“Never write the first line if you already know the last. The best poem is the unwritten poem.” --William Logan
A Prayer Like Gravity
Mundus vult decipi
“Never write the first line if you already know the last. The best poem is the unwritten poem.” --William Logan
A Prayer Like Gravity 
I’ve never know the last line of a poem when I began the first words. I only hear a few words at a time and must wait quietly for them to trickle (or flood or scorch) their way out. Good quote. 🙂
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When I’m really on it, I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. 😉
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This would be most days for me and most talking. 😉
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In photography, too, better – OK, I will refrain from good-bad judgments – more fun – to take the photo that will lead you to a new place, rather than compose something in your mind’s eye. Seems to me. But the second quote – too much regret.
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I have said of poems, and recently of photographs too, that the good ones asks more questions than they answer. I feel it’s important to listen well to what the poem/photograph is trying to tell you. I one lets it speak for itself rather than trying to hard to speak through it, the results are much more profound and meaningful. Meaning is found in the questions, not the answers. Which leads into that second line (is that what you meant by second quote?)–to me this statement is what keeps me going. Ever striving to get closer to that “best poem.”
I’ll stop preaching now. 😉
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Yes, I meant the second line, sorry…and I see your take on it – makes sense. Something good lies ahead! I like your comment about not trying hard to speak through a poem, but letting it speak, which requires listening. Can be applied to photography too, of course!
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Yes definitely–Kind of what I think I was reaching towards in the Cartography poems. I always think of Zeno’s paradox. The striving to get ever closer but knowing we will never fully make it. Like the idea of perfection. A dangerous concept to believe in as a concrete reality, I think.
Thank you for your words. They mean much to me.
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Oh, and this leads me to a Robert Graves quote I’ve been thinking of using for the next Quoets for Poets post.
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Re perfection: dangerous until you move to the side and view perfection as everything-as-it-is, perfect in itself. I’ll have to look at your Cartography poems – maps are another love of mine, map-making, what it means, what we try to do with it, I love the paradox of it, don’t you?
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For me, paradox is what it’s all about. It almost seems like poetry could be seen as the history of humans coming to terms with the paradox inherent in their own natures. It is a timeless struggle and one that never gets old.
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