Let's rap! (6.27.20)

The trepidations are beginning to leak in

To my inbox from people who say they're needin' 

Some kind of serious detox

For the poetry rap project objectif we've got, 

You know what I'm saying, I'm saying these big lots

Of rhythm & rhyme 

Jammed together in 5/4 time

Like jazz like hazardous material

For the lungs & the tongue 

That don't wanna be spoken so much as sung . . .

Sometimes, people, I just can't help myself!  Even when it's probably wiser to . . . Looking ahead 20 years, and assuming I'm still around, what today's blog might sound like to my nanogenetic self . . .  BUT!

Or as Elizabeth Warren might say, Nevertheless, I persist.

Look, people, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to make poetry for the ages the same way it's been made for ages, since Homer, in fact, and that's all well and good, at least for us in Western Civilization.  But sometimes it starts to feel . . . er . . . a little too Western?  As in one of those extended learning courses in Western Civilization that universities like UNC cook up for retirees (for a fee) so we can all feel educated and . . . civilized?

Occasionally, it's nice to eat dessert first, have a bowl of cereal for supper, drain a glass of wine for breakfast.  Sometimes, it's good to dance naked in front of the mirror.  SOMETIMES we need to stretch our ideas about what kind of poetry we can write, even if we don't ordinarily think of it as poetry.

Here's my two cents: the rhapsodes of ancient Greece were the original 50 Cent, Lil Nas, Queen Latifah and Nicki Minaj.  Then Homer came along, whoever he was, IF he was actually one poet, and codified the rhapsodes' raps into formal poetry.  The Troubadours wandering Italy and France resurrected rap, maybe in the form of villenelles (which at one time were really quite various in style and length), which in turn rejuvenated poetry until somebody reduced their songs to a single form--like the villenelle--and called it poetry.  Walt Whitman came along to toss out the stuffy sterile imitative stuff of American anglicized poetry and . . . well, you know what he did!  Then the Beats had to follow suit a hundred years later because poetry had slipped back into the merely academic again, or so they argued.  In the 1970s, partly out of cultural resistance, partly out of political will, came hip-hop, then rap . . . and voila! poetry reborn, saved from itself.

Here's a secret I would like to share with you: you don't have to be Eminem to write rap poetry.  And so I invite you to give it a try.  First, a few simple observations or rules, if you will--and yes, rap adheres to three but pretty strict rules--and then a few examples, brief plus extended, so you get the idea.

Rule 1: theme

If you're going to write a rap poem, settle on a simple theme.  The rap you're probably thinking of, that most offends you, is about night clubs, grinding, raw sexism, bad attitudes, selfishness, guns and cussing.  It's in your face.  That's not necessarily the only vehicle for rap, though.  You can write rappily about anything--what you like for breakfast (see "Ham & Eggs" below), about community, about writing poetry, about Donald Trump, about Queens Latifah and/or Elizabeth, about your dog or your cat, about your cluttered garage, about your favorite pair of pants.  The point is, choose a theme.  Next, brainstorm it--what is it, what does it sound like/look like/taste like/feel like, where do you find it, where don't you find it, what do you really know about it, etc., etc.?  How do you feel about it?  Themes in rap poems are often very personal, almost confessional (though they aren't always that way.)  A rap can address a reader or a historical person directly.

Rule 2: flow

This is the key to rap, and therefore to rap poetry.  What is flow?  Here's what it is not: flow is not meter, as in a popular song or a ballad or a traditional lyric.  In fact, flow is not even "rhythm" as we traditional writers of poetry think of rhythm, such as cadence.  Flow is not a regular rhyme pattern, as in a-b-a-b or a-a / b-b or as in a sonnet.  So what is flow?  Flow is unlineated and unpatterned in the usual sense.  Flow is a falling-driving rhythm that ignores line breaks (even if there are line breaks in the poem).  Flow can be written as prose, in fact, because it doesn't depend on line endings and beginnings.  If you look at the rap poem I wrote at the top of this blog you'll see the pace wants to be quick, the movement continually "forward," and the beat or rhythm always falling-driving from first to last.  This is because flow is sequential: a sequence of words that sound similar even if they don't actually rhyme (they may may have the same number of syllables with stressed syllables in the same place in each word or set of words in the sequence).  Hint: use words of two syllables or more or word clusters in which the first syllable is stressed.  Repetition ad nauseum is one way to get to rap's flow.  Reading it aloud should leave you breathless.

