I wrote the first
draft of this entry in pen--specifically, a Cross Townsend Medalist Chrome with
a .7mm gel rolling ball tip. I've been using this pen as my every-day writing
tool for more than ten years. I write with it in my journal all day long. I also
write my drafts of poems and other writing with this pen.
It fits my hand.
That is to say, I enjoy using it. I like the heft, and I like the way the ink
flows--particularly with fine-tipped gel ink, which glides smoothly across the
page and doesn't blot the letters together. My only complaint is that one ink
cartridge doesn't last very long, so I always make sure I have multiple spares.
Even though every
poem eventually ends up there, I don't often begin writing with a computer.
Poetry isn't a race. I need time to think.
I need space to write in the margins of my initial thinking and to line
through things, all of which lets me see through the current version into what
I've been thinking along the way.
Early on, I decided
I didn't like writing on bright white paper. And I discovered an engineering
notebook that had legal-pad-yellow pages with grids instead of lines, as if for
designing a widget, to scale. When those were harder to find, I turned to a gridded
Moleskine (the 5 x 8 1/2 hard-cover
version). I think the grid encourages me to think of my writing as
construction, something built rather than strung together.
And if I'm going to
go to all that trouble, I want to have tools that will allow me to more fully
enjoy the process. This pen does that.
Over the years, I've
dented the cap, and I've bent the clip so that it's useless. But I have no
intention of replacing it. I've owned two Mont Blancs, but I've lost them both
(I suspect they were an attractive nuisance, and others are enjoying them now).
And even though it's a presidential souvenir pen (the kind he hands out after
signing bills), the Cross is not nearly as expensive as a Mont Blanc. Yet it is
still distinctive and expensive enough that I'm motivated to keep track of it.
But if I should lose
it or damage it beyond use, I know where to find another one just like it.
