I wrote a poem last night. Where did it come from? When did I notice its first steps? I was reading Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho. The novel was recommended to me on Monday by my friend Gail McCulloch, a librarian living in Salt Lake City. The book is one you can’t put down, but I did. I stopped and started writing a poem about Pablo Neruda. Was it because Veronika looks out the convent window in Ljubljana and sees the statue of France Preseren, the great Slovenian poet?
My poem begins:
Neruda’s head is across town/It’s in the garden outside/the OAS building.
On July 8th, I gave a talk on Pablo Neruda at the Arts Club of Washington. It was a wonderful literary evening. I shared the stage with David Keplinger who directs the MFA program at American University. David and I read our own poems and talked about Neruda’s influence on our work. Before I concluded my presentation I invited Naomi Ayala to read one of Neruda’s poems in Spanish. Naomi was the highlight of the program. I could hear her voice in my head last night as I wrote my poem.
Where are Neruda’s hands?/Legs? Feet? Did someone believe/Neruda’s poems came from his head?
I seem to include more questions in my poems these days. I guess I’ve traveled a considerable distance from when I first started writing. During the twilight of those Black Arts Movement days, I thought every poem I wrote was an answer to the world’s problems. Couldn’t I organize the entire black community with a few stanzas?
I spent last night writing the poem "Neruda" which is posted in my E-Notes (blog) today. Is the poem finished? Maybe. Should the word penis be in it? Might the word be a distraction? I thought about it but then decided it would complement the word love that I also use. What do you think? Words sometimes are maps. Neruda keeps interrupting my reading. Is it only his head that’s across town? His poems seem to be everywhere.