copying

My adviser from grad school sent me a poem he thought I might like: No Title Required, by Wislawa Szymborska. I did like the poem — I like the idea of an introspective poem that traces a line of thought in situ, as it happens — but I thought it was too verbose. I trimmed it down a bit here:

I'm sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning
 
I have come from somewhere
and before that
I have turned up in many other places
 
So it happens that I am and look
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
and a shadow skims through my hands
 
When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not

I'm not sure Wislawa would approve my changes. But I enjoyed making them.

I've thought about writing in the past. I've even tried writing a story — a very short story. But I'm not great at it. One idea that crossed my mind for becoming better was essentially copying someone else's story, but making some minor changes to it. Of course, this idea is just a copy of a previous post, it seems.