Rule 3: rhyme

A rap poem feeds on rhyme, but it doesn't rhyme in strict time (see Rule 2 above) or pattern.  A rap rhyme can be exact, off, near, slant, and gestural all within the space of a single image or sequence of words.  A rap poem will use masculine rhymes (rhyming words of one syllable) often extended to a series, one after the other.  A rap poem will deploy feminine rhyme (rhyming words of multi-syllables: Stella and her umbrella met a helluva fella).  Most of all, and most fun of all, a rap poem will go for partial rhyme or "part-rhymes," that is, choosing words in a series that may incorporate rhyming syllables at the same position in each word.

So there are your rules.  For me, flow is the most important.  No flow no go in yo po . . . etry.  Here are some examples.  Try reading them out loud a couple of times, looking for the pacing and tempo that best suits what the poems are attempting.

Internal to Internal

(This is a poem that I wrote and perform with my band)

We go out (yeah yeah)

And we come back (yeah yeah)

After awhile (yeah yeah, yeah yeah)

It's a wonder 

That we recognize each other,

You and I, internal to internal/

[Bridge]

On a case by case basis

We can make an oasis

Of each other, brother to sister

Sister to brother

But what we need is a bridge

To build a bridge with the courage

To abridge the spaces

Between us, I mean us

Because we need us

(Can you believe this?)

And be fly together

Like birds of a feather

No matter the weather

So if not now, if not right now then when?

Don't tell me never

Don't say to me whenever, whatever

We go out . . . etc.

. . . and my wife, Ann, who gave me the idea to challenge you all with this project, wrote this little rap about our dog . . .

Murphy's Rap

I have a little poodle

a really cool funny little dude

he loves to make art with his food

he runs around in circles

playing keepaway with dad

he always wins un-huh that's what I said

guard dog at the window

barking at all

you don't know that I'm not tall

I weigh 8 pounds 

and have 6 teeth in my head

but walk on by

I really don't mind

'cause after all I'm just saying hi

Rap poems and songs copped from the web . . .

It Pays Big

(a primer on how to write rap poems)

First press play, then we’ll play.
It’s the same old game, just cut, next frame.
Shakespeare first, then Molière.
Tragedy to comedy, an act so raw to me.
Start your flow, it’s your show,
‘else it’s paycheck, rain check, your own shipwreck,
Hands on deck, it’s mic check, say,
‘This is me for you to see, a gift, just pay your fee.’

And I’ll remember your face,
But I’m not coming home,
‘Cause I’m stuck in this place
Where it pays big to roam.

Break stage right, missed that flight,
Now it’s airport naps, short break, next port.
Who are you? Just ask the mirror.
Stake it out and fake ‘em out, next city break it out.
Time for rest, did your best.
Now you move it, groove it, fast, prove it.
She cries out, listen, hear her
Celebrate, initiate, live once, appreciate.

And I’ll remember your face,
But I’m not coming home,
‘Cause I’m stuck in this place
Where it pays big to roam


DOPE RAPPER

Am the microphone wrecker wacky mc’s thrasher
Call me punchline call me dope rapper
Lyrical tyrant punchline merchant
Don’t come close I got a wackiness repellant
Am the soldier in the ant the giga in the byte
Flows so sick you never ever bite
Don’t poke your eyes you might cry twice
Once bitten you gonna be shy twice
With your lame ass flow you don’t even cause a ripple
My rhyme so sweet it could make a girl tickle
Am the eagle you are a worm better wiggle
Blow the beagle am the boss man simple


ON KEY

I may sing off key but I rap on key
Rhyme so loaded am the rap donkey
Am like the rap tree you just a rap monkey
I got this locked down am the lock and the key
You cant get out you are under lock and key
With rhymes this good you cant get past me
Am a baller like Messi you no play pass me
Am on your tv and radio them too dey play me


THE A

Am the A in your apple
The whip on your back when you shit for temple
The itch on your head when you scratch your temple
Fall back watch me am the thrill in the movie
The movie in the ROM the kinda flows I drop make them shake their bumbum
Spitting rhymes like a well chewed bubble gum I make your liver pool but am sweet like tomtom
And I break rules like diego maradonna ready to blow with ma lyrical bazooka
Am the hay maker I make the sun shine and I aint bragging its just a punchline
Am so coded I got my own tune 99.9 I got the beat I got the tune
Am the generator men y’all the fume I smell good even with no perfume
Talk is cheap so I bought silence you wanna rant I give y’all the license
I make some sense even even when am talking nonsense cos my nonsense even get one sense
Some people no go grab cos them no get sense
The sense I make is not too common no be big deal cos now my rap is common
Am not a flash in a pan cos am known from Lagos all the way to japan
I got a master and I got a plan so you see I got a master plan
I know my master plans and his plans I don master am not stopping now cos now am going faster
Am repping Jehovah my one and only master


