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I think the subject of thought is among the most challenging to address, and poetry might be the only art form that can do it justice. Thoughts are slippery, fleeting, persistent, obscure, arresting, reoccurring, conflicting, intrusive, unending, and on and on and on. They are ceaseless. Even in our sleep we continue to churn them out. Bob Dylan said, "Thought will fuck you up", and in saying that, he redefined what "fuck you up" means. Like him, I have an uneasy alliance with my thoughts. I often think my thoughts are not my own and like the thought of that : ) I am also bedeviled by thoughts that masquerade as ideas. They are not. But thoughts are seeds that can be
held and magically
transformed into ideas that then can be
transcribed into poetic language. That's what I think you are essentially trying to do, but I wonder if you've gone far enough.
I will be contrarian and say that the poem feels like navel-gazing. Of course, if you went through my journals you would see a lot of that going on. But when it's time to write a poem, I must shake myself out of that tendency to naval-gaze and look elsewhere to create. I still don't know if I've ever succeeded.
- Would the first couplet be more impactful if it was:
............. My thoughts slip past
.............and clutter space
- The em dash interrupts the floating quality that thoughts have and that the punctuation-less lines echo. You might also consider no capitalization.
- I agree with others that the title doesn't work. Either call it "untitled" (I would argue that raw thoughts are almost by definition untitled) or perhaps Susan's suggestion "Void".
- I don't know what to think about the Hamlet/Shakespeare in the final lines... it feels too pat.
- Like Rick I do like the expression/idea that thoughts clutter space. They never clean up after themselves.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe thoughts are the very essence of navel-gazing and therefore this poem is not navel-gazing but instead a biopsy of navel-gazing. Thoughts are all we have in this interior world that we cannot escape from — we can only think about it. So maybe never mind : )
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