Yashima Gakutei:
Woman About to Write a Poem (c. 1824)

" … not the definition of insanity but of quality."

Every year, as Christmas nears, I find myself stuck to my desk WritingPoems. Years ago, I solemnly swore to stop buying presents in stores. I'd had it with that despondent shuffle exhibited by people hoping to find that perfect gift while having no real ideas about what such a gift might entail. That annual desperation of hoping a pre-Christmas miracle might appear in an overcrowded aisle. The passion play involving the eternal search for perfection, demanding faith and devotion yet often fruitless. It might be that perfection cannot be successfully sought but can only happen unbidden. Anyway, I'd had it and swore off that curious addiction. I would henceforth write poems and give them as gifts.

After more than twenty years of experience, I can't say that WritingPoems has necessarily been easier than shopping would have been. It has been a novel experience. It strikes me as an odd adaptation but has provided salvation from the shopping I always abhorred. Now I get to abhor WritingPoems instead, for I continue seeking perfection, just in another form. Nobody in their right mind would agree to sit down and pursue mediocrity with poetry. No, one expects to exceed prior successes with fresh, even better ones. This requires perhaps more dumb luck than skill because it's not until a poem gets written that its qualities can be assessed, and my poetry emerges in iterations. Each starts lousy. The better ones improve with repetition. Those repetitions can feel excruciating.

Every bit as tricky as holiday shopping, the challenge requires unsupported belief to overcome. There's never any good enough reason to believe that the mess the initial iteration leaves behind can be improved. It's with no small measure of desperation that I ever engage in the second iteration. I tend to begin deliberately breaking rhythm and rhyme, thinking myself somehow more clever due to my lack of discipline. With iteration, I often come to my senses to see that simplicity seems superior. I constrain myself by insisting the finished work fit on a single page. As I edit, the poem starts taking shape. The shape of the finished product seems to matter, too.

When I first began Writing Poems for Christmas, I committed to finishing them between the afternoon of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. This meant that Christmas Eve was consumed by me pulling an all-nighter, so The Muse strongly suggested that it might be acceptable for me to start writing on the Solstice and finish by Christmas morning. I adapted. I will have enough to serve my purposes if I can write three or four poems daily for those final days before Christmas. This more extended period has been good for the marriage.

I mention my poem-writing practice because it mirrors how my futures have unfolded. They appear through sometimes painful iteration. They rarely exhibit anything like perfection first and often fail to exhibit much perfection at all, ever. They just are, though I try to influence their quality, often through excruciatingly private and lonely work. Like my poems, my futures require a lot of faith for them to work. Oh, and cynicism never works. I don't create the sort of poems penned by pessimists. My seasonal verse is blessed or cursed with positive perspectives. My poetry invariably features happy endings. Peace does, indeed, reign on Earth. The little girl gets the pony. Santa somehow fits down the damned chimney again, and I view my future through wondering eyes. The process of producing the sons-a-bitches seems so arduous only hopefulness can pass through.

I hold similar expectations for my NextWorld. I cannot live expecting doom. However unpromising the unfolding next might seem, I cannot quite bring myself to expect worse. I have not adequately prepared for disaster. Perhaps I believe I can dispel disaster by merely avoiding preparing for it. I'm WritingPoems while the world goes to Hell in a handbasket. It beats basketweaving and assuming we're headed for Hell. I observe my own personal Hippocratic oath: First, write a poem, for it couldn't possibly do anybody harm. Hold some faith. Hope for better. Hold out for improvement through iteration. The disappointing first drafts are destined to pass and should never be considered emblematic of talent. Goodness emerges from repetition, repeating almost the same thing while expecting different results. That's not the definition of insanity but of quality.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz