Three daughters has the master of the house. He bids them sing for us From some concealéd place, And the drink of his house is time And the meat of his house is grace. Three daughters that were born Of love that keeps the sun in place, And whiteley goes the lawn Before that house, and they Have fawns that feed out of their hands, And hawks that shade them with their wings.
Hi Jasmine- it depends: generally, I think, one is given either an image to build around, or a preconceived line. It happens that a whole poem comes easily on occasion, and it happens that they must be built piece by piece from the ground. The best poems seem to come from somewhere in between. If built from the bottom, they can come either from sensory impression which is, hopefully, leavened by something from above, or if there is a narrative telos which one sets out to make into a verse, the sensory impressions tend to be organized around that telos somewhat like to how one builds a tee-pee structure for a fire (and yet the first must still be called down upon the altar). If they come completely from above, I have found that they are sometimes obscure, or have a force which is not entirely embodied in the 'ink' of the poem, as it were. Forgive my long answer. God bless
How do you begin to think of your poems?
Hi Jasmine- it depends: generally, I think, one is given either an image to build around, or a preconceived line. It happens that a whole poem comes easily on occasion, and it happens that they must be built piece by piece from the ground. The best poems seem to come from somewhere in between. If built from the bottom, they can come either from sensory impression which is, hopefully, leavened by something from above, or if there is a narrative telos which one sets out to make into a verse, the sensory impressions tend to be organized around that telos somewhat like to how one builds a tee-pee structure for a fire (and yet the first must still be called down upon the altar). If they come completely from above, I have found that they are sometimes obscure, or have a force which is not entirely embodied in the 'ink' of the poem, as it were. Forgive my long answer. God bless