“Beginning writers seem to believe that great writing emerges fully formed from the author’s pen. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Great writing is created in revision—rethinking, rewriting, adding, subtracting, repositioning, editing. In effect, fine writing is born in change.” (The Tao of Writing, Ralph L. Wahlstrom).
This wisdom echoes that of my drawing teacher Phil Sylvester who always reminded us that great drawings emerge from experience, from our willingness to just keep drawing no matter what. This kind of endeavor is a form of generosity, the first of the Paramitas that we are studying during this Ango period. The purpose of this poetry blog is only partly about poetry as I indicated at the end of last year. Of course it is about crafting evocative, meaningful, well-crafted artwork. And at the same time, on a more fundamental level it is also about practicing generosity with our naturally creative selves, about sharing our creativity and pleasure in words with our friends without fear of criticism. It is about offering others a delicate, inspiring glimpse into our depths, our openness to the world; the mysterious, intangible presence of Ourselves as it takes form through squiggles, lines, dots, and shapes on the page.
The tricky thing with generosity, what sometimes slows us down in expressing our natural generosity, is that it is risky. Just showing up each day to post a poem regardless of its relative, literary merit is generous. But it’s also involves risk. Risk of exposure, risk of having our experience frozen in time, risk of saying too much or too little.
Sometimes the most potent way for our generosity and creativity to be shared is when we consciously undertake or submit ourselves to a form, to a discipline. In religious settings this often takes the shape of liturgy and ritual. Contrary to the fundamental Protestant ethos that we Americans tend to share about freedom of religion, free speech and so on, there is actually great value in pouring ourselves, generously, into forms. When we open ourselves to the Universal flow, these forms help to give traction and grounded vitality to what is moving through us. Much of contemporary poetry is expressed in free verse, without much pattern or external structure except what comes from the pressure of the words and the somewhat random artistic decisions the writer makes in regards to line breaks, word selection and so on.
But in the discipline of poetry there are ancient forms, strict formulas of composition, metre, syllabic patterns that have helped poets refine their images, ideas, and creative impulses. Many of us are familiar with and captivated by the haiku form. What you may not know is that there are other traditional Japanese poetic forms as well as some very powerful ancient European forms that can serve a similar purpose.
And of course, those forms are the generosity of our poetical ancestors to our contemporary explorations of writing.
