It’s been a little while since I sat down with the intent to write a poem. I’ve continued to collect blurbs and quotes and thoughts and ideas, because that part has always been very easy. But sitting down and making those little pieces of fluff into actual poems has just not happened. Sure, I could cite a lot of complicated reasons having to do with general philosophies and institutions, but what it boils down to is the fact that I’ve been extraordinarily lazy. And uninspired. And a little bit terrified.

Somewhere, I know that the key to being a good writer of any type is to do it consistently, so that you eventually get to the point where you stop listening to yourself edit as you go. Just like exercise, I know I need to do it every day to enjoy its benefits. But it sucks to sit here and consider the fact that when I do sit down to write, it could turn out to be absolute shit, that I’m a complete idiot for even trying because I am not a Writer, and that I need to just give up trying to write poems, because, let’s face it, I’ll never be any good.

Yep, it’s the completely unoriginal, shitty, boring little monologue that almost every writer goes through each time they sit down, knowing that they are going to try and make art. And yet, it still feels so true every time I go through it. And it probably always will. And I just need to get over this already.

So…let’s start with a little assignment. I know I started off this whole project a little late into the first month, so I don’t have the luscious expanse of time I will with the later pieces. The best way I’ve found to get myself moving is to make the whole thing seem smaller by defining my terms. So this month, I’m going to write an ode.

I’ve been dying to write something a little on the dramatic side to just get that all out of the way, so an ode is the perfect way to satisfy my craving for a little over-the-topness without going too far.

My favorite place to start with odes is with the Romantics, because dudes, to them, almost every poem was an ode. These folks were pretty much in love with everything (well…everything except the loss of The Gleam, getting older and forgetting their infant wisdom, conventional religious ideas, picking on monsters, etc.), and they weren’t afraid to say it. Let’s check out the beginning of Wordsworth’s “Ode” from “Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (I swear my poem’s title will be better than that.):

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.

Whoa. Pretty intense. I’m down for dramatic, but Wordsworth dramatic, I don’t know.

And since we checked out the beginning of one, let’s check out the end of Howard Nemerov’s ode “The Blue Swallows”:

O swallows, swallows, poems are not
The point. Finding again the world,
That is the point, where loveliness
Adorns intelligible things
Because the mind’s eye lit the sun.

Nice. Any of you all have favorite odes?