I had no idea what I was doing when I began the project that eventually culminated in this blog. Looking back on it, I’m reminded of the character played by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind who was compelled to mindlessly build that miniature mountain inside his house. I just had to do something, but I really didn’t know what or why.
So I kept writing and reading about writing. And I took some English classes at Cal Poly Pomona. Then one of my professors, Dr. Carola Kaplan, suggested I apply for their MA program. (She advised that if I continued to take classes, sooner or later I would “accumulate” a Master’s Degree.) Many of the longer articles on this blog began as academic papers.
I continued to write until my computer was constipated. So I read the books on how to write the perfect cover letter and I sent out queries and more queries. And all that ever got me was shoe-boxes full of rejection letters.
After more than a decade of unrequited querying, I finally went on an Open Thread at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog and asked the nice people there how much it would cost to start my own blog. When they told me it was free I said, “Thank you so much. If I had known that, I would have gotten myself a blog years ago.”
Sometimes I begin writing a poem knowing exactly what I want to say and it turns out just like I planned. Sometimes. Other times I set out to write something, but I end up writing something else. And sometimes I think I have a long way to go when the poem suddenly informs me that I’m finished.
And sometimes I start with an idea that’s bugging me or just a single word. (I began this poem thinking about how much I like the word notion.) Other times an entire line will pop into my head. Once a line zipped across my brain, but I ignored it. A few days later it returned—louder. It wasn’t until I sat down at my computer and typed it up that I realized that the line was entirely alliterative: My monkey makes my mother mad. But I didn’t know what the poem was going to be about until I had finished writing the first stanza.
My Funny Farm My monkey makes my mother mad He also aggravates my dad He took his car the other day And drove it to the Hudson Bay My kitty cat is kooky too He likes to strut down to the zoo And tell the tigers to all stand back If they don’t want to get attacked I have a hamster named Houdini And though he is rather teeny He’ll quickly pick a thousand locks You could not hold him in Fort Knox My kangaroo’s a real joker Up all night playing poker His friends come to destroy the house I think I shoulda’ got a mouse I got a hippo last July He really is one swell guy Everything he does is super I got a giant pooper scooper Living on this funny farm I know my pets don’t mean no harm But both my parents moved away And no one wants to come and play Richard W. Bray
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