Ride That Metaphor: Training for Poetry

No breakfast yet—not even coffee, and we are standing in the sand at Waikoloa, watching men and women emerge from the ocean to run barefoot along the course to the bright hot lot where their bikes wait. The bay still flashes with arms and splash as the other swimmers continue their trip around the floating pylons.

Up at the beginning of the bike course, we watch the first few cyclists wheel their bikes to the mount line and ride away. At first, we wait long gaps between contestants, and then the frequency increases. Riders clip into their pedals and head up to the highway.

It is hot. It is lava-field hot and scoured by fierce winds that haven’t stopped for days.

“Waiko-Blow-A,” one of the race volunteers tells me.

We watch dozens of riders go out, and now the leader returns, racks his bike, and takes off on a 10 K run.

It’s beyond my comprehension at the most visceral level, and yet I want to be doing it, too. The fact that a shoulder injury keeps me from swimming or that my knees are too trashed to run no longer seems relevant. Not even the fact that I’m 49 years old. The idea of training—setting goals and reaching them—appeals to me.

How do you train if you’re a writer, a poet? What is the triathlon of writing or poetry? How do you compete in a non-competitive sport—or not a sport? Sure, you can slam. Or you can say that acceptance and publication are forms of winning. But it’s all subjective. You don’t have the comfort of numbers, of measurements.

You could measure speed and quantity—say you wrote the most sonnets in an hour or the quickest sestina—but why? What would it give you—or anyone? Speed in writing is not equivalent to quality. Competition is not the point—not to me. I don’t write to win. I write because I write.

And the wonderful thing about poetry is that it gives us the opportunity to be generous—it’s less about the first man or woman across the line, and it’s more about the idea that everyone who finishes wins. Sure, only one writer will get the contest prize. But somehow, it’s different. It still isn’t a race. It’s a life.

I can train— half-hour free writes or hold myself to a writing schedule, measure my work, even measure submission goals—and read, read, read—a critical part of any writing program. I know that many fiction writers set daily word goals—1,000 words and then they’re done. I can’t imagine this working in poetry, where each piece is often shorter and where it’s so important to run with an idea until you can’t run anymore.

I realize that I always ponder this idea of training when I’m on vacation—especially in Hawaii. It started one time when I was watching golf on TV while I packed my suitcase. Is it all the leisure that leads me to think of training? Or is it all this time?

The reality is that after I return from vacation, refreshed and inspired, I don’t train. I don’t do 30-minute free writes every day, or even five minutes every day. And while every day is certainly a good practice, and I’m trying it yet again, it’s also the comfort of measurement—and of accomplishment. I can tick that off my list and say, “I’ve done this.” It doesn’t mean I’ve come up with anything that will evolve into a poem—although I believe that if I write enough, if I work hard enough, something must change.

It’s not the winning, it’s the doing. Just reaching a goal of setting a pen on paper or typing on a screen, whether it’s five minutes or an hour. That measures participation, but we’re in a society that applauds tangible results or rewards, and those aren’t guaranteed. Somehow, we must come to terms with being mostly measureless in a measuring world and know that we are not slacking off. Our training and our results are just different.

Writing isn’t a race. It’s a life. After the triathlon (after he breezed across the finish line), the winner spoke about his plans: Flying to New Orleans to compete and then on to a handful of other competitions.

“What a life!” I thought. But it isn’t mine.