In the end, I want to be surprised by what I've written. I don't believe in formulas or exercises (such as consciously writing the opposite of what I intend or believe). But if my initial logic is challenged, I might end up surprised. I compare writing in form to drawing without looking at my drawing hand or the paper. Drawing while looking at the model. It is a
completely different process from writing in form, but it delivers similar results. You have to use the noggin writing in form, certainly, but you also turn off the cerebral, knowledge-based approach to writing as you go--just as you turn off your
knowledge that a finger has three joints and the middle finger is the longest when look at the hand you are drawing rather than the one you are drawing with.
Many of my poems start with a line that may or may not have other lines or ideas attached. It rarely ends up as the first line in the poem. Quite often I arrive at a subject that would never have occurred to me.
But
these guys can explain it all much better than I could ever hope to.
RM