The time of a poem

At poetry workshop yesterday, B said Elizabeth Bishop spent 20 years writing "The Moose." I didn't believe anyone could spend so long writing a poem that wasn't an epic poem, so I looked into B's claim. B was correct; Bishop famously spent 20 years writing "The Moose," a longish poem but not an epic.

The four of us--B, A, and K--had been commenting all afternoon on each other's poems, each of us having submitted 10 pages to one another a week or two in advance of the workshop. Most of the poems were older poems, poems most of us had worked on for several years. Having a batch of ten pages permitted each of us to comment on the "project" each poet seemed engaged in from the perspective of a poet who hadn't written the poems, a poet who stood outside the poems.

3 hours went by while we read one another's poems and then listened to one another's comments about our poems. It was almost dark when we broke the workshop up and said goodbyes.

Thinking about the workshop this morning, it becomes clear that I am still writing beginning poems, poems that are just beginning to be poems or will never be poems at all, never had a chance to be poems other than my hope that they might be. To write the poems I want to write I have to change; I have to change myself to change my writing; I have to change my writing to change myself. 

I don't think I can change, but I can try to change. A circular motion must be initiated and maintained.