Dateline Sunday 15 August 2021

I’m having a restful Sunday. Took a nap or two this afternoon. It’s evening now, and I may try to write a little this evening. Or maybe I’ll continue to work on old e-mails, deciding what to keep, what to discard, what to archive. For some reason I find that a restful occupation. Right now I’m going through e-mails from 2011.

But this blog post is about a small writing success story that happened late last week. I think it was on Friday, but it might have been Thursday. This involves poetry. Now, years ago I wrote poetry, but I transferred away from that and concentrated on prose for a long time, with many works under my belt. From time to time over the last ten years I would try my hand at poetry, but none came to me, either by inspiration or perspiration. I have ideas for poetry books, but no means to make them happen.

So Friday evening, I had a minor breakthrough, a two word breakthrough. I wish I could explain how this happened, what  inspired me to bring this poem to mind and to figure out those two word needed to replace two unproductive words. I’ve been reading in three books: Behind The Stories, a 2002 book about a couple of dozen Christian novelists; The Joyful Christian, a library book that is a compilation of a number of Lewis’s writings; and, on my phone, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol 3. I think my catalyst may have been in the letters book. Lewis probably wrote something to someone about some poetry that person had sent him. As a result, the problem poem came to mind. It’s a sonnet I wrote in 2002, my 18th sonnet. But as I said, I was never happy with the closing line. I had emended it several times, maybe improving it, but never feeling that it gave the required punch the sonnet needed.

Well, the words came to me while I was reading. I didn’t have my computer open, so I wrote the revised line on a sheet of paper by my reading chair, and said it over and over to myself. I went to bed saying it, mulling it over and over. It seemed good. I’m going to paste in the poem here. I would type it, but I don’t know html and poetry lines don’t come in right on this platform.

I’m not going to explain it. Native Rhode Islanders will understand, both the place references and the object references.

I’m not saying poetry is back for me. My mind is still mainly on prose: stories, novels, articles, letters. But I’m glad for a small poetic break-though. I leave it to poetry critics to explicate that last line and judge its worthiness. Now, back to my prose.