Thunder of New Wings

Often, I'm attuned to poetry's forms, but this essay considers its earlier stages, even of formlessness. It is difficult to separate the elements of writing that writers use. Vision, voice, and technique are interlocked, and the whole seems to exceed the sum of its parts. Lao Tze wrote:

Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

He says what cannot be spoken. It is the province of poetry to express the inexpressible. In exploring ways that "the spirit" can intersect with poetry, I wanted to bring together some thoughts about making new work. It is a creation story, somewhat abstracted, of the way that writers create objects made of language.     

In poetry, before the voice arrives, we attune to the world with our ears. Our ear gives us a sense wonder and awakens us. Our ear gives us the vowel sounds and cadences of the language we are born into, and we feel its rhythms in our body, listening comes before speech. The ear can pick up a tune. It is our ear that leads. A poem listens. Listen, a poem, titled "Beginning" by James Wright: 

The Poetry of Place: Northern Minnesota

I search for poetry that rises from the roots, flows like the winding St Louis River to Lake Superior, and surges inside, wave against wave. I search for moments of the past that cast their light upon the hands. It is in the body, visceral and geologic, in the stones broken for mineral deposits, in the cities on ice. It is in the scent of wintergreen and yarrow. I search for the knock and echo of the pileated woodpecker, the call of the bittern and the Canadian goose. In the hidden things, the just whelped wolf pups playing amid the tangle of shadow and light, the endless roads taken by the wild and civilized or the wind, in the encounters and surprises, in breath and word, I find my music.

Writing about place offers poets the opportunity to explore stories that are layered and deep. There is a wisdom in the landscape and secrets spoken without our knowing. Writing that begins or ends with the land is a way to ground ourselves, hold to the elemental and enduring, and access the part of history or heritage right before us. "The Blessing" by James Wright begins: