Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Hugo and Poem Process: Jessica Orange

I found The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo a extremely useful aide in my writing. He addressed several issues I've had myself while writing a poem and it was very stress relieving to know that I am not the only one who has a problems with things just as making assumptions, finding the right "triggering town" to write about, and dealing with feelings of being inadequate when I write. Hugo also wrote about things that I felt like I could relate to, such as obessions with certain parts of my life and how it effects my writing. I was really touched by the chapter Ci Vediamo, which I learned means "until we meet again" in Italian. The story of how emotionally connected he felt to the location he was stationed in during World War II really made me feel like I understood him more as a person which helped me take what he said about writing more to heart. Hugo's honesty about the writing process and things that may effect the writing process are extremely useful and things I feel like I will consider from now on when go through the creative process.

That being said, when I do go through the creative process, I usually go through something different everytime I write a poem. When given a prompt, I usually go through some research about possible topics, like the Animal poem, I searched different wild animals and their behaviors, looking for something to inspire myself. Then I write down my topic and words that come to mind when I think about. I usually don't incorporate all of words, but some of the language that jumps out at me will definitely find a way into the writing, usually when I don't expect it. On the other hand, when I'm just writing for myself, about anything, whenever I feel inspired by something I just write down how I feel. Whatever is going through my head at the time, and although the poem usually ends up pretty rough, I will go back maybe the next day, or even the next week, when my emotion about the topic is less biased in my brain, and then I can make revisions to make the poem clearer and less rigid and more relatable.

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