Sometimes waiting for an idea for a poem is like waiting for Godot–some kind of existential joke. You can see Beckett and Camus laughing in the barn. Or Sartre’s mirthful eyes through his thick glasses. Or angst from the corner of your wary eye. But after a while, you grow impatient, and if there’s one thing poets need as much as doctors, it’s patience. (See what I did there?)
So I flipped open good old Ted Kooser’s good old how-to book, The Poetry Home Repair Manual, to the section titled “But How Do You Come Up With Ideas?” A reading, then, chapter and verse:
“The poet Jane Hirshfield wrote: ‘A work of art defines itself into being, when we awaken into it and by it, when we are moved, altered, stirred. It feels as if we have done nothing, only given it a little time, a little space; some hairline-narrow crack opens in the self, and there it is.’ She goes on to quote Kafka: ‘You do not even have to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, remain still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.'”
A lovely image, that. The world rolling at your feet like a submissive spaniel. An idea fetching you a stick called “brilliant poem.” And all because you waited, because you said to the Muse, “Sit!” then “Stay!” and finally, just to show off, “Heel!”
See how easy? You may now begin writing. About spaniels. About advice. About white space being eaten up by letters like homework being eaten by the dog. And so forth.
