First things first. Pretty cool news about Louise Gluck, ay? I wonder what winning a Nobel does for your artistic psyche? I'd think it would offer more burden than anything else. Apparently, Sartre did, too.
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Recently, we discussed a poem in a Wednesdays@One salon where everyone felt the author had lost the thread of the making. A pattern seemed to be laid down early in the poem which then was abandoned, or in this case simply neglected. Or maybe just never recognized. The poem wandered away into thickets of pretty words, and never found its way back. The author initially tried to justify the errancies, but ultimately was as unconvinced by the poem as the rest of us.
Now, I've said before that poems begin in sound. Much of their power resides in the spoken word, in rhythm and pitch, in the acoustics of art. Meaning arises from there, often. But there is "sound," and then there is sound. "Sound" is noise. Almost everything following the opening stanza of this W@1 author's poem veered toward noise. Sound is form and intention, however illogical or chaotic it may seem at first hearing. Prettiness usually falls into the "sound" category, art into the sound category.
Before I lose the thread myself, here is our project for next week . . .
Scroll down to find an assortment of stanzas and/or passages from poems I chose at random from my own library. Select one of the passages and follow its lead to write a new poem. Study the passage. Read it through several times. Then read it aloud. Try memorizing it and then reciting it into a mirror. If you keep a poetry notebook or a journal, write it out there and then break it down, analyze it. Consider its "statement" and its potential context(s). Can it be paraphrased, that is, if someone asked, could you say, "This passage is about/describes, introduces, takes us to . . . "? Ponder its grammar and construction (lineation, syntax, punctuation, subordinations, verbs and tenses). Note its figures -- metaphors and similes, analogies, personifications, slangs, heightened speech, alliteration, rhyme. Hear its tones, such as irony, guile, clarity, simplicity, evenness, flourish, grandness or sublime-ness, colloquialism and other folksiness. Is it a cry? A shout? A whisper? A plea? Is its language aggressive or dismissive or "healing" or admonitory or analytical or questioning or something else? Does the passage suggest a rhetorical approach, in addition to the poetic; that is, does it suggest an opinion, a preferred point of view; is it attempting to teach you or convince you?
What I'm asking is that you internalize the piece of poetry you select, in part to make it your own, in part to get a sense of its poetic possibilities -- that is, of your poetic options. So read through them all and then, if one strikes you as something you can work with, go for it. But don't just start writing! Do what I describe in the paragraph above. Each segment comes from the beginning of a poem that some poet has already written and published. I've chosen relatively obscure poems to discourage you from looking up the completed original. You are to make your own original, using this beginning as your "topic sentence."
Which brings me back to the title of this post and that poem we discussed recently. I believe the author of that errant poem failed to recognize the path suggested by the first stanza he'd/she'd composed. A common error, by the way, even among the professionals. I don't think this was intentional. I do believe that had the author paused once in a while to re-read that opening stanza and consider its form, "statement," lyrical quality, specificity (or gauziness), diction, word choice and order, figures, concreteness, etc., that a different and more coherent poem would have emerged. This might have taken more effort, more thought and feeling, and more time. The writer's process might have been more recursive and tentative. But I think the result might have been superior.
So what I'm suggesting here is a writing technique, which is to treat an opening stanza or paragraph of a poem like the topic sentence of a prose paragraph. I recall helping my Freshman Comp students devise topic sentences for their 500-word essays and for individual paragraphs, then advising them to write the topic sentence onto a piece paper and to tape that piece of paper somewhere above their writing desk, right where they could look at it again and again as they developed their material. I suggested series of questions they could put to themselves as they worked:
- Does the paragraph or essay in some way develop the thought of that topic sentence?
- Does the material in the paragraph/essay explain, question, illustrate the thought expressed in the topic sentence?
- Is the tone of the paragraph's/essay's language consistent with the tone of the topic sentence, or is it implied by the topic sentence?
This technique doesn't always work, that is, doesn't always result in a good poem, at least not at first writing. But sometimes, if I come back to that passage months or years later, it still serves as a guideline or a pointer, saying, "go that way," which I can see more clearly. And I'm not saying the poets who wrote the poems from which the passages below come followed this technique. Everybody deploys different techniques at different instances for different purposes. But try writing a poem with one of these passages as your opening "gambit"; get to know the possibilities the gambit offers. Tape that passage, if you like, above your writing desk. Keep referring back to it as you write. Let the passage lead you -- don't try to force it into something else you'd like to write.
Then, next week, show us what you've composed. Have fun! The openers follow.
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