What poem, or lines from a poem, governs ('informs' might be a better word) what you write?
What I mean is – if you were asked to quote from a poem (or from a piece of prose) to express what writing poetry means to you, or what you wanted to achieve by writing, what lines would you choose?
Here’s mine:
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’
The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.’
And they said then, ‘But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.’
From The Man with the Blue Guitar, by Wallace Stevens.
Maybe post your lines on your own blog and let me know in the comments box. Or if you don’t have a blog, post them in the comments box direct. Of course, don’t post whole poems for copyright reasons.
