I accidentally made my living in the hardware business. I call it accidental because no one who knows me would ever ask me to fix a screen door since I am inept at actually handling hardware. Still, they would most likely come to me first if they were ever in need of a poem, although this has yet to happen. And where hardware has almost nothing in common with poetry, it can provide a starting point.
Poems come to be born, like the cotton gin came to Eli, as seminal gifts emanating from outside the conscious. Any inventor will tell you about the value of intuition or the flash of insight bestowed while one stands in the shower.
For myself I call poems reverse prayers, in that real prayers go forth from one who beseeches outward to the Great Beyond; poems, on the other hand, emanate from the Great Beyond back into the receptor poet.
Quite proud of this term, reverse prayers, I walked around satiated for many months until I read in a Richard Wilbur essay that Emily called them bulletins from Immortality. This gave me pause. I didn't know if I had stepped on the power-rail of poetic luck or not.
Later I learned Jack Spicer used to refer to poets as little radio receivers. No doubt in the future some essayist will think to call us ion beam receptacles.
There's that old joke about the redneck who puzzled over a thermos bottle. He pondered how you can put coffee into it, and later the coffee comes out hot. Or you could put soda pop into it, and later the soda comes out cold. Mystified he asks, "How do it know?"
Poems are like those rare moments at a crowded seashore when, by capricious timing, there are no waves breaking and the brief silence alerts everyone to the succinct importance of introspection. Quickly the waves continue.
The best stance for a poet to learn -- like a bizarre literary bio-feedback, void of conscious thought -- is the poetic equivalent of 'how do it know?' The best lines of the poem sneak between the foliations of the unsuspecting mind. One truly does not need to know them at the moment of birth; one simply needs to be able to recognize them later, on the re-write.
Such poetic success, I should point out, is the opposite of business success, which depends so much upon conscious endeavors and unshakeable wills. And where many executives might profit from increased reliance on the ability to intuit, no poet is going to benefit by trying harder and harder. When poets try harder, they quickly become afflicted by writer's block.
