What I've Learned
Alas, not much. But not nothing, either. A place to start,
to begin with. Point A, as when the pen meets the paper
for the first time, and keeps moving until it stops and lifts,
or doubles back on itself to make a shape of some kind.
Or continues on into the white space, meandering,
trying to discover what it's meant to become this time.
Boundaries are helpful. You can go in one direction
only so long without getting lost. Better to return
home on occasion and consider whether to expand,
consolidate, change course entirely, or begin again.
The choices you make at any particular time are
mostly a matter of intuition. Often one move
will dictate the next, and the one after that, in a way
that will, with luck, deliver what you never saw coming:
A flower. A comet. A house. A star. A beating heart.
Process Reflection:
This is a poem written after I completed the pen-and-ink drawing in my previous post. The poem is a reflection on the process of drawing in general and of drawing that picture in particular; it is also, inevitably, a parallel reflection on the writing process as I understand it and practice it. Formally, I was attempting several things at once. I originally had it in mind that it would be a sonnet, or at least sonnet-ish, and that each line would contain 14 syllables. When I got to the end of fourteen lines, I found that the logic of the poem as it had unfolded in the writing suggested that I needed one more line, which was a) a surprise to me (I hadn't planned to do that) but also b) a surprise in the poem that mirrored or echoed the surprise that I felt once I had completed the drawing and began to see things in it that I had not completely intended. Although I think looking at the picture may help snap the intention of the poem into focus, I hope that the poem works as a standalone written document as well.