Ham & Eggs
By A Tribe Called Quest

I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol
Ay yo, Phife do you eat em? (No, Tip do you eat em?)
Uh uh, not at all (Again)
I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol
Jarobi, do you eat em? (Nope, Shah, do you eat em?) Nope
Not at all

A tisket, a tasket, what's in mama's basket?
Some veggie links and some fish that stinks
Why, just the other day, I went to Grandma's house
Smelled like she conjured up a mouse
Eggs was fryin', ham was smellin'
In ten minutes, she started yellin' (Come and get it!)
And the gettin's were good
I said, "I shouldn't eat it", she said, "I think you should"
But I can't, I'm plagued by vegetarians
No cats and dogs, I'm not a veterinarian
Strictly collard greens and the occasional steak
Goes on my plate
Asparagus tips look yummy, yummy, yummy
Candied yams inside my tummy
A collage of good eats, some snacks or nice treats
Apple sauce and some nice red beets
This is what we snack on when we're questin'
(No second guessin')

I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol
Ay yo, Phife do you eat em? (No, Tip do you eat em?)
Uh uh, not at all (Again)
I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol
Jarobi, do you eat em? (Nope, Shah, do you eat em?) Nope
Not at all

Now drop the beat, so I can talk about my favorite tastings
The food that is the everlasting
See I'm not fasting
I'm gobbling, like a dog on turkey
Beef jerky, Slim Jims, I eat sometimes
I like lemons and limes
"And if not that, I get the Roti and the Soursop"
Sit back, relax, listen to some hip-hop
Gum drops and gummy bears tease my eyes
A sight for sore ones and some bore pies
And other goodies that are filled with goop
With fried apple roots
Delectable delights, control my appetites
Mines is for me, right, but I know what I like
Chicken for lunch, chicken for my dinner
Chicken, chicken, chicken, I'm a finger lickin' winner
When breakfast time comes, I don't recognize
Pig in the pan or a pair of bogey chides
Mixed with stewed tomatoes, home fried potatoes
Or anything with flair, cook it, I'm in there
Pay attention to the Tribe as we impose
This is how it goes

I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol
Ay yo, Phife do you eat em? (No, Tip do you eat em?)
Uh uh, not at all (Again)
I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol
Jarobi, do you eat em? (Nope, Shah, do you eat em?) Nope
Not at all


Remember the Name
By Ed Sheeran, with Eminen & 50 Cent

Yeah, I was born a misfit
Grew up 10 miles from the town of Ipswich
Wanted to make it big, I wished it to existence
I never was a sick kid, always dismissed quick
"Stick to singing, stop rappin' like it's Christmas"
And if you're talkin' money, then my conversation's shiftin'
My dreams are bigger than just bein' on the rich list
Might be insanity, but people call it "gifted"
My face is goin' numb from the shit this stuff is mixed with
Watch how the lyrics in the songs might get twisted
My wife wears red, but looks better without the lipstick
I'm a private guy and you know nothin' 'bout my business
And if I had my 15 minutes, I must have missed 'em
20 years old is when I came in the game
And now it's eight years on and you remember the name
And if you thought I was good, well, then I'm better today
But it's ironic how you people thought I'd never be great
I like my shows open-air, Tokyo to Delaware
Put your phones in the air if you wanna be rocked
You know I want way more than I already got
Give me a song with Eminem and 50 Cent in the club

You know it ain't my time to call it a day
I wanna crack on and I wanna be paid
But it's 'bout time you remember the name
Ayy, ayy
You know it ain't my time to call it a day
I wanna crack on and I wanna be paid
But it's 'bout time you remember the name
Ayy, ayy

I can still remember (What?) tryna shop a deal (Uh-huh)
From Taco Bell to TRL
I climbed the Billboard charts to the top until
As fate would have it (Yeah), became an addict
Funny 'cause I had pop appeal
But they said time would tell (What?) if I'd prevail (Huh?)
And all I did was (What?) put nine-inch nails (Where?)
In my eyelids now (What?)
I'm seein' diamond sales like I'm in Zales (Yeah)
Without a doubt, by any means
If rap was skinny jeans, I couldn't do anything in 'em
I'd be splitting seams of denim when I'm spitting schemes
Which really means, no "if," "ands," or "buts" are squeezin' in between
You sleep on me 'cause you're only fuckin' with me in your dreams
Not even when I'm on my deathbed
Man, I feel like Ed, it isn't time to drop the mic yet
So why would I quit?
The thought that I would stop when I'm dead
Just popped in my head
I said it, then forgot what I said

