Heather Stewart Poetry

I love to tinker. That was the word that I used before I began to embrace craft. I tinker with all sorts of things, especially words. I fell in love with it when Disney turned Tinkerbell into a little inventor. She tinkered with objects she found to make them do new things. She figured out how to fix things.

When I was in the Navy, I was an electronics technician. Though, I was never very good at actually fixing things, I did love being a tinkerer. I loved the idea that I could contribute to making things run smoothly. It turned out that I was much better at helping people run smoothly than objects, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It was what eventually earned my the moniker of “mom” to many of the people I worked with. I hated that for a while, but it grew on me. I didn’t want to be thought of as responsible for the people I worked with like a mom, I didn’t want to finish raising them.

It was more of an emotional thing in the end. Many of the young ones needed comfort and I turned into one of the people they turned to. Sometimes the thing that keeps us going is a hug, who knew?

These days most of my tinkering is with poetic forms. I tried to write sijos for a little while. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t great. A sijo is a little 3 line poem with a specific syllable count. Here are the three that I wrote.

1.  

You can be just there waiting, not knowing how to choose a path 

When approaches another who also wasn't expecting you 

You never know when you will meet someone who will change your whole life 

2. 

Once I asked, trying to find an answer to help ease the fear, 

Not knowing, the confusion of exactly what they would want 

One just needs a good attitude and will for working it out 

3. 

Recruiters will always do the best thing for themselves foremost 

The right thing for the Navy will be next in considering 

Then perhaps, what is best for the kid may be considered last 

They get the point across that I was trying to make, but they don’t have any real feeling. I packed away that form and am keeping it for a poem that it can make sing. I’m gonna rewrite these and see where they go. The idea had been to put in writing the lessons I had learned in the Navy. These first three were about the beginning, about training. The actual lessons were pretty simple and these expressions got them all convoluted.

1. You never know when you will meet someone who will change your life
2. Keep a good attitude and be willing to work
3. Recruiters are looking out for themselves first, then the Navy, then the kid.

I want to make them feel like proverbs or something. The kind of advice that is memorable and we can take with us. I’ll keep tinkering with them until they feel right. I feel pretty good about the fourth one, which I returned to my free verse roots for:

You only hold the power 

While you hold the pen 

 

Read carefully 

Turn over the words 

Be aware, there are 

Extra definitions 

 

Don't sign your life away 
Just to make your mark 

Even though there are more words and more than one stanza, the whole idea is simplified and more memorable in the last couplet. I enjoyed playing with two definitions of “mark” too. The lesson itself originally summed up as

4. Pay attention to what you sign

So, is there any advice out there for a new poet tinkering with forms and playing with words?