I'm Adelimo and this is The Slowdown.

Something we don't often talk about is the strangeness of poetry.

How poetry makes room for the memories in the back of the brain.

It twists and turns and allows us to purposefully or not

misremember images and at the same time remember feelings with extreme clarity.

There is even the danger sometimes that as a writer we will become so beholden to the

good line, the vibrant image that we will write the poem and then forget the memory.

This has happened to me.

I've written a poem that conflates two or three memories and now I couldn't separate

them with a crowbar.

Did that actually happen or did I write a poem about it?

I sometimes hold onto something that matters to me so tightly that I won't let it near

my poetic impulses because I want it to remain true, to remain pure.

Or maybe it's too painful to see it transformed on the page into anything other than just

pain.

So I avoid the page.

Then there are times when poetry's ability to make room for strangeness is perfect for

the true but other worldly memories.

For example, once my mother and I walked along the shoreline thinking we saw a shark and

as we walked further we realized it was a seal and then we kept walking and realized

it was not a seal but a man wearing a wetsuit that had a protrusion like a shark.

First it was a shark, then it was a seal, then it was a man dressed like a shark.

...