WRITING GRANTS WRITING POEMS

For the last two weeks, a big chunk of my time has been spent writing: writing poems and writing grant proposals.  There are some similarities: for both, a lot of the writing is in the revision; you seek for a unity and flow in a poem and in a proposal; and for both, years of practice may not make perfect, but they do matter a lot in developing the craft.

On the other hand, they are really different, particularly when it comes to the mind and heart (and even the body) process of creating.  Especially when it relates to outcomes.

When you write a grant proposal, you have to tell what you expect your outcomes to be, the steps you will take to get there, how you will evaluate whether you’ve been successful, not to mention who’s going to do it, when it’s going to get done, how much will it cost, how will you promote it, what data will you collect, et cetera.

When I write a poem—or at least, when I’m at my best and least distracted—I may start with an image, a story, an idea, and I may have an idea of where I want the poem to go.  But woe to me if I insist on the ending or even the path I have in my mind!  When I was just starting to write poems (40 years ago!), I usually had an idea what I wanted the poem to be, to promote, to say.  Thank God, most of the time now, I am more interested in exploring where the poem will go, not deciding where it will go.  There are still a lot of decisions I make in the creative process: word choice, line and stanza breaks, and so on.  But there is more surprise, more gift in my writing when I let go and let things happen as I write. 

Sometimes, that means letting go of some pretty cherished words and lines.  And every now and then—rare, but deliciously rare like a steak—what I cut out or kill in one poem becomes the seed for another.

Much of the first lines of this poem came from a poem I was writing about my father, how the Depression came early to farm country with drought and the despair of the land to provide what families depended on.  I was riffing on the process of nitrogen fixation in the soil, and was enjoying it.  But it really didn’t belong in that poem.  So I took them out, cleaned them up a lit, and started to explore where the poem was leading me.  It wasn’t until I had written almost all of the poem that I saw what it was “about”—or rather who it was “to”: a 6^th grade science class at Hans Christian Andersen United School in Minneapolis, where I taught community gardening two springs ago.  Here’s the risen poem:

TO MY 6^TH GRADE SCIENCE CLASS

At the root, in the dark, in

tandem with rhizome and wish,

bacteria beg nitrogen

from the soil. It is lifted

up the xylem like a psalm:

some days lament, some

days praise.  Seeds die

and stems are born.  Leaflets

appear as wings out of

a chrysalis.  Sun kisses

chloroplasts into sugar,

and the stamen and pistil

bathe in the nectar that

sirens in the bees.  It’s

all done without an eye,

without a brain, and yet

deep in the deep, roots

burrow like moles: ancient

rock has bedded down there,

ancient ice is flowing.  Taste

and see: this tomato, this corn

has been waiting for you.

Be beauty. Be justice. Taste and see.

Patrick