march 19, 2017 / rest
In 2017 on this day, I was writing about the new poetry class I was taking at the Loft — my first ever, the one that changed my l ife:
I’m thinking about trying to write about running for my poetry experiments. In a post for class I wrote the following:
In the editor’s note it’s mentioned that Mayer writes hypnogogic poems. I looked up the word and found the definition (a state between waking and sleeping, when drowsy) and an interview with Mayer about how, after suffering a stroke, she experimented with using a tape recorder to record her thoughts in this drowsy/dreamy state. So cool. Currently, I’m writing about running and I’d like to experiment with ways to express the dreamlike state I sometimes enter during long runs.
Today, in 2024, I’m working, and bit stuck, on my Haunts poems. Thinking about writing about the dream-like state that running provides has given me a new idea for them: write about the dream-like state in running and in living with fuzzy vision. Also: don’t try to fit the poem parts together in some coherent narrative. Instead write a series of poems about different definitions of haunts.
march 19, 2019 / 4.25 miles / 39 degrees
I posted a poem about the relationship between the Body and Soul on this day in 2019. I was preoccupied with these ideas then. Still am. Here’s a part I’m thinking and writing about today:
from Body and Soul/ Sharon Bryan
it [soul] would like
to think it has the upper hand
and can leave whenever it wants—
but only as long as it knows
the door will be unlocked
when it sneaks back home before
the sun comes up, and when the body
says where have you been, the soul
says, with a smirk, I was at the end
of my tether, and it was, like a diver
on the ocean floor or an astronaut
admiring the view from outside
the mother ship, and like them
it would be lost without its air
supply and protective clothing,
Reading these lines again, I’m thinking that I might write about this poem for my log entry for today, in 2024.
march 19, 2021 / 3.3 miles / 42 degrees
Just past the top of the hill on Edmund between 33rd and 34th, you can glimpse the river through the trees. Today it was on fire, glowing with a bright white light. Wow. Definitely dazzling. Seeing this bright light, I thought about the Emily Dickinson poem I’m studying and that I memorized before running: “We grow accustomed to the Dark.” The poem is about how we adjust to the dark when “light is put away,” both literally and metaphorically. For many, I’m sure, this poem suggests that the loss of light and the coming of the darkness is always unwelcome and tragic. But not necessarily for ED, and not for me. I had to stop at the top of the hill and record a thought into my phone: “sometimes the problem with light is not its loss, but its abundance.” Too much light is too dazzling, making it too difficult to see or understand what you’re seeing. I have difficulty when there’s a lack of light, but often just as much when there’s too much light. So, sometimes a lack of light is welcome, wanted, offering some rest for tired and overwhelmed eyes.
I remember this, stopping to record my thoughts on a almost-spring day. The white heat of that water — wow! Often when I run on Edmund and see the river sparkling through the trees, I recall this moment.
The rest of this post is a line-by-line response to ED’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.” So many good ideas! Too many to post here. Just a reminder to return to this entry — probably even later today!