Write Everything

Painting by Chidi Okoye


Write Everything


Write everything.
It came to me that way,
the way certain words or sentences do,
coming from on high, or from down low,
if s not up to me to decide about that,
just to listen.
Listen and think it through.

You call it 'self-command,'
a phrase with a whole other range of meaning,
but I can accept it here-
certainly a command to myself,
but I'm not sure if it was, is,
a command from myself. Doesn't matter.
To me, the command
(and that's what it does amount to)
to write everything meant this:
when something comes to mind, deal with it
When a word or phrase comes into mind or mourn,
deal with it
Deal with it - write it down.
Inscribe it, and work with it
Work with the words that are,
as Olson said, before us, there, on the paper,
under hand.
With the same fidelity that Jackson Mac Low
addressed the results of his chanceful
procedures and strategies,
I try to address the words that begin.

So what comes to mind becomes the matrix,
casual, random to whatever degree
the neuronal processes of a human are random,
the matrix from which poems come.

Another thing that 'write everything' means
is something trivially like Keats' great
articulation of Negative Capability,
in this case, meaning never to resist the words
under hand if they say, or seem to be saying,
something "I" don't like or don't believe
or don't want "I" have no business
in that stage of the poem.
If the poem is ever going to be greater
than the poet's self-awareness.
If the poem is ever going to be itself.


Robert Kelly

Posted over on American Poetry Review