When you write - hand-write - your poems on a sheet of paper with an ink pen or a sharp pencil. Words and their truest intrinsic meanings become known through the simple act of writing it out. Sometimes the shape of your poem will reveal itself or an area that needs definition will come to light.
Writing your poem on the page as you would say it out loud helps to organize and define its story line and structure. These elements surface when you think of the page as your medium. A clean page is more than a piece of stationary. It is the vehicle for the telling. It is the surface that refines the art of the poem.
[ UNTITLED ]
Meg McFarland was one
year older than me
and when you’re
in kindergarten
that’s huge.
Meg would talk
back to her mother
so much that her mom
would routinely straddle her
on the floor in front of me and shove
a bar of ivory soap
in her mouth
as I look-
ed on.
Meg
had no fear. I
remember the day
she and I decided it would
be good to lay in the street and
wait for a car to come along, just to see
if it would stop.
Meg really got it for
that one. I don’t remember
too much about Meg’s mom except
for how she used to yell in her crackly voice, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"
Joanne Leva
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