The Practice of Poetry

In a written statement for The American Poetry Review’s 1999 roundtable discussion titled “How Poetry Helps People to Live Their Lives” (published in this month’s issue of APR) Yusef Komunyakaa says, “…I am taken back to Phillis Wheatley as she muses about the sacredness of the human imagination, how she seems to link it to freedom, and this supports the reason poetry is important: It reconnects us to the act of dreaming ourselves into existence. Poetry is an action…” (32). Komunyakaa’s conceptualization of our existence as an act of dream-creation is an interesting one; it declares that one must dream to liberate themselves and moreover, making the dream into poetry is an active process of self-realization.

Komunyakaa’s philosophy that the imagination is a liberating force echoes the Zen philosophy that our thought patterns are the cause of our suffering as well as the potential source of our liberation. Poets and meditators often observe the same precepts: everything depends on how we engage our mind; when we think about what we think, we can gain great insights, and we can be free of our enslaving fears or trapped fantasies that exist within.

As an example of poet/meditator parallels, take Western Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield. Although his advice is projected towards the meditating student, it translates well for the writer too. Consider his following story:
“A professor of mathematics and topography who had come to meditation was worried because his work involved hours of thought. He asked how he could practice meditation while thinking through these complex math problems.…I responded with a simple solution: ‘First, check your motivation. Approach the math in a positive and creative way. Then, when thinking about math, just think about math. If you get competitive and worry about publishing your solution before another colleague, that’s not math. If you find yourself dreaming about winning the Nobel Prize or the Field medal, that’s not math. Find a skillful motivation. Then do the math and enjoy the creativity of the mind” (The Wise Heart 148).
Kornfield is giving advice on meditating, but he is simultaneously giving great advice on focusing the nervous creative mind that might be stalled with self-doubt, fear of failure, or any other kind of paralyzing writer’s block. His advice is simple: those extra worries aren’t the task at hand—so let them go, focus on the true work (math, poetry, whatever) and enjoy the challenge.

This act of letting go and focusing is when Kornfield believes the mind opens up and becomes more liberated. Isn’t this similar to what Komunyakaa says? When we write, when we truly pay attention to the subtle machinations of our imagination, we make solid the otherwise drifting shadows, we make real the things that are waiting for acknowledgement.

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