Loved the whole post. So much goodness in it. Like this line: “Notebooks have always been a kind of private rehearsal — a place where lines are allowed to be strange, incomplete, or tenderly half-wrong.”
I have kept them and infrequently refer back to them. Once a poem is transcribed into a digital format, that becomes the working version. But I do have "notes-to-self" and random observations that I revisit from time to time.
Thank you so much for this, Robin. I drank down every word, and felt that itch in my fingertips for clean, blank pages in a notebook - secret rooms for our hearts and minds.
Ooh saving this for later 🙏
Great!
Loved the whole post. So much goodness in it. Like this line: “Notebooks have always been a kind of private rehearsal — a place where lines are allowed to be strange, incomplete, or tenderly half-wrong.”
Thanks! I like thinking of the notebook that way. It gives me permission.
Yes my notebooks reread and toss aside until I remember. Peace
It all remains in memory.
You stir up our imagination.Thank you.
On purpose!
I'm old-school enough to do 95% of my poetry composition in notebooks. Then I transcribe them into Google Docs, 30 poems to a "volume."
And do you store your filled notebooks? Refer back to them ever? Now if I could just sketch, I would scribble in the margins, too!
I have kept them and infrequently refer back to them. Once a poem is transcribed into a digital format, that becomes the working version. But I do have "notes-to-self" and random observations that I revisit from time to time.
Great prompt! I look forward to trying it. I would also like to share your Flow Guide with my writing group :)
Definitely share the guide with your group! I'd love to hear how it goes.
Thank you!
https://open.substack.com/pub/anonymousemama/p/permission-slip?r=47v0&utm_medium=ios
Callie, Such truth in your poem! I love the punch of the last stanza. Wow...
I found this image so powerful today, and wrote-
Tensìon
Sifts my gaze to
Blame - me, you, circumstance.
I drop trust to the ground, hurt
By shame.
I love this...its conciseness and the upshot in the last line!
Thank you so much for this, Robin. I drank down every word, and felt that itch in my fingertips for clean, blank pages in a notebook - secret rooms for our hearts and minds.
So happy you like it! Yes, love that feeling!
I just have one question at the end of your life. What do you do with all of those that no one wants?
They become a part of your unknown legacy...an unheard chorus. Each person has this, I'm sure.