little word machines

Last night, the heat kept our minds wading through poetry at writing group. It was still good, so good, the thing I look forward to so much, and I carried little snippets in my mind as I walked out. So much of our lives are so busy, striking up against each other, and these few hours, we are quiet, we look at words, and we discuss with a glass of water and a plate of cookies. We pass around sheafs of paper, little roses for one another.

Zachary mentioned how(who was it?) someone calls poetry, "Little word machines."

Nothing superfluous.

Things I need to remember in my own poetry: don't explain, don't tell the reader what you are doing. Do it. And: chronology may seem natural, but it isn't always the way to go. After all, chronology is memoir, as Eireann put it. Use images to tell the story.

Right now, and I trust that no one reading this blog will tell him, I am working on a series of poems for K. There is that old tradition of giving a gift from the bride to the groom, from the groom to the bride--jewelry, monogrammed flasks, that sort of thing. Of course, we tend to want to push the boundaries to something more unique, and I have two plans, two gifts: one, a world map, framed, but with no glass, so that we can put push pins in to the places we have traveled together. The other, a series of poems from my heart to his, and these are the ones I will work on with my poetry group.

I've said that I am no good at writing love poems, especially when I am happy in a relationship. I've teasingly cursed K for giving me no good material; it's harder for me to express happiness. And this is so ridiculous--because happiness is the best thing to write about (let's all move on from teenage angst, how tired). So this is what I want to learn how to do this summer: write about love--great, big, passionate love--write about the kind of love that will keep us safe for a lifetime.