Filed under: cw posts
In my poem, Let My Cat-Insticts Out The Bag:
Last night I had a mouse-chase going. I laid still
between the sofa and shoe rack
in case it will come out nicely
out a hole in that roomful of papers,
boxes, cans and dusts.
The whole time I did not flicker an eyelid.
It might scamper right before me
and I will miss it.
Until the wait expired and settled
as a false hope—I closed my eyes.
Finally sensing the cold floor
appeasing my hairs down
to my very skin. And the night was
silently devouring me
to sleep. But I did smell it—
It tickled my whiskers down through
my wary nose. Ah! I heard it too!
But my instinct was swifter
than my eyes that it was Browny
I mistook for a mouse.
My heart leaped a hundred miles
that I screamed
the moment away and ran
like Uncle Cheetah. Until I found myself
a safe place up near that hung pictures. Thank whoever!
I do not want my nine lives to be
all gone at one time,
you know.
we were asked in our CW101 class to make a poem that would exercise the element called point-of-view. The instruction was to assume a point-of-view of an animal or an inanimate object. Our teacher presented a sample poem (in a point-of-view of a bear?) that I considered painstakingly upon writing my own poem. My decision of choosing an animal’s point-of-view, (particularly a cat since we have one at home) was greatly infuenced by the sample poem.
Since I am still a creative writing student, if ever there really was a creative process coming from me, it was channelled in a way that will fit to what our exercise demanded.
The first stage of the creative process is called preparation (during which the problem is looked at from different angles and when a number of thought changes occur). In this stage, I looked at the sample poem as my model poem. Since it was an animal’s point-of-view, I discarded the choice of choosing an inanimate object and stuck with the idea that I would write from a perspective of an animal. I thought of possible animals I think I am capable of assuming its thinking. I thought that it would be practical to assume a domestic animal because they are closer to me and by that I know them better. I thought of house-lizards on the walls, house-flies, mosquitoes, then finally I was disrupted by my grandmother’s cat entering my room. Then I decided a cat would be fine.
The second stage is called incubation (no voluntary or conscious thinking on a particular problem happens and “ series of unconscious and involuntary mental events may take place”). This was probably the then-what? stage. After I came up with a decision to write about a cat, I suddenly felt tired of thinking—almost frustrated because I realized I do not have something in mind. Frustration is effective sometimes. It let my mind wander. I felt the pure need to come up with something. Then I just stopped. Then something came up. The muse made its way, I guess.
The third called the illumination stage ( a “happy idea” appears “together with the psychological events which immediately proceded and accompanied that appearance; the incubating idea “becomes definitely related to a specific goal… and the picture is first sketched”). This was the time when I started writing my lines. It was almost like Sigmund Freud’s dreamwork, wherein every detail seemed to happen in real life one what way or another. I always spotted my grandmother’s cat just outside my room waiting for the mouse to come out the hole in the corner. And the lines just flow. The determining what to write was more difficult and more time consuming than finally writing it. I came up with a narration.
The third stage is called the verification (the idea obtained in illumination is elaborated and revised to its exact form). This was the part when I did changes on verbs. Some lines I omitted and changed the cutting. Then when I felt I could not do anything about it anymore, I decided to stop and abandon the poem that way.
green green grass 