You know it ain't my time to call it a day
I wanna crack on and I wanna be paid
But it's 'bout time you remember the name
Ayy, ayy
You know it ain't my time to call it a day
I wanna crack on and I wanna be paid
But it's 'bout time you remember the name
Ayy, ayy

Ain't nobody cold as me, I dress so fresh, so clean
You can find me in my whip, rockin' my Fendi drip
Man, you know just what I mean
Shinin', wrist with the rocks on it, Buscemis with locks on it
Everything my voice on, this shit knock, don't it?
Balenciaga saga, I'm in Bergdorf ballin'
It's just another episode, my hoes, I spoil 'em
She like the fly shit and I like to buy shit
Shit, I'm gettin' stupid money, what else we gon' do with money?
Bitch, we be ballin' out, the king bring you 50 bottles
Tonight, we gon' blow a check, worry 'bout your shit tomorrow
The turn up be so real, we 'bout to be super lit
Boy, I'm kickin' straight facts, that's just how we do this shit
Tomorrow, we hangin' over 'til we start feelin' sober
Then it's time to start it over, here we go again

You know it ain't my time to call it a day
I wanna crack on and I wanna be paid
But it's 'bout time you remember the name
Ayy, ayy
You know it ain't my time to call it a day
I wanna crack on and I wanna be paid
But it's 'bout time you remember the name
Ayy, ayy

 

A child and a poem (6.21.20)

Several of you at Wednesdays@One have already begun sending me your poems about children, so I can tell this is a project that piques your interest.  After all, everybody has kids and grandkids, right, and is proud of them?  Well, maybe not everybody.  I don't, for instance.  But that's another matter.

The project at hand is to write a poem for, to or about a child.  I imagine at least some of you plan on celebrating your own kids or grandkids in poetry.  Fine.  Only, please try to avoid sentimentalizing.  We're about poetry here--making art--not greeting cards.

I haven't read any of the poems you've shared yet, but I'm guessing you've just been caught with your hand in the Sentimental Cookie Jar.  To help you extract it, perhaps with a rewrite or two, here are some more and less famous examples of poems about, to, for children or young adults . . .

On My First Daughter

--Ben Johnson, 1616

Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,

Mary, the daughter of their youth;

Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due,

It makes the father less to rue.

At six months' end she parted hence

With safety of her innocence;

Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears,

In comfort of her mother's tears,

Hath place amongst her virgin-train:

Where, while that severed doth remain,

This grave partakes the fleshly birth;

Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

from The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers

--Andrew Marvell, 1681

See with what simplicity

This nymph begins her golden days!

In the green grass she loves to lie,

And there with her fair aspect tames

The wilder flowers and gives them names,

But only with the roses plays,

    And them does tell

What color best becomes them and what smell.

. . .

But O, young beauty of the woods,

Whom Nature courts with fruit and flowers,

Gather the flowers but spare the buds,

Lest Flora, angry at thy crime

To kill her infants in their prime,

Do quickly make th' example yours;

    And ere we see,

Nip in the blossom all our hopes and desires.

The Chimney Sweeper

--William Blake, 1794

A little black thing among the snow

Crying "'weep, 'weep," in notes of woe!

"Where are thy father & mother?  say?"

"They are both gone up to the church to pray,

"Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smil'd among the winter's snow;

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy, & dance & sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,

Who make up a heaven of our misery."

Spring and Fall

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah, but as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder,

By and by, nor spare a sigh,

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.

And yet, you will weep and know why.

Now, no matter child, the name.

Sorrow's Springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no, nor mind express'd

What heart heard of, ghost guessed.

It is the blight Man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

-- Dylan Thomas, 1937

Never until the mankind making

Bird beast and flower

Fathering and all humbling darkness

Tells with silence the last light breaking

And the still hour

Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round

Zion of the water bead

And the synagogue of the ear of corn

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed

In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.

I shall not murder

The mankind of her going with a grave truth

Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath

With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.

Out, Out--

-- Robert Frost, 1916

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her apron

To tell them 'Supper,'  At the word, the saw,

As if to prove that saws knew what supper meant,

Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--,

He must have given the hand.  However it was,

Neither refused the meeting.  But the hand!

