Surgery

Poetry is not rhyming. It's not about form or using gold laden words. Poetry is cutting yourself into pieces, tiny little scraps of field notes, and crawling back inside the womb to find clarity; to find out just how and why you were put together. You have to do it slowly, accept the pain of each tender slice and breathe in a gentle rush. Do not worry about keeping organized, forget where you place everything. In fact, cast them as far away as possible. You’ll want to discover every nuance of your history as if it were someone else’s. This will help with perspective. You’ll be able to see things as if they were in real time, as if you were reading them in a book that you didn’t know you were writing. Have an open mind, you might not really know your star character. You might not even like them at first, but you will know why they are in the place they are in and you’ll have something to say about it. -James Kelley 2013, All rights reserved.