torbakhopper |
This post is my musing about the workshop, "Your Ability to Write a Poem is Always Present," I'll be giving next Friday for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
Is poetry different when it comes to mindful writing?
Any act of writing leads to a
structure that can be quite different from ordinary spoken language. It's
different because of that intricate use of time to create the text (those
unseen ant tracks made by the author, the recursive nature of
writing/revising/editing/writing/etc.) The time factor of literacy allows us
to rework our language, adjust our phrases, make changes without a listener
standing around, waiting for us. We have the leisure to tinker, to be by
ourselves and our words.
To some extent, because of those ant
tracks, all writing (no matter the genre) has captured the intrapersonal
dynamic and the privacy inherent to writing. This happens even if only for a
few seconds, as when composing an email that's immediately sent. As long as
there's the capacity to delete & edit & add before another person
encounters your words, the chance for internal dialog arises. This is part of
the Present moment of writing.
The use of page space and line
breaks--as well as the typical brevity of a poem in contrast to other types of
writing--make poetry much more about those omissions, those silences, those big
phrases of privacy. The intrapersonal dynamic is heightened with the genre of
poetry.
We're also much more likely to think
of a poem as a system of sounds (and thus occurring in time) than other genres.
This helps accentuate the Present moment.
Mindfulness has the potential to
alter the nature of our internal communication. By training in mindfulness
practice, we become more aware of that internal dialog. So does the writing of
poetry: it can alter our internal dialog by drawing our attention to it.
In fact, if you want to become a
more mindful writing, no matter what genre you consider to be your mainstay, no
matter if you are a novelist or even a blogger, trying out poetry can help
develop your awareness.