The Best Poems Are Not Made, They're Found, Like The One I Had Written Down For Erin Poem by Dennis Ryan

Monday afternoon, June 13,2022

'Art isn't made; it's in the world almost
unseen but found existent there.'
--William Bronk, untitled poem found in his sunroom the day he died

'Basho had distinguished between... ‘becoming' and ‘making'.
A good poet does not ‘make' a poem; he keeps contemplating
his subject until it ‘becomes' a poem.'
--Makoto Ueda citing the words and thinking of Matsu Basho
in The Master Haiku Poet Matsuo Basho

The best poems are not made, they're found—
like the one I had written down for Erin.
Remember? I tried to write it many times,
but failed, so finally I started to wait for it,
and eventually it came, and spoke through me.
Remember? Yes, I kept thinking about
my subject, and it became the poem:
I just wrote it down. Like dictation.
It's mysterious. I can only tell you
what happened. I can't explain it.


A SECOND POEM FOR ERIN, ON HER BIRTHDAY: THE SILENCE

--September 19,2002

'I don't know how to say it/needing a word with no sound'
--George Oppen, 'Two Romance Poems'

'Grass, I thought to keep you, would have stayed;
and you, trees, water gone too.'
--William Bronk, epigraph to Silence and Metaphor

Erin, I don't know exactly what to say,
or how to say it, but may my love speak to you,
to that deepest, funniest, more indestructible part of you
that no one else can share. Ever.
You are inviolate. Wasn't it just last night
I wrote another poem for you? It was Christmas.
The snow was falling, and you read the thing
while lying on the livingroom couch.
You pronounced it good. It all keeps in memory.
In the silence. Nothing can measure up to it.
The silence waits, waits there, always wanting to be used.
My friend Bill once wrote a poem about wanting to keep everything--
the grass, the water, the trees too.
You know. He didn't want anything to change—
like everybody else. Finally, only the silence stayed.
Bill made me realize that the silence is the best place,
the best foil, the best opening and shelter.
It's where the first poem lives, and now this one.
The silence made me listen, and listen, and listen for you.
Not for sounds. Not for words. But for feelings.
It didn't say, it didn't say, it felt.
Then finally, almost magically, this poem came,
and spoke through me.