The Beautiful Voyage

From Barbara Guest's essay "The Beautiful Voyage" found in her collection Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (the formatting of the below piece is a bit jacked due to HTML constraints that I don't have time to manipulate):

"But another way is to go inside the poem itself be in the dark at the beginning of the journey. Here, with a vague idea (as Picasso suggested) of what to write,

and I am trembling am trembling with the excitement



This trembling is a good idea, because it means your are not exactly in charge." (80)

& here is another morsel from a bit later on in the essay:

"While the poem is in the making it changes as thoughts change. There are certain rhythmical tides and swells on this voyage when the poem gains control of its shape and enters its own rhythmical water; times when the poem withdraws into itself/ and as you coast 'musing' remember the rocks upon which the Sirens sang...

when the poem can be, I believe, in most danger." (81)