Page One Poem by Daniel Brick

Imagine you start reading a novel and can't get past Page One. Try as you might you're stuck there, reading it again and again, but when you try to turn to page 2, you're paralyzed. Or similarly you're writing a short story and finish Paged One, but - ditto! Getting stalled happens to us who are readers and writers, sooner or later we have to deal with that paralysis of the creative imagination. I was wrestling with this frustration one night, gave up and went to bed. Thankfully, my sleep was restorative; I woke up at 5 am refreshed and energetic. The phrase Page One and the shadowy outline of the poem's scenario were already in my head. I went into my library and wrote the first draft of this poem in 90 minutes. I took a coffee break in the kitchen. Then I went back to the library, and 90 minutes later had revised the poem, especially imposing a 14-line stanza form and sharpening the images. I tell this story in the hope that if you haven't had such an inspired writing session, you will have one soon. It's delightful to watch the words flow onto the paper and find their assigned place in the poem effortlessly. This poem wrote itself, I was merely a scribe. Ironically, this poem of inspiration, about inspiration, is concerned with writer's block! For the three hours I wrote and revised, I was blessedly free of any writer's block. I call this poem an ABSTRACT POEM because it generalizes a situation and does not develop through the interplay of images. There are many images but they are determined by the poem's abstract theme. It's actually easy to interpret once you can identify a few key passages. That's because the poem uses the ALLEGORY TECHNIQUE, in contrast to SYMBOLISM. Stephane Mallarme is a poet I revere, whose poems I reread every without exhausting them. But you could exhaust the meaning of Page One in a paragraph. This is the contrast: Mallarme created symbols through his language, genuine symbols open to multiple meanings, all of which are true to some degree. Each time you read a sonnet by Mallarme your imagination will assign different nuances of
meaning to the symbols and those nuances will affect the surrounding words, so you have a unique take on the sonnet. But the process starts over with every reading, so you find you can bring closure,
final closure to a Mallarme poem. But ALLEGORY deals in limited meanings, and a one-to-one correspondence between an image and its meaning. Take an extreme contrast: Joyce's Ulysses figure, Leopold Bloom, is an inexhaustible symbol of the modern person, but John Bunyon's Christian in Pilgrim's Progress is one-dimensional. Both works and their main characters have their own integrity; I'm not saying one form of literature is necessarily better, but the differences in reader responses can be wide. In my poem, the speaker has grown comfortably numb in not moving forward; he has surrendered to the block of his imagination. That's why I used elements of Homer's
THE ODYSSEY. Odysseus, like every epic hero, is tempted to give up the quest and settle down to a comfortable existence. No more epic adventures, just comfort and relaxation. Odysseus only surrenders once: protected from Circe's wiles by Hermes's magic 'moly', Odysseus
becomes her lover for a year, and then returns to his quest. Later, he refuses the gift of immortality from the goddess Calypso and returns to the quest. You really don't have to know all these details from Homer to get the point that the speaker of my poem is avoiding his mission. It's a one-dimensional situation. I did not have an ending image for this poem, but I was playing Scriabin's PROMETHEUS, POEM OF FIRE while I wrote, and just borrowed its theme of transcendence and flight. Once again it's not symbolism, it's allegory. I just let the words run up a scale: words, spells, melodies, choruses, symphony. As my speaker flew out of sight with the other liberated inhabitants of Page One, I was liberated from writing more. The poem fulfilled itself as an allegory of overcoming
writer's block. Some passages probably seem odd or oddly elaborated. But since the theme is obvious, I could indulge myself elaborating whatever details struck me. Mallarme would be shocked by my lack of balance, by my disproportionate passages, by my colorful asides which don't advance or clarify the theme. For example, bringing in Saint Sebastian as a trouble-shooter is outrageous, but it was fun and no harm was done to the theme. Yes, it was fun writing this abstract poem
especially after the frustrations of the night before. We should all get a break like this when the words flow effortlessly, find their places immediately, and the poem completes itself in a couple of hours. And after writing a poem like Page One, you can return to your writing desk and work on that knotty Magnum Opus, that ideal poem that demands blood, sweat and tears but is worth every laborious hour.

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November 7,2013I