April 29:

Over the past couple days I have written the same poem many times. Or more accurately, the same three verses many times. One or two images threatened to eclipse the entire poem. I wrote the same stanza about tape loops at least five times. Then I would stare at it, waiting for more words to follow. Another verse came after much coaxing, and if I was lucky I could write another. But three was my limit; no words would follow. So I scrapped it and started again: flipping between pages to copy the same dozen words over and over again.

I finished the poem yesterday. It’s called “space travel.” The tape loops don’t enter the poem until the third stanza; first there are the dams in the sky, then the rusty nerves. These were both images I had been carrying from other empty poems, but I was so focused on the tape loops opening the poem it took me five drafts to change it. Sometimes writing a poem is simply rearranging the cut-up images of your collage at your arts and crafts table. This is when writing is most frustrating.