Artistic Process

I try to keep my photo site (http://www.wizenedeye.com/) updated. It just doesn't feel right to display a picture of the winter solstice as I look out at Serviceberry blossoms and clumps of yellow daffodils. Poetry seems more seasonless, and while man and nature are always presenting me with photo-op's, the poetic muse is more elusive and an infrequent visitor.

There's a new poem on the www.wizenedwizard.com site: Requiem. Only twenty lines, but it has taken me eight years to write it. When Requiem finally found voice, it flowed from me like water from a pitcher, the words settling on the page in about two minutes. I guess my "craft" is born of emotion rather than imagination.

Once written, Requiem and I met daily for nearly two weeks as I tried to improve it. I softened it. I made it rhyme. And then, frustrated, I ignored it for awhile. The problem was the word "asshole." No, I didn't care that it might offend. I wanted a better word, a word so derogatory, so demeaning that it would aptly describe him, and I felt as if "asshole" was crude in a way that somehow instead debased me, the poet. Webster, Roget, "The Urban Dictionary" and I conferred but we finally gave up on improving the poem, and yesterday the original version of Requiem - warts and all - was granted a page on the website.