The sacred cups of words

I am speaking to somebody who has no experience in either reading or writing poems, but who is interested in the craft.
"Tell me," he says, "how it works."
"People make the mistake of taking words for things," I reply. "Everywhere you find people arguing - often they are arguing about nothing more than which words to use for some idea. They toss them to and fro like balls.
"But for a poet, words are cups. You fill them with feeling, the feeling that flows through you."
"I get that," says my friend.
"Yes. But in the first place, the feeling is one between just you and yourself, or you and God, or you and Nature, or you and Silence, or you and your lover ... whatever name you give to the state of being at-one in a particular moment.
"It can happen anywhere - in a pub, beside a stream, at a table with friends - whatever. When you listen attentively, words find you, if you're that way inclined.
"The right words always find you when you listen with your heart."
"But if I do that," he retorts, "I don't get a poem. I just get a list - say, like ..."
He rattles off several nouns.
"That's ok," I say. "You write them down, straight - stream-of-consciousness. Get it down.
"Then, when that's done, you can look at what you've got. That's the point at which you can tentatively start using your conscious mind - how can I string these words together so they make sense?
"In a way, you are taking the words like molecules of feeling. Two separate hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom don't make water. But when they combine, they make something we can drink, and wash and cook with, and swim in.
"So you link your words into something bigger than the separate words - something which you, and later your reader, can assimilate.
"Thought-water, if you like. Or thought-wine."
"I've written," he says, "quite a lot. But I've always thrown it away."
"That is good," I say. "You offer your creation in the first place to yourself, or to God; maybe to a friend you trust. The process of offering gives you feedback and matures you.
"Keep working in this way. You'll find your own voice this way. You'll learn to discriminate between what is truly yours and what is not.
"Don't think of publishing.
"Publishing is not writing and it is not reading. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the cups of words in their mysterious beginning.
"Publishing only comes as a very last stage - when your combinations of words have reached a point of being sufficiently strong to be buffeted by the physical world - a world where things are chaotic, competitive and not at-one.
"This stage requires you as a poet to be strong - stronger than you can be when you are creating a poem, where you have to be soft and open as a baby."
I read him a poem.
"That is so beautiful," he says.
"It's a lifetime behind this," I remind him, "a lifetime of being a baby.
"Creating poems is an organic process and the initial conception in the womb of your heart's music is of necessity vulnerable and sacred."

- Silke Heiss, 9th April 2019