To write good poems, you need to have good standards. You pull the curtain to reveal a slice not only of your inner life, though often more is revealed than you are willing to show, but also your skill. Take comfort (and torment) in the haze of Potential, but meet yourself now where you are. You should be able to stand on the shoulders of your mind, with self-possession. Now show the world the limits of your knowledge and be happy with it. You needn’t be this iron-clad all the time, only when you press your pen to the paper. Once it is written and out there, it is beyond redemption. Retract it all you want, but it was only beautiful because it was irrefutable.
The reader can tell if you’re faking; when you’re pouring water down the page. You, the first reader, can always tell. This isn’t to say publish only the pearls of your work. If it is something you can stand to read, publish it. Let it draw its truth from its audience and come alive.
It is hard to tell what one can stand to read. If it is not garbage, but it is unbearable to see, then it might also be the truth. Write it for yourself. Ultimately, it is always you that you write for. And it is you that you wish had found your poem, before it was ever created.
Stephen King says in his memoir On Writing that good stories are not created, but found and excavated, like buried fossils. Sometimes the words seem to flow through you of their own accord and all you need to do is step aside. But at times you dig at hard rock for hours, in the background at night, and birth something. I have always wanted to know, can the reader tell that it is something inside me that wrote this but not me as I speak to you now? Can they tell what came like an asariri and what was unearthed like a diamond?
You give birth to this piece of art with exertion and pride, yet the good artist is expected to also be a sadhu. To be without. Write it, put it out there, and forget it ever happened. This too will happen of its own accord. At some point, you move on to what is next, what is now bursting in phrases inside and forget all that was before. And this is where you need to read. You cannot write the same poem time and again as many are wont to do, and be surprised that the same words are slapping at you. You may own your words like you own your phone (in that they own you actually), but you need to constantly refill your cup with life and language. Life will happen to you, but language you must seek.
I find that nature helps like nothing does, but so does heartbreak. If you’re a poet unfortunate enough to be happy, it is truly a curse for your trade. It is much harder to translate joy into living verse, the exercise is far easier with that anvil of heartbreak.
We will not speak of desperation or proving oneself, this has got nothing to do with that. The natural desire to claim space and stand in the middle of the world in plain sight is one that artists share. Art is freedom. It is the ability to be, such as a child is. But for all but saints and children, it is painful to be seen.
Pour art into your mind. Let it soak and brim and overflow. Season it like a tea pot. Tilaithiru. Let it distill from you something that’s new. Create from this place in your mind, where words and ideas are ripe for the picking. Let what you make claim its space in the world.
