Poetry Progress

I am happy to report that I have finally written a poem.  I have been aware that it is National Poetry Month, but I'd have been feeling anxious even if it wasn't April.  I like to write at least 1 poem a week, and it's been several weeks since I got a poem written.

Last week I sent out this tweet:  "I want to write a poem that juxtaposes feast days of virgin female saints (do we celebrate virgin male saints?), modern women's lives, and cancer. Can I do this without stretching a metaphor too far? Stay tuned!"  Even then, I was conscious of censoring myself--what I really wanted to write about were the virgin saints who cut off their breasts to preserve their purity and to juxtapose that image with the modern mastectomy.

I do worry that the comparison is overwrought, but I wrote it anyway.  I still need some distance from it to be able to analyze it, but it has potential. 

I've been feeling a bit dried up, like I don't have any good ideas for poems, like I once had them, but I can't remember what they were.  Sometimes, reading my old poems helps, and sometimes, revision and typing them into the computer helps.  

Yesterday I made this Facebook post:  "I had forgotten that I wrote a poem about Noah's wife who gets a job at a community college where she has to hear about a different kind of arc (average registered credit) as a means of salvation. That poem is now revised and polished and ready to sail out in a submission packet."

Did the process of revision yesterday lead to this morning's success?  Perhaps.  Or maybe it's because I got up a bit earlier, which for me means closer to 3 a.m. than 4 a.m.  I'm not sure why that hour of the day is most golden for my composing process, but it is.  At least, at this moment in my life it is.

Here is the last stanza of the Noah's wife poem.  It seems appropriate for this time in the life of our nation:

Noah’s wife returns to the wastelands
of the inner city laid bare
by predatory practices.
Her husband put his faith in floods
to wash away the blight.
She buys an empty warehouse.
Noah’s wife gets to work.