The Anatomy of A Poet

Insights into How My Writing Has Evolved

Haiku

In the early years of my writing career, I focused solely on writing, reading and rewriting haiku. During a seven year period, I published over 125 haiku in more than 25 magazines including Modern Haiku, Dragonfly, and Cicada. (This was prior to the internet when poetry magazines were still published in hard copy.)

Some of my haiku from this time have more than 20 versions. Often I would only change one or two words. The importance of rewriting had been drilled into me in college. Like most writers, I love the initial spark of creativity and don’t particularly like the rewriting.

Writing haiku taught me the importance of concrete images and the juxtaposition of those images. Haiku is grounded in the physical world. I also learned to use words with 2 or 3 syllables and avoid complex, multiple syllable words. Writing haiku taught me the importance of the economy of words. The fewer the better. Here are four of my haiku from that time:

clinging to a weed shell of a grasshopper… autumn winds

Illinois farmland — pheasant scoots across the snow the pickup heads home

soft spring rain soaks into the fresh dirt… a child’s grave

(This haiku appeared in Modern Haiku in the Winter/Spring 1978 issue.)

the bearded old man hand in hand with the woman— full autumn moon

Seven-Line Poem

After seven years I felt confined by the short form and looked to expand it. I played with combining 3 haiku into one poem. Slowly this longer poem evolved into a seven-line poem with three couplets and a closing line. The first two couplets present an image that is juxtaposed to the image in the third couplet. The closing line ties the couplets together and takes us in another direction. Here are three examples:

A Chinese kite weaves

across a blue sky like a mother

in search of a lost child.

I cling to the warm hand of my daughter.

A cold winter wind nips at my ears

as I circle the house again and again.

Courage finds its beginnings in small acts of the heart.

I steal a lamp shade from her new lover.

Dreams are like trading baseball cards

with a best friend on a Saturday afternoon:

only the bargaining counts for anything.

I pray for the life of my dying son.

A couple years after creating the 7-line poem, I discovered goal-setting and set a goal to write a poem a day for a year. That year I wrote over 450 7-line poems. I have since written thousands.

“Every time I create a poem, I am actually rewriting something I have written before.”

Writing Down the Bones

In the early 1990s, I read the book, Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. The book slowly changed how I write and helped me to overcome writer’s block. I moved away from focusing hours on rewriting. Instead, I focused on the initial creation which I repeated multiple times.

For me, since many of my poems have similar themes, I see the creation as the rewrite. Every time I create a poem, I am actually rewriting something I have written before.

I often write my poetry in longhand first. The only rewrite occurs when I type it and usually that is a correction of spelling or a changing of the length of a line.

Twenty-Line Poem

The length of my poems changed again when I began creating 20-line poems. I realized that many poetry magazines stated in their submission guidelines that poems should be 20 lines or less. Here is an example.

Fireflies

A sip of hot tea, a handful of walnuts — my dinner tonight. I watch the sunlight fade from the sky and applaud the fireflies in their flights of sexual fantasy. She sleeps for now — the pain deaden by the morphine, the screams quiet and hidden, only the restless turning of her body. I mumble a few words in my clumsy attempt at prayer, my reaching for comfort in old rituals that no longer have meaning. I beg for mercy and that her death be quick, without too much discomfort. I catch a firefly with my bare hands.

Fireflies was written at 9:45 pm on June 15, 2006. (I date and sign all my poems in my journals and I have over 20 journals filled with poems. I did not start writing in journals until 2006.) On June 16, 2006 I was told by my doctor that I had prostate cancer. I was 57. For this article, I compared my original handwritten poem to the one I published on Medium recently and there is no difference.

So what you find in Fireflies are images in juxtaposition to each other. I begin with hot tea and walnuts, my evening meal. Then I mention fireflies whose blinking lights are actually a mating call. Next comes the image of a dying woman (wife) who is sleeping. Then there is the image of a man who is attempting to pray. The last image is of the man catching a firefly. When we caught fireflies as children, we tore off the light and spread it on our fingers as a ring. All this images work together to create a story in the reader’s mind. The reader may not grasp the story on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level the reader will experience the emotion.

