I recently noticed that the word “try” is in the word “poetry” - I think that pretty much sums up my approach in creating poetry. It is the effort of poetry that heals the writer. That act of trying to find that nagging voice or message echoing around in your head. To make tangent that which is truly intangible. What finally comes together may heal or hurt those outside the author’s bubble, but once you push whatever statement is being made out into the public mind you have little control as to what it will do on its own. The writer has done their job as their own patient and physician (yes, that’s a Tolle reference).
Describing what I do as “writing” poetry doesn’t cut it for me. More than writing, it is creating. It is micro-history, freeze drying a memory through the verbal photographic process, re-creating a scene or thought through my perceptions, filling in the missing descriptive facts with faltering human emotion and cultural prediction.