I guess I’m suffering from withdrawal pangs.
The past two weeks (ten days) were absolutely wonderful, intense poetry-imbued weeks, and I wrote my first limerick(s), ballad, odes, acrostic poems, found poems, elegy and sonnet. I’ve read and written poetry for most of my life. I even wrote rhymed poems, but this was my first attempt at these difficult, and occasionally unyielding, forms. How wonderful it is to be pushed beyond one’s comfort level! I’d like to stay in a state of discomfort for the rest of my life, because that my brain gets stupid if I’m not learning something new. And I cannot allow stupidity to set in.
To learn something new and wonderful every day is the highest goal, and a most satisfying feeling.
I’m a little unmoored, right now, but I’m going to attempt a sestina in the next few days, and then, gasp! a villanelle, after that. What have I got to lose?! These forms force me to write about things other than my own feelings and particular experiences — a welcome change! (Oddly, when it came to writing songs, it was the opposite. I refused to write personal love songs, because they were too easy, and could tempt one into triteness. Instead, I wrote strange, surreal songs that were difficult to write, and for which the music I composed was even more difficult. Then, when I actually wrote a love song or two, I welcomed them as something wonderful and novel (for me), and imbued them (I think) with that feeling of newness, of wonder.
I have to go now. It’s almost 2:00 a.m. I’ve gotten used to typing at this hour, but I keep promising my husband I’ll change my ways.
There. I’ve said nothing, nothing at all.
Goodnight, all!