One of the great things about the avocation of being a writer in general, and a poet in particular (even the vocation of writer/poet I will assay when I retire next year), is the art’s sponteneity and portability. You never know when or where the lightning of creative thought will strike you and if you don’t toss a net over it…poof. You know what happens.

Hi, I’m Joe Hesch, your host for this final Open Link Night of October 2013.

For many of us, this wandering and gathering of the raw material of poetry is as simple as reaching over to your nightstand and picking up a notebook. But equally as fulfilling is capturing poetry on the hoof, al fresco, in scribbling some impression, description or catchy phrase on a scrap of paper, the renowned paper napkin, or the back of your hand.

For me, it was carrying a handful of 3-by-5 index cards in my back pocket, upon which I would jot down a note in large, barely legible script. I have fairly good handwriting, but these notes were shaky because usually the hand that held the cards also held the human end of a leash that terminated around the head of an 80-pound Golden Retriever at the other. She may be my sorta-muse, but Mollie has neither idea nor care of what’s involved in the creative process. She’s a four-legged blonde Philistine and I love her for it.

The cards gave way to small spiral-bound notebooks, their steel curlicue spines often unraveling into the fabric of my back pocket or that of my right hand. Then I found Moleskines, the allegedly legendary sewn-spined notebooks of Hemingway and the rest of that Lost Generation writing crowd. It is within the pages of these that so many of my morning poems (come to think of it, a lot of the afternoon and nighttime ones, too) have been sown, captured or shaped. I think of them as the world’s smallest writer’s studio or salon.

Lately I’ve been wondering about making a verbal note into the recorder of my iPhone. It’s bad enough, though, that I look back at these breathless bits of creative clay I scratched into a notebook when I finally get around to drafting the silly verse, but to actually hear the breathless intonations and “Hold on, Mollie’s” would be a little too much to take.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ll stick to my little notebooks for the foreseeable future, capturing the yesterday, today and tomorrow of my heart and head and then framing them into some sort of nude self-portrait that I display like a warped exhibitionist at my A Thing for Words blog and here each Tuesday on Open Link Night.

How do you capture your poetry ideas when you’re on the move, either physically or intellectually?

I can tell you how to sow those poems into our hearts and heads:

• Post a poem to your blog,
• Link your poem to dVerse (1 per blog, please) by clicking on the Mr.Linky button below.
• This opens a new screen where you’ll enter your information, and where you also choose links to read. Once you have pasted your poem’s blog url and entered your name, click Submit.
• Don’t forget to let your readers know where you’re linking up and encourage them to participate by including a link to dVerse in your blog post.
• Visit as many other poems as you like, commenting as you see fit.
• Spread the word on the poems you enjoy if you’d like. Feel free to tweet and share on the social media of your choice.
• Enjoy being part of this community.