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling.  Then the boy saw all--

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--

He saw all spoiled.  'Don't let him cut my hand off--

The doctor, when he comes.  Don't let him, sister!'

So.  But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed.  They listened at his heart.

Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.

No more to build on there.  And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Sara in Her Father's Arms

-- George Oppen, 1962

Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells

Made cells. That is to say

The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father's arms,

           the little seed eyes

Moving, trying to see, smiling for us

To see, she will make a household

To her need of these rooms--Sara, little seed,

Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world

Glittering: this seed will speak,

Max, words! There will be no other words in the world

But those our children speak. What will she make of a world,

Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.

from The Bath

-- Gary Snyder, 1972

Washing Kai in the sauna,

The kerosene lantern set on a box

outside the ground-level window,

Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the

washtub down on the slab

Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops

brushed by on the pile of rocks on top

He stands in warm water

Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach

"Gary don't soap my hair!"

--his eye-sting fear--

the soapy hand feeling

through and around the globes and curves of his body,

up in the crotch,

And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus,

his penis curving up and getting hard

as I pull back skin and try to wash it

Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,

I squat all naked too,

   is this our body?

 

 

We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper

-- Michael S. Harper, 1970

We assume

that in 28 hours,

lived in a collapsible isolette,

you learned to accept pure oxygen

as the natural sky;

the scant shallow breaths

that filled those hours

cannot, did not make you fly--

but dreams were there

like crooked palmprints on

the twin-think windows of the nursery--

in the glands of your mother.

We assume

the sterile hands

drank chemicals in and out

from lungs opaque with mucus,

pumped your stomach,

eeked the bicarbonate in

crooked, green-winged veins,

out in a plastic mask;

A woman who'd lost her first son

consoled us with an angel gone ahead

to pray for our family--

gone into that sky

seeking oxygen,

gone into autopsy,

a fine brown powdered sugar,

a disposable cremation:

We assume

you did not know we loved you.

 

 

Child Bride

-- Caroline Bird, 2006

Peel that scab off your knee,

pass me a piece of mud pie,

slurp me a soggy kiss

and lie down on the road,

I'll run you down with my tricycle,

we'll drink undiluted orange squash.

Put this chewing gum in your hair.

Let's make a potion,

I'll put some leaves in the blender,

can I read your diary?

Let's put pencils in our ears,

throw stones at a wall,

climb onto the roof of the greenhouse.

Can I see your underwear?

Let's pretend I'm a doctor.

You can bite me if you like,

you can share my crisps.

Peel that scab off your knee,

pass me a piece of mud pie,

let's pretend to make a cup of tea,

would you like to marry me? 

 

 

 

 

 

Delaney Davout Watson, 1958 - 2020

Wednesdays@One friends and writers learned this afternoon that our dear friend and fellow writer passed away earlier in the day.  Delaney had fought cancer since at least the first of the year and became debilitated by it only in the last few weeks.  When it took him, it took him fast, and we were informed that Delaney died peacefully at UNC Hospice, Pittsboro, North Carolina.

Everyone feels subdued, quietened, reined in by this news.  His attendance at our weekly salons had dropped off sometime after the beginning of the year, and now we know why.  

Delaney was a writer of sonnets.  To be more specific, he was a writer of English sonnets and the occasional Petrarchan sonnet.  His themes ranged from the occult to the spiritual, the Civil War, the Vietnam War (his last poem shared with W@1 is an anti-war diatribe recalling the war that America visited upon that small country), lovers and love, death and eternity, loss and gain.  We were always surprised when Delaney shared something other than a sonnet with us, but never surprised by the depth and passion of his poetry!  

Here is the last sonnet he shared, at our salon on February 19, 2020:

The Pursuit of the Red Mouse

I dreamt you walked among my treasures eyes ablaze.

Thin lines of light as fine as silk began to flow

Between our hearts until cocooned, I met your gaze.

The radiance consumed all discord one could know.

Your auburn locks were glowing, brightening a path

Into those umber orbs, so clearly seeking love.

While all who dared oppose were slain in fiery wrath;

You gently beckoned onward - raised a satin glove.

Behind my face my leaden vaults became unsealed.

Unleashed, the golden words, coin and currency

Of honest, precious, true desire, remained revealed.

A princely ransom, yet unclaimed, I cede to thee!

When I awoke, the morning treeline sketched her gown;

Where strands of sparkling gossamer were trailing down.

Kenneth Patchen could not have - never did - write a better love poem than this.  I wish I could write a love poem as good as this.

