If you haven’t already discovered Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, I highly recommend it to any writer, but specifically to poets. It has been a great help to me through the years when I get stuck in my creativity, and I hope it serves you well.
If you have already read it, please leave a comment of how it helped you.
I wrote this poem over 20 years ago in a creative writing class, one of the best class experiences of my life. There were four of us in the room: the professor (William Virgil Davis) and three students. Each week we would discuss our poems for three hours, ripping the work apart line by line, making sure our words said what we meant for them to say. It was as brutal as it was wonderful, and I wish that type of experience for any writer/poet visiting this page.
Separation
The ancient skiff glides
through thick fog
upon a waveless sea.
The mariner draws
full nets of fish;
throws them all back.
He guides the boat
away from shore,
afraid of finding land.
Why do we sometimes stay as busy as possible and then complain that we don’t have time to slow down? Many times it is because we fear what we might find in solitude.
inside
even in the silence
there is such inescapable noise.
the thoughts we bury
merely sprout and creep
back through the darkness.
but we keep the background
music on, the fan humming,
the conversations muffled
to stifle the whisper
of a weary, waiting soul.
One of my favorite things to do is to create images with words, to describe a scene, to write poetry in an attempt to stay sane in a world that rarely makes sense. Over the last 18 months or so, I decided to be more intentional about writing poems, and the result is my first book of poetry. The oldest poem in the collection was probably written sometime during my final year in college, so the book spans 20 years of writing.
If you are interested, the book is now available in print or electronic form through Amazon.
Awaiting the Images 