POETS ANONYMOUS: TWELVE STEPS
With a Marianne Moore poem, "Nevertheless"
1. We admitted we were powerless over metaphor, simile, imagery, meter, assonance, consonance, rhyme, and narrative —that our lives had become unmanageable.
you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle, yet
was, where the fragments met,
2. Came to believe that a Poetry greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food
than apple-seeds–the fruit
within the fruit–locked in
like counter-cruved twin
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the Muse as we understood Her.
hazel-nuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant
leaves of the kok-saghyz stalks, can't
harm the roots; they still grow
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the truth, of lies, of what we perceive, know, don't know, and a fearless inventory of ourselves.
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickly-pear-
leaf clinging to barbed wire
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;
5. Admitted to Earth, to ourselves, animals, and to another human being the exact nature of our longings, our wrongs .
as carrots form mandrakes
or a ram's horn root some
times. Victory won't come
to me unless I go
to it;
6. Were entirely ready to have workshops remove all these defects of character
(until we graduated, then it would be our closet friends).
a grape-tendril
ties a knot in knots till
knotted thirty times,–
7. Humbly asked our intellect, our heart, to remove our shortcomings.
… so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.
8. Made a list of all poems and persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself.
9. Made direct amends to such poems and people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
… What is there
like fortitude!
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
… What sap
went through that little thread
11. Sought through drafts and drafts, through prayer and meditation, to improve our conscious contact with Language as we understood It, praying only for knowledge of Language's will for us and the conscious and unconscious power to carry that out.
to make the cherry red!
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these poetry principles in all our affairs of being alive.
(Keep coming back! It works if you work it.)