But that's what I wish my poem to mean . . . (5.31.20)

I'm always fascinated by statements like this one.  Its "but" opening gambit indicates not just a defense of whatever the writer of a poem has written, but an attitude about criticism and how an author handles it.  The "I wish" portion of the statement, duly couched mid-sentence, expresses not just desire but authority; that is, the authoriness of the author's authored thing.  It's as if to say, I wrote it and that alone makes my poem meaningful.  And then we come as we must to the end of the statement: "to mean."

Often, you'll hear this statement after someone--a reader, a workshop cohort, a critic--questions someone's use of language, diction, image, tone of voice, persona, and so on.  The poet has labored over the poem for some amount of time, has made some critical decisions here and there about what to put down, what to take out, what to leave in, and what to replace in the drafting process (assuming there has been a process).  And now the poem says (means) what the author wishes it to mean.

The problem with meaning is not just whether it is valid and acceptable or whether it is the result of deep thought and feeling or hard work:

"This really happened.  I deserve an 'A'!"

"This really affected me.  I deserve an 'A'!"

"I worked hard on this.  I deserve an 'A'!"

In some ways, the problem with meaning is its ownership and, beyond that, how that ownership is established (I would say, earned).  But most importantly, the problem of meaning in a poem has to do with recognition: knowing what I actually mean in any poem I have written.

I can tell you from long experience that often enough I don't know what a poem means, what I wish it to mean, until I've written the poem.  And even then what I mean (in the poem) emerges only slowly, in pieces, through multiple re-writings and re-readings, and may induce me to revise yet again the better to amplify that emerging meaning.  This, for me, is true of even the simplest poems that I write.

I find that my weakest writing is the result of starting out with a specific meaning in mind, a meaning I wish the poem to get to.  When I've stated that meaning, revealed it in lines and images, voila!  A finished poem!  This approach--which is intellectual as well as procedural--handcuffs the writing process.  It closes off, artificially, possibilities and opportunities for the poem to become a poem. It makes the poem less art, more rhetoric.  It is the intellectual equivalent of paint-by-number.

And it is cheating (the poem).

So how does a poem come to mean anything?  It will tell you how and when it begins to mean.  More importantly, a poem will tell you what it begins to mean . . . if you're paying attention to it. You're job as the poet is to follow where the poem leads.  It will give you a pathway here, close one off there, if you're paying attention (and being honest with yourself and your process).  In a very Aristotelian fashion, the poem you are writing will come to be; it will move from what was possible to say and to mean at the start of the process to what is likely or probable, finally to what it must mean.

And this necessary meaning may look nothing at all like the meaning you had in mind at the start of the process, though it may be traceable to that original intent.  After all, it was the intent that set you down at your desk with the will to write something.  But the great art of writing poetry depends on the poem arriving at a meaning as the result of actual writing, not of intention.  You follow whatever path the poem presents, and if the poem offers more than one way through, you choose.  And that's you being the author.

Then and only then can you rightly say, that's what I wish my poem to mean.

The Six-Word Poem (5.29.20)

We have dabbled in haiku and other Eastern forms, as well as in limerick and “Instagram-verse.”  But we haven’t tried to write a complete Western-style poem in as few as 6 words.  

So, our project for next Wednesday: write a poem in six words.  

What do I mean by "Western-style poem"?  For one thing, I mean a poem that does not attempt a radical ellipsis, that does not, like haiku, follow strict rules, such as "seasonal," "surprise," "nature," elided parts of speech, or "numbers" (that is, strict syllable counts, as we tend to perceive haiku here in the West).*

What we should strive for here is a complete poem—a poem that tries to deploy as many of the tools, techniques, figures that we have studied at W@1 as you can put into it.  Like the poems you ordinarily write for W@1.  What?  For a refresher on many of those tools and techniques, scroll back through the various topics and projects in the blog archive to the right of this text block.

Personally, I'd love to see poems that do any or all of the following:

• Use standard English grammar and punctuation: articles, conjunctions, subordinating pronouns, commas and semi-colons, periods.  
• Tell a story with a beginning, middle, and an end; that is, a narrative poem.  
• Turn on a volta (thus creating a "before" and an "after," a propositoin and a conclusion, or a generalization followed by an illustration or vice versa).  
• Unfold in stanzas and/or rhyme scheme.  
• Incorporate a strong voice, a persona or "speaker."  
• Establish a point of view and perhaps comments on that point of view (see volta above).  
• Develop (perhaps, extend?) an image or a metaphor.

