Essay

 

 

 

Essay

A place to begin. An undertaking. An attempt at con-
        struction, picking up pieces, turning them this way

    and that. Squinting, weighing, wondering

         whether this one goes here or
                    there.

                                             How do we de-
        cide? Slowly something takes shape, a song

  insists on being sung. One voice, another, eventually, a choir.
                    A cathedral. Vocational

            therapy. We're in this together, we

        gather, we lean on
                    each other. We wander. We stand tall,

       we call out, we await the arrival
                    of the eyes

                       that, falling upon us, bring us,

                                            ever so briefly, to life.

 

 

Process Reflection:

Most people, hearing the word "essay," don't necessarily think about its derivation, the sense of the word that means "a trial" or "an attempt." But every work of art, and of writing, is in that most elemental sense an essay. The collage at the top of the page, entitled "Essay" is one of literally hundreds that I have worked on in recent years. The poem, a very "wet" recent draft with the same title, is an attempt both to generate some words about the collage and to mirror in its structure some of the observable elements of its architecture: the way in which disparate fragments and pieces come together, or, insisting on their unique individuality, resist coming together. One critical difference between the two "essays" is that the pieces of the collage, once glued down, are immovable, whereas the poem, now in its fifth or sixth incarnation, is subject to as many re-visions as I have the time and the patience to attempt.