This book has been on my wish list on Amazon ever since the writer’s conference in the fall. My dear hubby picked it up for me for Christmas and I thought this week I would dive into it. This first chapter is called “Find the Poems Inside”. 
In this chapter we are introduced to the idea of doing freewrites.
I admittedly am not unfamiliar with this term. The five-minute-Friday challenges I take part in are five minute freewrites. Where you just write for five minutes. Unlike these free writes though where we don’t edit, we just write and share, this first chapter encourages us to freewrite for 5-15 minutes, a given time frame, and then use that freewrite in order to frame out a better poem.
The author also gives a bunch of freewrite starters like a tour of your home town, being at the hospital, a time you got lost and more.
But you don’t do it immediately. Do your freewrite and then walk away from it. Have a cup of coffee or go for a walk or something. Just give yourself a break. Once you have done that, go back, read your poem over. Make no changes, just read it. Then read it again with a pen in hand marking those parts that you really like. The lines that speak to your heart cause that’s what poetry is…your heart speaking to the world.
Take those heart lines and write those out, and then use those lines to help you write a better poem, a poem with some flesh on it, without answering all the questions your poem raises, because heart answers are seldom complete. Write and refine, but first find your heart in a topic.
That’s what the joy of freewrites are.. finding your joy.
Interesting approach to poetry. Never really thought about poetry being edited more than once, modified or manipulated. Something to think on.
Poetry is like any other work, something you can refine and work with. Granted 98% of my poetry is written off the top of my head. 🙂