Hunger After Hunger
or, why I keep failing at the same beautiful problem. For the Creative Endeavor Unofficial Challenge.
I want to tell you it begins with lightning
or a visitation, some clean bolt of knowing.
It begins with irritation, with restlessness,
with the gnawing sense I should be doing something
and have no idea what.
So, I sit and write garbage
sentences that go nowhere
images that sound good and mean nothing.
I write toward it, around it
describe the room it might occupy
hoping it will walk through the door.
Sometimes it does. A line appears
I couldn’t have planned
arrived while I was busy forcing something else.
That line is a tight rope. I walk it.
Revision is realizing
I spent four stanzas clearing my throat.
The poem begins on page two.
Everything before was me
pretending I knew what I was doing.
I cut, rearrange, read aloud
to hear where I’m faking, where the music flattens
where I got precious, lazy, showy.
Then I kill the bits I love most
because they exist to impress, not reveal.
Why do this? I have no grand answer.
Maybe because the world keeps happening
and I need to make something
that isn’t just reacting, that’s mine.
Because writing is the only way I know
to understand what I think about things.
Or because I remember reading a line
that reached in and rearranged my thoughts
and I want to do that for someone else
even if it’s small, even if three people read it.
Mostly though, it’s the problem.
Each poem is a problem I set myself
How do you say grief without saying grief
How do you make loneliness feel
like a room someone could enter
The answer never works completely
so, I try again.
It’s like this, I’m building
a container for something shapeless.
Every attempt fails in ways worth noting.
The failures teach me the shape.
Someday I might see its outline. Probably not.
That’s why I keep trying.
Written for "The Creative Endeavor" Unofficial challenge. Click link below:
About the Creator
Tim Carmichael
I am an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. I write about rural life, family, and the places I grew up around. My poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, My latest book. Check it out on Amazon
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Comments (4)
-I spent four stanzas clearing my throat. The poem begins on page two.- I love these lines because they say so much by not saying much at all. Great work laying your process out on the page.
So true, Tim: "Because writing is the only way I know to understand what I think about things." (I used to make my students journal their experiences) It's also true of me...I guess I'm so visual I have to see what my feelings look like on paper or to decide what decisions should be made. But, unlike you, I just call it like I see it, sort of like J.D. Salinger trying to catch the rye. I wish I were more refined and disciplined like you...please keep using your process because it WORKS!
Exactly - how do we put it down for others to see? Good luck in challenge! I know they say write every day but many days I don’t. I look outside and at my photos and then if inspiration hits, I create.
This is me. Wow you said it so clearly. My mind is mush, I like the premises the plot yet the execution is evading me. Well said sir.