Cally--
Oh, Lawdy. I'm most certainly not fearless in my off-the-page life! I'm terrified of death. I have a deep terror of God, and not, I don't think, the fear that one's supposed to have, the awe and holy trembling. I'm afraid of riding out the rest of my years alone. I fear (don't laugh!) sleep. I fear getting sick.
You know, I call these 'fears' but they are probably more rightly _panics_. Panic is noisier, and hyperbolic. It's less true, you know? It's a smokescreen. It keeps you a little unaware of real fears. Or, it does me.
But: I don't fear saying things that are on my mind and heart. Not. At. All. If we lived nearby and hung out, you'd fast learn that I don't have a good verbal filter-- if I think it, it's really difficult for me to keep from saying it! Or: write it. I suppose that's where the structure of form is at its most useful and attractive to me-- because we simply can't just put something on the page and call it art. I endorse experimentalism wholeheartedly, but not experimentation without craft. The form or the idea of the form is the pen to keep my wild stallions in their pasture. It's the casing on the sausage. (THAT is a terrible metaphor! I'm sorry!)
So when in my off-the-page life, when shit hits the fan, the first thing I do is make a list, create a plan-- and then go forward. A list, a plan is a form. And for me, it works. Likewise, putting a poem into a shape. Ack, I'm kinda afraid this is a crappy answer (and don't hesitate to hold my feets to the fires), but it's all about structure. It doesn't have to be a perfectly geometric structure, but those lines have to live in some kind of a house.
Is this helpful???
|