Now, your first temptation will be to eliminate what you think are extraneous parts of speech, in order to get to your six-word target.  HOWEVER, DO NOT DROP ARTICLES, PRONOUNS, RELATIVE PRONOUNS, CONJUNCTIVES OR OTHER GRAMMATICAL DEVICES THAT YOU WOULD NORMALLY DEPLOY IN A LONGER LYRIC, NARRATIVE OR CONTEMPLATIVE POEM.  You needn't go out of your way to incorporate every part of standard speech into your poem; only, don't write a voiceless snapshot of your back yard that is all nouns and adjectives.

One of our guiding principles at W@1 is Bennett's dictum: poems must move, they must go somewhere.  

Write a poem in six words that does just that.  In fact, you might want to write a handful of them, first to get the hang of the brevities of this project, then to have something to choose from for next week.

Have fun!

*Of course, you can put season into your poem, you can make nature its subject or locus, you can introduce a surprise or a twist, and you can count syllables, if you wish.  What I'm saying here is, no haiku, haibun or anything "snap-shotty" like those forms.

Why a draft poem "feels right" (5.28.20)

I know you've experienced this phenomenon.  You've been working on a poem--first draft, second, maybe a third--making changes as you add new lines, images, paragraphs or stanzas, ideas.  Eventually, and sometimes suddenly, everything about the poem "feels right."  You can't explain why, except in the vaguest or most general of terms: now it has a beginning, middle and end; it moves; the poem arrives somewhere.  Beyond that, it just feels right.

Your poem, finally, reads and moves and makes the kind of sense your mind and body inchoately knew it would when the idea or the spark for it first happened.  Almost as if its present form had been there all along and all you had to do was unearth it.  You're an anthropologist!  An excavator!

But why does a draft of something you've been working on begin to feel right at some point, and what does this mean?

Well, a poem starts to feel right because you've begun to recognize certain elements as you work with it.  These elements are literary conventions.  You are starting to make your poem conform to a tradition that was established long before you took up the pen.  And no matter that you never bothered with earning a Ph.D. in Literature or even took a few courses in poetry writing in high school or college.  Somewhere along the line, you absorbed the conventions you've now begun to see in your poem, that make it "feel like a poem."

My senior year at university.  I am taking a course in the history of literary theory from Professor Gross, a man whose intelligence and erudition I not only admire but am in awe of.  It's as though he's in constant personal conversation with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Thomas Aquinas, right on up to Jacques Derrida and Frank Lentricchia.  He is a generous man and patient teacher.  I'm not the only student who reveres him.  One day after class, I present to Prof. Gross a small packet of poems I've written, thinking that a man of his intellect and learning ought to be able to tell me whether I've actually written some poems, whether they are any good.  I have no idea whether they are any good, but I want them to be.  Prof. Gross leafs through them briefly and then hands the sheaf back to me.  "Well, they certainly look like poems."

What?  Was?  He?  Saying?

He said exactly this: my efforts fulfilled, on the page, some of the major conventions of Western poetry.  They looked like poems (lines, left justified, stanzas, a title).  Beyond that critique, Prof. Gross was not willing to go.  Workshops were not his thing.  And that is why they "felt like" poems to me.  As to their quality as poems--were they any good--well, that's another matter, one of taste and currency.

A draft poem begins to feel right because it takes on some of the forms and characteristics of all the poetry that has ever been written in your particular tradition.  For our Wednesdays@One cohort, this must mean Western poetry from Homer to what you read in the Sunday New York Times or whatever poetry journal you've subscribed to . . . and also to what your W@1 colleagues bring to the salon each week.  You are steeped in the Tradition of Western poetry; rather, you are waist deep in that Tradition and, like quicksand, you can't extricate yourself from it, even if you try.

And you do try, sometimes.  Trying is what advances poetry and what lends it currency.  Sometimes you only gesture toward the Tradition, as perhaps with a "sonnet" of 15 lines of mixed trimeter.  Sometimes you write what others might call gibberish but what you prefer to call "experimental" poetry.  But experiments are necessarily understood in relation to expectations.  I once overheard a poetry dilettante say of another poetry dilettante's poem, perfect! not a word too much or too little and every word in its proper place!  What Dilettante #1 meant was that Dilettante #2's effort fulfilled, exactly, her expectation of what makes a poem, that is, of the Western Tradition of poetry.

