on writing...

Writing is far more than a seemingly learned skill, it is a genuine connection with one's most inner-self, willing often to color outside the lines placed by previous expectations, both from self as well as others, and a willingness to put such mystery on display.  The following is an excerpt from Mark Doty's Souls On Ice which renders a brief journey into the internal process of an accomplished poet and author who has dared to journey and color outside the lines....

Our metaphors go on ahead of us, they know before we do. And thank goodness for that, for if I were dependent on other ways of coming to knowledge I think I'd be a very slow study. I need something to serve as a container for emotion and idea, a vessel that can hold what's too slippery or charged or difficult to touch. Will doesn't have much to do with this; I can't choose what's going to serve as a compelling image for me. But I've learned to trust that part of my imagination that gropes forward, feeling its way toward what it needs; to watch for the signs of fascination, the sense of compelled attention (Look at me, something seems to say, closely) that indicates that there's something I need to attend to. Sometimes it seems to me as if metaphor were the advance guard of the mind; something in us reaches out, into the landscape in front of us, looking for the right vessel, the right vehicle, for whatever will serve.