My writing life this week has been full of tumult.
Half the writers I know struggled this week, with words like knots of hair
made worse by the addition of chewing gum.
Who’s to say why, or where the joy went, or the ease, or when — pray tell — either will return.
Sometimes you just have to sit in front of the mirror with a good comb and go at it,
until you have gotten to something glossy and fine.
Sometimes you just have to take the whole mess and cut it out.
Sometimes you just have to apply peanut butter.
So I was reminded of this wild ride of a poem by Edwin Morgan that a friend sent me awhile back.
It’s based on a quote by John Cage that reads, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry."
Morgan takes those fourteen words and wrings an entire sonnet out of them.
I’m not kidding you.
Here’s a bit:
Opening the Cage
14 variations on 14 words
— Edwin Morgan
I have to say poetry and is that nothing and I am saying it
I am and I have poetry to say and is that nothing saying it
I am nothing and I have poetry to say and that is saying it
And here’s the last line:
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it
When I read this piece, I feel comforted, utterly mad and quite ridiculous — all in good measure.
Do you know what I mean?
And then, to add to the mad and ridiculous, I started Googling, determined to follow this poem down its rabbit hole, and I got here, the apparent vault for all things related to the number 14. Because, of course such things need to be organized somewhere. Right?
Here, you can read the whole Morgan poem (scroll down to number 72) and you can also look at bits of Chapter 14 from the Koran and Chapter 14 of the Bhagavad Gita and Shakespeare’s 14th sonnet and the 14th letter in the Greek, English and Arabic alphabets.
And you can discover that a lavendar pink peony has 14 petals, to be picked by the 14 phalanges of the human hand.
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it…
Oh my goodness. I just went and read that tricky riff stone-cold out loud to myself and…it totally worked. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to memorize and pull out at a school visit to silence the nay-sayers. Except that it would take every last brain cell and then some.
P.S. I heard an ice cube works for gum in the hair. Gets it so cold and brittle it breaks off. In theory. In reality, I think it just melts freezing water down your neck.
I think if we all started reciting this at school visits, we might got a lot of administrators looking at us nervously and ready to call for help in case we went completely around the bend. No?
Sorry about the tumult. I know something about that myself. Keep going, Liz.
Also, I was born on the 14th.
Oh, well, Linda. They should have you listed on the site!!!
TadMack says: 🙂
Oh, boy. Two chapters this week, and it felt like death and agony. Two chapters! And yet, the week ends, and we do the things we need to, to find the time to sit down and go at it again. I love your gum-in-hair analogy; to this I apply my butt-in-chair reality, and go on…
Fourteen kinds of courage to you!
Re: TadMack says: 🙂
And to you, Tanita. And to you…
Wow. But, you see, feeling utterly mad because of a piece of writing like that can be a good thing!
Thanks for sharing that, which I’m going to come back to later again….it’s worth more than one look.
Jules
7-Imp
Yes indeed it is…
Great post! Writing is madness, at least 14 different ways.
14 different ways and backwards…
My last 14 school days (give or take a few) have been the gum-in-hair sort and I’m sick to death of butt-in-chair reality. In about 14 more I’ll have to be starting report cards! Sigh.
I don’t know how i missed this post. This is one of my favorite poems ever. What brilliance!! How did he ever come up with those 14 words and make them rock? My personal ambition, since the first time I heard this poem, has been to find a key just like this. It’s a secret quest and now you know.
Will you let me know if you find it? I agree. Utter brilliance.