Author of award-winning, adventurous realistic and historical fiction

I love this poem.

deepthoughts | Poetry month | talking about writing

A Poet’s Poem
Brenda Shaughnessy

If it takes me all day,
I will get the word freshened out of this poem.

I put it in the first line, then moved it to the second,
and now it won’t come out.

It’s stuck. I’m so frustrated,
so I went out to my little porch all covered in snow

and watched the icicles drip, as I smoked
a cigarette.

Finally I reached up and broke a big, clear spike
off the roof with my bare hand.

And used it to write a word in the snow.
I wrote the word snow.

I can’t stand myself.

I think it applies to novelists, too.
Thanks to Megan for a) knowing I would love it b) emailing it to me.

4 Comments

  1. Katy
    Katy on October 4, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    And… such is life. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca! 🙂

  2. Rebecca B
    Rebecca B on October 4, 2011 at 8:53 pm

    Glad you liked it!

  3. jenniferpickrell
    jenniferpickrell on October 5, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    Yes, I think I can finally comment on blogs again!!!

    Sorry, I’m just freaking out a bit, so happy the glitch (or whatever it was with Blogger) has been fixed.

    This poem is so true! It’s like writing five pages of a WIP and upon re-reading, you discover the only things your characters did were stare at each other, stare at the floor, and blink a few times.

  4. Rebecca B
    Rebecca B on October 5, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    Yay for commenting ability!

    My “freshened” in this WIP is “sighed.” Everybody sighs, all the time, and I can’t get that stupid verb out of my pages.

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