The Secret Rooms of Writing

Poet Donald Hall tells a great story. It’s an account of some friends who purchased an old house in the country, a great “warren of small rooms,” and after settling in and living in it a while, they realized that the floor plan “made no sense.” They started investigating, and you can imagine them tapping on walls, tearing away strips of wallpaper. And then after stripping off one particular section of paper, discovering a hidden door. And behind it a secret room. It contained no moldering skeleton, no hidden bags of money, but was closed off, as Hall relates “who knows why.”

Hall likens that secret room to the surprise found in certain poems. The astonishing acknowledgment of a truth one knows in their very bones, has always known, perhaps, deep down. But has never outwardly realized until the reading of the poem.

Wordsworth wrote of a time of desolation, of wandering “lonely as a cloud” and then discovering “a host of golden daffodils.” Oh, the turnabouts life has in store for us! Emily Dickinson wrote of not having time for mortality, but death in his black carriage “kindly stopped for me.”

One of my favorite poems has always been Gerald Manley Hopkins “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child.” The poem opens with the question “Margaret, are you grieving/ over Goldengrove unleaving?” The green things of the earth which must wither and die. And ends with the acknowledgment that Margaret has come upon one of life’s hard realities. “It is the blight man was born for,” the poet writes, “it is Margaret you mourn for.”

In these poems, we are allowed entrance into a secret room. The truth of the poems comes to us in a rush. We feel it in the body, in the heart. It is not for the intellect to tinker with, but for the heart and soul to feel. The poem helps us to do that and we know the shiver of reality.

But it is not only in the reading of poetry that you come across secret rooms, but in the writing of it. You are just writing along, writing about a remembrance of childhood, perhaps, or the bittersweet feeling that comes at the end of summer. And without intending to you’ve uncovered one of the essential truths of existence. You’ve stumbled into that secret room.

Robert Frost said that “I have never started a poem whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.” For many writers, all writers—not just poets—that is what keeps us going. The knowledge that once in a while, you’ll come across a secret room that will reveal something new. Express something you haven’t previously been able to put into words. And that, is one of the great joys of writing. -Lucy Adkins

For more inspiration, check out our website www.thewritingandcreativelife.com. Or follow this link to purchase Writing in Community or our latest book, The Fire Inside.