A few lines from recent journal entries:
My wife was visiting my daughters in Arizona this past week and I got this test from her and as I read it come across my phone I was nodding my head… “yes, yes!” I acknowledged her message and she said what she sent me she was a quote on a poster at ASU. She said she knew I would appreciate it. She knows me well.
What she sent me was a quote from Alberto Alvaro Rios – poet and professor of English at ASU [pictured here left] and it’s a poignant expressing of the task of writing. What she texted me follows:
“The public job of a writer is to write. But the private and secret job of the writer is to listen. Writing itself is finally clerical but listening is a life’s work. By listening we must include the sweetwork of the eye the skin the tongue the nose. This then is the true language of writers. The language of listening.” ~Alberto Alvaro Rios.
A life’s work… This is so very much related to what my conception of being a poet is about. Listening, observing, seeing things that you might otherwise miss. Seeing things in a variety of perspectives. Searching the natural world, your own soul and the history of the human experience. Putting this all together and recording it. This is to me what being a poet is all about. Listening and letting what you hear inform what you write.
We all have heard the mantra, Read, write, re-write.. I believe listen needs to be a part of that cycle of process.
Why am I writing about this? Good question. I don’t really have an answer. Sometimes I just like to look at something and turn it into something else. Looking at things differently is a great way to enrich one’s creative process. Hopefully my receptors are firing on all cylinders and racing around sparking new ideas, pulling from other data in my mind and creating new data. One can hope.
