Charles Wright’s “WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT, WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS COME FROM?”

I’m posting a series of poems and excerpts from poems and essay that I love. Today’s is Charles Wright’s “WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT, WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS COME FROM?”

“Never again, never again” is often the feeling that spurs a poem in me.

 

WHAT DO YOU WRITE ABOUT, WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS COME FROM?

 

Landscape, of course, the idea of God and language

itself, that pure grace

which is invisible and sure and clear,

fall equinox two hours old,

pine cones dangling and doomed over peach tree and privet,

clouds bulbous and buzzard-traced.

The Big Empty is also a subject of some note,

dark dark and never again,

the missing word and there you have it,

heart and heart beat,

never again and never again,

backdrop of beack yard and earth and sky

jury-rigged carefully into place,

wind from the west and then some,

everything up and running hard,

everything under way,

never again never again.

 

                                                Charles Wright, Appalachia