Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

I don’t write poetry. Considering that I want to make a living writing, this is probably a very good thing. Poets have never been very high on the income scale, though at one time it was very much ‘in’ for the wealthy to write poetry, or at least have a poet that they supported on the side.

Unless you count song lyrics, there isn’t a huge modern market for poetry. Those places that do accept poetry usually are looking only for the modern edge stuff, no rhyming, things that take chances.

I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with that. After all, taking chances is what leads to all new discoveries. There is something to be said, though, for the old forms.

Since you already know that I’m a geek, I feel completely fine confessing a deep seated affection for ancient Chinese poetry. Yes, I mean haiku. I’ve said I don’t write poetry, but I’ve dabbled in sci-fi ku from time to time. It’s doggerel, but it is a lot of fun.

The real thing though, that’s something entirely different. Some, at least after translation into English, hardly seem to be poetry at all. One by Soseki reads:

If I were the emperor

Of a deserted island

It would be nice.

Strange, but it’s also oddly reassuring to find that a man on a different continent, dead these many years, could feel exactly as I still sometimes feel.

Others are achingly beautiful, depicting a single scene that exists now only in the mind of the reader. One of my favorites for this is by the famous Basho.

On the darkening sea

The voices of wild ducks

Are faint and white.

Different people do different things for inspiration when they write. I know quite a few that play music in various styles to suit either their own mood or the mood of the piece that they are working on. Some days, that works for me. Personally, I seem to do better with instrumental music, where there are no one else’s words to distract me from my own.

Other people have a certain ritual or two that they feel they have to complete before the writing will flow properly. Certain drinks, or snacks, a fan on, a candle burning, yoga, meditation, even the need to have a specific stuffed animal present while writing, I think I’ve heard them all. Aside from having made myself a personal place in which to write, I don’t really have a ritual.

Once in a while, though, I do feel the need to be inspired. Especially when I find it necessary to change gears, to go from breaking horses to writing, for instance. At other times, it's really just my mood I need to shift.  For me, poetry is perfect for this. It’s short enough that I don’t take away from my writing time, but often I find that the image in my head is a perfect place to jump off from into my own writing. Inspiration doesn’t mean you’ve stolen their idea, it means that their idea has given birth to another inside your head. I cannot ask these authors, as I can neither speak Chinese nor channel the dead, but I do not think they would mind sparking the ideas of another, even so long after their deaths.

Here’s to thoughts and minds, intangible, interconnected, and indestructible.

Cheers,

Michelle