Everyone has a little twitch in the brain that enables us to think of situations that differ from what we experience. These imagined circumstances might be what we want, or want we do not like to happen, or probably what we observe in our own environment.
The Creation
Imagination and creativity are two factors that enable me to write my poems. All of them are fictional because I could not bear to write a poem about a part of my life. Everytime, I try to write one, I cannot will myself to write with much truth. My poems are bent to tell tales of another experience that has not happened in my life.
Most people consider me as a gentle person, incapable of committing crimes like murder. However, in my collection of poems, I have written four pieces (Arsonist’s Appeal in Court, The Payment, Rapunzel, The Warning) of which the main characters are quite of a psychopath who have the urge to kill. During the workshop in class, my critics once asked me if I have been enraged when I write those poems. The answer is ‘no’. I find writing poems with psychotic speakers interesting because it encourages me to imagine. By imagine, I mean of thinking beyond the perspective of a psychologically normal person. As much as possible I try my mind to have the perception of my characters, how much intensity are there in their malicious motives.
Contrary to the imagining activity which is interesting and mind-stimulating, the creativity part is stressful and mind blocking. By this, I mean of putting into writing what my adventurous brain has traveled through. In terms of comfort, I find ease in writing free verse than in metered and rhyming poems. This is because I ache for grappling the right words that will fit in the pentameter as well as to make it follow the rhyming schemes in the sonnet or the villanelle. Whereas, in free verse, the lines seem to flow, though, sometimes I hesitate as to where I should cut my lines that will make the line sensible as well as artful.
The Revision
There are only minor changes in most of my poems, except for the sonnets, Memory of the Last Minute and Sleeping Beauty: Marathon’s Prize. Though, I have not really overhauled them.
In Memory of the Last Minute, it happens that I have to change the whole scene, changing the speaker as the one who dies. I have also changed the whole third stanza because it has no turning point. Now it is the revelation the whole event happens just before the man dies.
Moreover, Sleeping Beauty: Marathon’s Prize intends to derive the story from the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. I have changed some of the lines to make it more sensible.
Overall, in the process of revision, I notice that it is easier still to revise free verse because I do not have to mind the rhyming schemes and the metrical count of each line. The sonnets takes a lot of time to revise since, unfortunately, it occurs that I have to overhaul the third stanza wherein the turn should have been manifested.
What I like in poetry is the challenge it poses from the process thinking of a catching circumstance and how to put in lines, as well as the scratching of lines and crumpling of papers. Writing a poem is like creating a different world that I know is not mine.
