Arlene Corwin writes

The Time When There Was Nothing To Say

Or, Content Is All

In ’49, repressed and mute,

She made her instinct-driven debut.

Isolated, no one’s neighbor,

Still teenage and merely cute,

She had nothing much to say,

No expressive skills of note;

And the urge to break away

Had crept in through the sex, not throat.

But there inside the head was ear,

And the gene to play with rhythm,

And a thriving drive to clear

Out something that lay hidden.

Locked inside was need to play,

And a key, a means, a way:

Written sound, syllabic sound

That could make the clear come ‘round.

Substitute a year, or any

Pronoun in its trail.

Gender, time are never prime

In the grammar of detail.

No, there was not much to say;

Not when no grownup had ever

Held a single conversation

And un-tethered something clever.

Oh, how play-less, plaintive, painful,

Joyless, doleful, plain-drained-brain-dull!

Then one noon, one exited cocoon,

Came a place to break the rules,

Use those under-conscious tools,

Break away, begin the play,

“Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye”.

Came a day to play the fool,

Let the psyche problem solve,

Use the spelling as a tool,

Love the discipline involved.

Came a self to manifest;

The sleeping self express its best,

Awakening in loosely fitted,

Tightly worked niveaus that knitted

Eye and sound into a compound.

Things to say, that just appeared

(Though there has been year upon year

When impulse dryly stayed away

And one had not a word to say).

But then it’s here - as now its been, year after year.

One feels that forever’s scene

Is on the tongue and in the eye,

And sky’s the limit.

Then it’s time to dim the wit,

Get inside the ground ideas,

Put a bit upon the babble,

End what’s writ, put stop to scribble,

Set the switch on dimly-lit,

Become god’s modest dimwit gabble,

Wait a week, then take a peek,

Re-check the beats, re-read and polish –

Know exactly what you’ve got.

If the goulash is too rich

Start off by killing the conjunction;

Re-arrange the line, all hinges,

Put a clamp on verbal binges,

Keep the article on hold,

Then re-vamp the preposition,

(Those that won’t do as they’re told).

Even commas make it holy.

Emphasis means sweating, crying,

Praying over semi-colons.

The kinetic part of trying

Means betraying semi-colons.

There’s not one thing not of value

In this universe of symbol

(For that’s all it is, is symbol)

Pointing inwards towards a One;

And the language and the rhythm

And the syntax are the fun,

Sometimes stunning, never cunning –

Or vice versa.

Don’t dismiss the depth of fun.

After all is said and done

It’s essentially technique

For the use of those that seek,

Meaning us, the strong, the weak.

If you look at it that way,

There are always things to say;

And the saying and the said,

And the one who is the reader,

Or the writer, written, read:

Each is teacher, subject, leader.

All the rules are jumbled up.

Writer finds himself the learner

From a mind-begotten textbook:

Time the spent, himself the earner,

Written for himself and reader

Who’s become the literal leader.

There was a time when there was nothing to say.

With no criteria to weigh

The thing, the outlet was romantic song:

Corny, un-experienced the texts;

Songs be-witnessing a longing

And an instinct to express

The milk potential in the breast.

Unformed milk in unformed quest

Conforming to the ABA:

Grist-for-mill of things to say.

Let a word suggest a theme,

As the rhyme refines the cream

Let a phrase release the phase,

And the phase release the phrase

Of those bio-rhythmic days

When the urgent surges forth;

Giving birth to means and ways.

Though the line defines the girth,

It stands and falls on what it says.

Content is all.

 

 Woman Writing -- Valerie Hardy