I suspect I write poetry unconsciously.

At least when I start writing, all my poems seem to be unconscious.

Sometimes I am able to wake them up.

I look on poetry as apt language;  a good poem can communicate things as nothing else can.  I want a poem to surprise and delight the reader – I think that is in the poem’s job description.  As a musician, I know that music and poetry live together in the same house.  They wander around and are constantly bumping into each other.  When you read a poem there should be an implied melody.  That should be in the job description, too.

I write poetry because it fills a need, I feel great when I have a completed poem, with all the things in the correct places, and nice layers like sedimentary rocks, different colors.  A good poem should be challenging, and sometimes uncomfortable, for the writer and the reader.  That also belongs in the job description;  not as rules, though – more like guidelines.  I often write poems about science and technology and cosmology.  That’s my background, so I guess I see music there.

 

“I like a beautiful melody telling me terrible things”  –  Tom Waits