The poem as field of negotiation (10.29.21)

It happens every week at Wednesdays@One.  We read a poem, twice through, ask a few questions of the author, then negotiate--sometimes debate--what we think of the poem's quality, technique, subject matter, form, style, figurative language, and of course, meaning.  Sometimes we negotiate its "poem-ness."

We all start from a place of rough agreement about "poem-ness," what poem-ness is.  Poem-ness means language is foregrounded in some way and is in some way the whole or main point of the poem.  Used to be, language was foregrounded through end-rhyme and meter, but these haven't been reliable (or definitive) indicators of good work for a hundred years of Western poetry.  In fact, end-rhyme and meter generally indicate bad or "old-fashioned" poetry for most of us--the kind of poetry we feel we have to apologize for when we trot it out in workshops, readings and other kinds of sharing.

We can tell easily when we are in the presence of language calling attention to itself, and we understand implicitly that this is the very stuff of poetry.  This much we agree on when we share poems at W@1.

But then we start negotiating the rest of it.  We negotiate the poem's quality, its value, its purity.  We negotiate even how we're going to talk about the poem before us . . . and the terms keep shifting with every poem we share.  Some poems we agree to discuss in largely technical terms, how their images work or the way they deploy certain verbs or modifiers.  For some poems, we agree, more or less, to focus on endings or shifts in tone or how they echo certain styles.  Sometimes our negotiations fail (or there's not much to negotiate after all) and we have at a poem willy-nilly or not at all.  

Whenever we come to the issue of quality--is this poem good?  do I like this poem?  should this poem be revised?--we negotiate not just with a poem's author but among ourselves.  We "bargain" over & whether a poem is a draft or complete.  If the case can be made that it's a draft, and a good candidate for revision, then we negotiate among ourselves the kind and degree of revision we'd recommend.  These "poems" may need cutting, or they may benefit from restructuring.  Sometimes, a good draft will be overwritten--the poem that will arise from the draft will be shorter, tighter, more clearly focused, that is, will pay closer attention to its material, language.

How do we negotiate the idea that a poem is unfinished but worthy of further work?  By pointing out internal inconsistencies, for example: the poem may begin in one tone or mood but then suddenly shift to some other; the poem may force rhymes that draw attention to themselves not as language, but as cliché; or the poem may emphasize a moral instead of or before it emphasizes language.  All of these inconsistencies can be remedied in one or two revisions, once they are pointed out to the author.

Regardless, each of these "suggestions" needs to be negotiated with the author, with each other, and, importantly, with our own individual understandings of the history and currency of "poetry."  Sometimes, we at W@1 are so sure of our "bargaining position" (ahem, I'm talking to YOU, Mr. Holtzman!) that we force an assessment onto or into a poem.  But this is all part of negotiation in the end . . . the most forceful or forcefully put argument.

Wednesdays@One has instituted a few guardrails against mere forcefulness, however.  We've negotiated, over much time, what we agree constitutes "poem-ness" in our group if not broadly elsewhere:*

1. Poems, to be poetic, must foreground or otherwise privilege the language they are made from.
2. Poems must move in the sense of some type of progression, either by steady logic or by leaps and bounds and cuts and turns, but they must move.  This movement must be internally consistent.
3. Poems must "arrive somewhere."  Movement is not in itself enough.  Internal consistency means movement from a place/notion/feeling to a place/notion/feeling.  Poems can do this thematically and technically, but they must do so in both content and in form.
4. Poems, to be "good," must show some awareness of their place in the history of poetry.  They must show that "they" are aware (even if the writer isn't) of the conventions they recall--including dead forms and cliché--even if that awareness is expressed as "rejection" or "innovation."

And as always, the above four agreements are open to negotiation and revision.

* And let's not discount the importance of "over time" in the above statement.  For conventions/agreements are arrived at only over time and extended rounds of negotiation, in politics, governing, personal relations and poetics.