Your poem feels right--feels like a poem--because it deploys the figures, the voices, the meters and rhythms, the points of view, the syntax, the structures, even the themes and the attitudes toward those themes, as well as the emotions you associate with them, that have been handed to you one way or another, formally or otherwise.  That inchoate sense you have of rightness comes from Culture.

How far you stray from what's given, or how hard you try to stray from it, is your business alone--and that is the business of the poet.  The more you're able to do so consciously and conscientiously, the better your writing experience will be, and maybe the better your poems will be, too.

Further thoughts about weeding your garden (5.21.20)

The title's a slant, a misdirection, a feint.  That is, it's a metaphor.  Of course this blog isn't about gardens and weeds.  It's about making poems without extraneous elements.

What follows is a continuation of the blog for May 17, 2019, "Why They Tell You Not to Use Adjectives in Your Poems."

Certainly you may deploy modifiers in your poems.  Stretching the concept, you could say that any figure of speech, like a metaphor for instance, functions as a modifier of whatever thought you're trying to convey.  It highlights the thought, or foregrounds it, or conceals it, or dresses it up or down; it defines your thought or it redefines it; a metaphor, like any other modifier, limits the sense in which you wish your thought to be regarded, understood.  The red barn says something meaningfully greater than the barn.  And here's a paradox for you: it says something meaningfully less as well, something more restricted.

But you can overdo the modifying thing sometimes.  And the less experienced writer will almost always deploy more modifiers, usually in the form of adjective-noun clusters or adverb-verb pairs than a poem can bear.  Here's what that looks like:

The red barn
stood in the green field
under a blue sky
mottled with fluffy white clouds.

Beyond, an aging shepherd
drove home a lowing herd
over a gurgling stream
and around a grassy knoll.

The bucolic prospect
was like a beautiful painting,
something for a grand museum,
but it was not a painting.

It was real life.

I don't trust you, my reader, to see what I see in this "bucolic scene."  And so I insert modifiers--adjectives--like nails, to fasten the meaning.  I don't trust you to see that the barn is red or the field green.  Though nothing in my poem quite reveals why this should be important to you or to me.  I don't trust you to look up and see that the clouds in that blue sky aren't just clouds, but fluffy and white.  I want you to know, though I never say why, that the shepherd is old.  And just in case you never learned that streams gurgle and museums are grand structures full of beautiful things, that country scenes like I've just over-described are also known as "bucolic," well . . .

The operative word here is trust and, as a writer you should understand that the reader will feel that lack of trust.  This is not (always) the relationship you should want to establish with your reader!

If the above poem were a garden, it would be a pretty weedy affair--not much room for fruits and vegetables or shoots and blooms.  Virtually every noun is led by an adjective meant to limit the meaning of that noun to the writer's sense of it, that is, to recreate as nearly as possible what the writer (thought he) saw in that country prospect.  But was the barn really red?  What kind of red?  I grew up in the Midwest where the barns are decidedly a tired red.  What does that mean?  And since most of us think of red when we think of barns, do I even need "red" in my image?  What if I just wrote "the tired barn"?  And what might that say about me, that I'm tired?  And is being tired or coming to the end of things (like the end of a shepherd's day) what the poem is really about?

What if I just removed the modifying material?  Let's see.

The barn
stood in a field
under a sky
with clouds.

Beyond, a shepherd
drove a herd
over a stream
and around a knoll.

The prospect
was like a painting,
something for a museum,
but it was not a painting.

It was work.


What I'm dong in the paragraph above is what you should be doing as a poet every time you come up against a noun that you want to modify (limit, expand, undermine, exaggerate, amplify) with a preceding adjective.  (Alert: sometimes the adjective doesn't precede; sometimes it follows, as in, "the barn is red"; but to much the same effect).  What you should be doing is thinking more deeply about the nouns and verbs you write into your poems.  You should be asking yourself whether these parts of speech actually need to be modified and, if you decide they do, then to what effect?  You should explore how they work without any modifiers, and what effect this has on the poem.  You should be thinking about options, such as synonyms for the nouns and verbs you're working with, and how these might be more effective (emotionally, vocally, rhythmically, visually) than the nouns and verbs you presently have in place.

Admittedly, doing the above is hard work.  That's writing!  This kind of decision-making or exploratory word-choosing is what craft is all about.  Next time a poem leaps or flows out of you in a single sitting, without much head-scratching or sighing or you pacing about stuck for a word, phrase or image, take a look at the product.  How much of it is easy nouns choked off by easy adjectives?

If the answer is too much, get up (at least metaphorically) from your desk and pace for a while.  Go in search of a hoe and a rake and start pulling out the weeds.