My eye intent on all the mazy plan

Sunday night as I was lying in bed I had an idea for the collection of poems I’m working on. Dare I call it a manuscript when I’ve only got five poems I would put in the “ready” pile and the rest are drafts, notes, mere puffs of smoke jotted down in the corners of my workbooks? Not an idea about the poems themselves, or the general theme of the collection – that I’ve known for a long time, since before I realized that I was writing a collection of poems that belong, that could belong, together in a manuscript. What came to me was an idea about the structure of the collection and the order in which the poems might eventually find themselves. What came to me was a plan.

I’ve never done this before. I’ve never said that rather than write this poem and that poem I’m going to write this collection, this – go on, say it – manuscript. I picture nineteen poems (that’s not enough for a book-length manuscript but could make a nice chapbook) on four themes. The themes would determine each poem’s place in the collection. I wouldn’t just have Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV – no, I’d move back and forth between the themes coming back around to each at  certain point. It could work, or it could be too clever by half, or it could go completely un-noticed by any readers I might one day entice into reading all nineteen poems. I might abandon it by the wayside as I continue to work.

But having this plan, this artificial impositon of order on what is by its very nature a disorderly process – the creation of something – makes it all less scattered and terrifying. I can be methodical and practical about something that is neither methodical nor practical. I can say I have three out of the four Theme A poems written and they are poems One, Six, and Twelve. I can say I have one of the Theme B poems written; I’ll make that poem Three. I have a Theme D poem written and it should probably be poem Four. And all of this will probably change but having this structure, this ladder to climb, makes it all seem so do-able now, so completely do-able.