by F. SolomonSometimes I run from being a poet. Fiction was always the admired form, even when I was in high school, and it was even more so in college. After college and all the fiction classes I had there, I was dually writing fiction and poetry. I always keep a book that I can write poems in with me, which I rarely write in it although I did a few days ago.
The thing I do the most --inspired by my author friend Cathy Greenfeder --is morning pages a la Julia Cameron's THE ARTIST'S WAY. Cathy gave a presentation on journal writing for our chapter and it made me remember the powerful tool that writing is: how it creates and heals. I do not do my morning pages perfectly, or even every day, but I do them on the train enough mornings that once, when I was feeling lazy, someone asked me if something was wrong and why I was not writing?! Another time, I was rereading stuff I had written, which THE ARTIST'S WAY gives you permission to do once you are detached from it.
And so the poems come, even though I do not always write them down. I think it was Thich Nhat Hahn who said that a poet sees a cloud floating across a page, and I have always had an obsession with clouds. Thich Nhat Hahn is the author of the title of this post, because that it what it is to be a poet. So many verses that run so fast like water that you cannot possibly catch. Sometimes I speak in poems; sometimes I write them and sometimes I breathe them. I am infinitely thankful for both.
Poetry is not just a craft but a lifestyle, when I am quiet and soft the poems come.
The thing I do the most --inspired by my author friend Cathy Greenfeder --is morning pages a la Julia Cameron's THE ARTIST'S WAY. Cathy gave a presentation on journal writing for our chapter and it made me remember the powerful tool that writing is: how it creates and heals. I do not do my morning pages perfectly, or even every day, but I do them on the train enough mornings that once, when I was feeling lazy, someone asked me if something was wrong and why I was not writing?! Another time, I was rereading stuff I had written, which THE ARTIST'S WAY gives you permission to do once you are detached from it.
And so the poems come, even though I do not always write them down. I think it was Thich Nhat Hahn who said that a poet sees a cloud floating across a page, and I have always had an obsession with clouds. Thich Nhat Hahn is the author of the title of this post, because that it what it is to be a poet. So many verses that run so fast like water that you cannot possibly catch. Sometimes I speak in poems; sometimes I write them and sometimes I breathe them. I am infinitely thankful for both.
Poetry is not just a craft but a lifestyle, when I am quiet and soft the poems come.
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