The Anatomy of a Poem / A Map of the Heart

A peek into my poetry process, plus a brand new, exclusive to Substack poem

Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash.com

We’re giving up the ghost and finally taking down our Christmas tree today. I start teaching my spring classes at Emerson College tomorrow, and it feels right to clear away holiday decorations before embarking on the brand new semester. I am craving slightly less decor and a cleaner slate of a living space before officially bidding farewell to the winter break. Of course, I am mourning this certain kind of coziness that comes with Christmas coming to a close right alongside embracing a sense of seasonality; if Christmas were all winter, it may not feel as special. Confession: I may still have my mini-tree perched on my desk, poised to keep me company as I write, and this makes the process of doing a larger tidy-up a smidge easier.

Speaking of processes, I’ve received some wonderful questions about my poetry writing process over the last several months. Do I write a poem all in one go? While sitting at my desk? While out and about? Do the ideas for poems comes from photo inspiration, music, or personal experiences? Do I prefer to compose poems by typing them out or handwriting them?

I tend towards being a “process over product” type of creative, so thought it would be fun to offer some answers into a few of these questions from you by sharing a brand new poem I wrote for this Substack space, but first, offering you a peek into the poetry process - at least, how it shakes out in my brain and heart.

As I mentioned in my post “The Sacred Seasonal Gap”, I personally love learning when and where poems by my favorite writers were composed, and thus far, when I have shared a new poem with you, I’ve included a line or two letting you know where I penned the specific poem.

When it comes to digital versus handwritten drafts, I am holding steady at about 50/50. I often write poems on the subway train or when I am walking or in line at the grocery store, and in those instances, digital is simply more practical. When I’m home or in between teaching or giving tours, scribbling verses on paper is my preference.

As it relates to scribing poems in one go or coming back to a poem over and over again before it’s “finished”, this depends. Many times, I will be out walking and taking photographs of plants, trees, or city scenery that feels inspiring to me and from there, a poem sort of descends into my brain. It’s hard to explain, but it’s as if I can hear a line or two drifting around in the wind and I have to reach out and pluck it from the air and write it down before it swirls away forever. In these cases, I pull out my phone and start scribing lines that are, for the most part, fully formed in their final form. By the end of the walk, the poem is often done.

This was the case for this short poem that I wrote back in March of 2019 in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge, that was inspired by this photograph I took on the spot:

A tiny string of lights hangs

on the city's smallest fire escape,

a dim but defiant stand

against the darkness,

a signal to faraway stars

that hope still burns here on the ground.

For a smaller percentage of poems, I find myself with one or two lines that come to me in the middle of walking or cooking or commuting, and write them down in my journal so that I can tinker with them when I have more time. This is the case with the new poem I want to share with you here today.