I think that the best incentives for poems are internal and already in you, with you, waiting, nudging.
Scars, worries, doubts, embarrassments, secrets—odd little ways of knowing the world that only make sense to you...
What you feel compelled to write a poem about—what preoccupies or bothers you—is more vital and important than any topic you are assigned.
To begin to find it, spend a day alone. Talk to no one. Stay in, or go where no one is. No TV or internet or texting. Alone.
From one morning to the next would be ideal—but things rush upon us all and distract us. What about—from waking until dark?
Such isolation can be like fasting: difficult. Not fun. Well, maybe it will be your kind of fun. If so, you might be a poet!
Talk to yourself, of course. Write down everything you are saying—let it all come as a cleansing surprise.
Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t flirt with yourself. Imagine an empty theatre—stand on the proscenium stage of yourself—where no one is listening.
A lyric poem is self-talk. A small, private song. Only after all is said and done might it eventually be shared.
Notice what you don’t want to tell, then risk telling those very things to the page.
As I say, no one is listening—not today. And there are no grades for this kind of courage.
Your private time will probably seem very long at the start—and then, if you are writing away, it will just fly by.
You are in retreat—ready to welcome the poem—in pieces—as it emerges.
If you are lucky and vigilant, the poem you have been avoiding will poke its gnarly head out and talk its vital nonsense only to you.
But don’t pretend it is an animal—it is language. Be wary of metaphor. If you are a wreck, don’t say your cat has been hit by a car.
If you find the accurate words for what you have to tell, there will be poetry in that, always.
Or go ahead—say your cat was hit by a car—maybe it was. Readers—if you ever have any—will take it to mean something else. As well. Anyway.
The next day, or soon after, revisit what you wrote that day while in retreat.
The Japanese call it—going into the tin can. As in—sealed off from the hurly-burly for awhile. No can-opener—until the project is finished.
You have gone in, and come out. Now you know where your poems are. Cloistered, not swarmed.
Back in the noisy world—circle the best bits of what you scribbled down that day.
There will be sentences or phrases or words you wrote without thinking—they seemed stupid or meaningless at the time...
Now your jottings might have a music—or some elusive, separate resonance all their own.
They may interest you—not for what they say but for how they say it, how they sound...
Your scribbles have caught something you didn’t quite know—about yourself—or the world...
Gather these circled bits, and arrange them. Listen to how they relate to each other. Somewhere in all of this—is your poem.
When it is finished, don’t expect praise, or even understanding.
You will probably change your poem, or add to it—but try not to kill its oddity or its power—its cloister-power.
If shared, it might be popular, or hated. But you will have made something—yours alone. Core song.
Go get more. Or as Seamus Heaney says:
You have fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here, and don’t be too earnest...