Theme: The Poem Process - Draft 1

I thought it might be of interest to follow a poetic process through stages. Last night I knew there was a beginning, but I wasn't going to get too far - just a feeling. It often starts with a moment's pause, an image, a chance concatenation of words. At present I find myself much concerned with the sky. The newish-to-me word that has been creeping in quite a bit is "angels". That's an image I have not been too keen on, and has had a deal of bad press down recent centuries , from the mighty fallen plotting the overthrow of the Miltonic God (whose ways had to be justified to Man, being so tough to take let alone understand and as to the underlying motivation, I don't believe the agonized John even got close) to the Romantic dissolute less threatening but with a definite edge on us in terms of beauty and tragic allure, to frothy little confections cluttering up the lower atmosphere, barely distinguishable from the tattier class of fairies.

So, to slip into the present tense to try to convey what can happen and lead on to greatness or usually something less, I step outside on yet another near-zero night (Europeans, that's around minus 17-18C, Canadians, you seem to know both), so the contrast after our warm little schoolhouse is a little breath-taking. As I look skywards the innocuous little question pops up: "How Dark the Night"? Is this a title, a line, a way into something ? Nothing much else for a few minutes as the familiar images and the cold sink in. Indoors again, I grab a pen and paper, no time to fire up the electronics, and in a very fast minute these lines are scribbled before they run away:

I'm tethered to this little box of warmth

Floating above in a cold sky

A barrage balloon keeping the angels away

Welcome my time buddies

To the midnight doings of the head

I'm in geostation orbiting my lost memories

Well, that's it for 3 am and it's not a poem, and this morning I have little idea as to where it might go.

The thing is, I  do have the feeling that I am on the threshold of something. Some poets have these false starts and  itches all the time, and often get no further, frequently discarding such jottings. I am less prolific, but tend to hang on to what I've got, and am a plodder. So I think that that will become a poem, and I thought that following the process might be of interest..What I am hoping most to capture, aside from all the technicalities and musical attention, is what meaning evolves and emerges. At this stage I have no idea, and I don't know whether I can catch that process in mid-flight. How interesting if one could follow the creation of a Shakespeare or Keats or Seamus Heaney  through the stages ! But we'd need the poetic equivalent of Leonardo's notebooks, and we don't have them, just bits and pieces (although I don't know about Heaney....)

No, dear reader, I am not pushing a comparison between myself and the demigods of English literature, but I suggest that just as when you tinkle the ivories on a piano you are actually doing the same thing as a Rubenstein or a Gould, or with a stringed instrument the same thing as Segovia or Paganini, just on a rather different level. That goes for us, We the Poets, as we scribble in the night. In this piece  I am trying to catch the process, not the product. The dry academic business of studying drafts is surely not the only way to do it. 

Richard