…poets pretend they don’t know anything about their own writing
processes and get arty and mysterious when asked about it…
—Kenny Williams, Rattle
I was raised in Abilene. More chickens than humans
down there. Worked construction, captured moments,
created stories. It was solitary work. Below the Blue
Ridge Mountains loved a man with a gnarly beard.
I’m pathologically nice. My brother has perfect pitch.
I write to one-up him. I use an assumed voice, am
learning the names of things, and can’t stop—I have
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Once threatened
in a beer joint in Arkansas. Spent hours among tall bolts
of fabric, tins of loose buttons, and leftover notions. My
words are knotted twine. Call it a reinvention. Walked
a peach orchard alone at night and saw the Milky Way,
felt freighted with a sense of mortality. Sleep sounds
like a pleasant dream. Cut my musical teeth in the jungle.
This is my singing, my attempt to insulate the violence,
to euphemize the shooting. Misery is universal. The only
math I know is balance. This is my way of preserving
memory. I make beautiful the moments of terror.
My Arty Ars Poetica: A Cento by Diane Lockward | Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
Diane Lockward is the editor of What the House Knows and three previous poetry anthologies, all published by Terrapin Books. She is also the editor of four books on the craft of poetry, most recently The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft (Terrapin Books, 2021). Her four poetry books include The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement (Wind Publications, 2016) and What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006), which received the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. Her other awards include a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a Woman of Achievement Award. Her poems have been included in such journals as the Harvard Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, and The Writer’s Almanac. She is the founder and publisher of Terrapin Books.
