Unveiling the Poem // Time Collapses

Hannah Darling Fenn

I don’t do much creative gathering for my poetry or art as I move through my days. Not consciously, anyway. It seems to arrive suddenly. I've asked poets and writers about their envisaging. If the art seems to come from elsewhere for them also. I've mentioned how sometimes I don’t even feel as though I am the author of the poem I’m staring at in my notes. These conversations are typically quiet and they subtly light up the heart. They are sacred, even. It’s as though we are secretly saying, under our breath, “Does this happen to you too? Does the art feel like an entity of its own, tapping you on the shoulder?” 

This divine happening, over time, has remained mystical to me and yet, has also come to feel totally normal. The instance of receiving from the creative ether, no matter how many times it happens, never loses its wonder. It's as deeply satisfying on the thousandth moment as the first. And while it can come as I intentionally sit down to write, the art most often seems to arrive while I’m loading the dishwasher or running out the door. It doesn’t wait for convenience or a schedule. No, poems either gently glide me through some portal or they urgently demand I record them. Now. Time collapses in those moments and I am elsewhere, shaking hands with some mystic. My surroundings are muted. Some autopilot second version of myself steps in to tend to my responsibilities while I'm in the other-realms – just me and the mystery. I haven’t planned the poem. It’s being delivered. I discover it as I read it back to myself afterwards. If I’m quick enough to catch it, that is. A lucid butterfly net of the mind could likely remedy the loss that arises when the muse slips away, when I can’t get to my notes app quickly enough with wet hands and various demands tugging at my waist. But I don’t let myself get too down when that occurs. She, the muse, always returns. And I’ve got to chop the wood and carry the water as we all do. 

Writing this, I’m reminded of a scene from the 2019 series “Dickinson” which follows the early life of the rebellious poet – a great watch, if you haven’t seen it. In the tragicomedy, Emily begs her family to hire a maid so that she can be free of chores. When asked what she would do instead of housework, she merely replies, “I would just think.” 

And when I watched this episode of “Dickinson” on a late-night flight to Miami en route to Key West, I understood something painfully obvious about myself for the very first time. I saw a piece of my innate nature played out on screen. In any paradise, in any idealized daydream, I would still not be whole without abundant time to think and drift. To daydream. And then, after that abundance of daydreaming, to be nothing but a channel for the poems that pour through from some unseen source. I could live off this lifting of the veil like oxygen. 

Understandably, some will see the contradiction between this desire for undisturbed quiet and a life spent raising children. But there lives a similar essence in mothering as there lies in creating art. One I can’t quite put my finger on. Other than the clearly evident: both are acts of creation. I had always yearned for children, endlessly and achingly. Just as I would be unwhole without them, so would I be without my art. 

And so, mother/poet, I move through my days. Both roles are second nature – and also have me grasping for guidebooks that don’t exist. At times, the balance flows like water. Others, I am a total stumbling novice. For a long time, I’ve craved a like-minded counterpart who really got this particular bemusement. And in perfect timing and synchronicity, the universe delivered, or rather, reoriented me and Crystal to one another. Within a few months, Gossamer Arts came to life and even in its early days is taking us into our dearest heart of hearts.

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L'ESTAMPE MODERNE Dante Rencontre Béatrix

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