So what does this poem mean. I think it is a glimpse into a moment of a man’s life, when his wife is dying, and he finds hope in the world of fireflies and summer nights.

My Writing Process

There are a few things that you need to understand about my writing process. First, I don’t plan my poems. I sit down and begin to write and I let my subconscious take over. One image leads to another. I have no idea where a poem is going. At other times, I will write a complete poem in my mind either while taking a shower or on a walk.

Secondly, most of my poems are fictional. I am not the person in the poem even though it is written in first person. I may have experienced some of the things in the poem. I have drank hot tea and eaten walnuts. I have captured fireflies. But my wife of 47 years has not died, although, I have thought about what I would do if she did. I have found myself attempting to pray in a crisis even though I lost my faith when I was seventeen.

Third, I am a speaker and have been speaking for over 30 years. I have learned that one of my gifts is my voice. People come up to me after a speech and tell me that I missed my calling. I should have been a preacher.

Speaking is different than writing in that the language is usually simpler and more repetitive. I think that my speaking style has unconsciously influenced my writing style. Many of my poems are meant to be read aloud.

Here is a link to my reading of my poem: Say, Amen!

Why Do I Write?

I have been writing poetry for over 50 years and have published hundreds of poems in many magazines and chapbooks. Yet, the amount of money I have made wouldn’t even buy me coffee for a week.

“I identify with being a writer. It is who I am.”

So why do I write? It is obviously not for the money. Or even the recognition. Thousands of my poems have never been published. And even those that have been published have only been read by a handful of people. I am not a household name.

Yet I have spent thousands of hours writing. I have risen at 5 am and spent an hour writing before going to work. I have stayed up after the family has gone to bed to write. Why am I obsessed with writing? I have asked myself this question many times over the years.

My answer comes down to one word: Creativity. I have this need to be creative — to express myself even if no one is listening. If I am not creative, I start to die inside. I become unhappy.

When I turned forty, I wrote an article, The Writing Years: A Look Back. I wrote:

“I identify with being a writer. It is who I am. I don’t see myself as a business man. That is the theatrical mask I wear to pay the bills. But after the performance is over, the mask comes off. My writing is a struggle to keep the other me alive. If I woke up one morning and realized that all I was ever going to be was a business man, I’d probably die.”

Now, thirty years later this quote still resonates with me. The need to create is in my blood.

I closed the article with this statement:

“I pay tribute in this the year of my fortieth birthday to the hairy-toed goddesses, the raving mad sleeping preachers, and the lonely, pregnant muses who drive me wild with ecstasy and inspire me to climb to the mountain top. I sacrifice myself on the altar of creativity and find my pleasure in simple words. I pry images off of my tongue and create landscapes of human insanity. I am who I am and thank God for that.”

Zentangle®

During the last few years some of my creative energy has been transferred into creating abstract art called Zentangle®.

Zentangle® is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. The Zentangle® method enables me to easily access my intuition and develop my creativity. Here are some examples:

I have created over 600 works of Zentangle® art. Here are links to more of my Zentangle® art on Instagram and Pinterest.

Final Word

Whether I am writing poetry or drawing abstract art, I have a strong need to be creative. While I share my work with others and appreciate their positive responses, I have learned to be thankful for the process of creation itself. Creating poetry and art makes me feel happy. For me, writing has been my spiritual path. Writing has helped me find my way through the chaos and despair in this world.

Copyright © 2020 by Harley King

(A special thanks to Arjan Tupan for inspiring this article when he interviewed me for his podcast, Tripple Effect.)

(I also want to thank Simran Kankas for publishing my spiritual poems in Spiritual Tree and Dr Mehmet Yildiz for publishing my poetry and articles in Illumination.)