First Draft

April 20 2011

The first draft

is always in long hand.

Like anything we start

we assume it will all end well.

That the rules

are for everyone else,

and we are above needing nice straight lines

to follow.

And that our penmanship

may be illegible,

but in retrospect

make perfect sense.

Some find the blank page daunting.

Some doodle in the corners

fiddle and fold

spill hot black coffee.

But I love an empty canvas

bleached white bond.

It feels like an uninhabited island,

with low-hanging fruit

south sea beaches

a mast, growing slowly longer

above the shimmering horizon.

Bringing characters to join me

in this brand new world,

provisions

of fresh new words.

The ending

may seem inevitable,

but I had no idea when I set out.

I feel like a willing instrument

a receptive channel

an amanuensis,

in a state of suspended awareness

looking on

amused. 

Until the final version

is printed out

and seems inviolable,

with its nice neat stanzas

and formal font.

When the first draft

that began

with a stab of the pen, a hopeful sentence

lies
crumpled in the trash.

And then, I send it out into the world,

hoping it will, eventually, be read.

And knowing it will be re-invented 

by each new reader.

That the first draft

never really ends.

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written a “process” poem like this:  that is, a poem that’s about the act of writing, the creative act.

I’m not sure if the 2nd stanza succeeds in the way I intended. It was supposed to allude to starting out in life:  things like youthful rebellion and mistakes; the utter unpredictability of all the twists and turns and forks in the road; and the foundational faith that it will all eventually turn out OK. That, as the saying goes, life may not be a dress rehearsal; but still, every moment of it is a first draft!

The one thing I would have liked to add is how rhyme is a gift, and often takes me by the hand and leads me through a poem:  how simply the sound and resonance of words gives me all the next line, and then the next. In this case, it may not have come by rhyme, but I’m quite thankful for the gift of “the uninhabited island”:  what turned out to be a nice gentle metaphor. And which in turn, gave me some nifty rhymes:  island …horizon …inviolable. Well, in the first draft, anyway(!):  since in the final version, the stanza with “inviolable” ended up getting moved down.

I try to avoid big words like “amanuensis”. After all, no one wants to accompany their poetry with a dictionary. And the more you have to process the language, the less you’re able to lose yourself in the poem. Music is the best analogy:  the way it enters directly into

the brain and touches the emotions and the intellect without any cognitive processing. This is the effect I strive for (strive for, if not often achieve!) in my poetry.  But in this case, “amanuensis” was just too perfect to resist:  the meaning is exact, and the mellifluous resonance with “receptive” and “suspended awareness” was just too delightful to let go.

The description of this sort of trance-like state – the “channelling” – is very much the way the creative process has always felt to me. I suspend that logical, analytical, intellectualizing habit of mind that comes most naturally to me, and try to be more intuitive, visceral, and passively receptive. I think my most natural form is the essay; so poetry is always a challenge. And the most challenging part is where it diverges most from the essay:  the “less is more” part – leaving  stuff out!

As the poem says, I had no idea what the ending would be, where I was headed when I set out. So that I was somehow able to call back to the “first draft” was very gratifying. And the sentiment in that last stanza is absolutely true. People will read or hear my work, and blindside me with the most surprising interpretations. And just as often, miss some of the subtle allusions and ambiguities into which I put so much effort. But all that is exactly the point of a work of art (or whatever, since “art” sounds awfully presumptuous and grandiloquent when using it to describe what I do):  like your child, you have to send it out into the world, and then let it go. It becomes the reader’s (or viewer’s), not yours.