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.
-----------
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?
Not all poems can be written like they are five-paragraph / three-subtopic expository essays. Often enough, I've decided that the opening stanza of a poem I've been working on doesn't work in that position, and so the poem doesn't work either. But almost always, when I write a poem, there is one stanza or set of lines that contains the DNA of the poem, that functions as the coordinate I need for making the particular map that is that poem. As I compose, I continually return to that segment as a way of checking the compass, of making sure I haven't wandered away from what it promises.
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.
--------------
Wind rocks the car.
We sit parked by the river,
silence between our teeth.
--------------
The leaves, though little time they have to live,
Were never so unfallen as today,
And seem to yield us through a rustled sieve
The very light from which time fell away.
--------------
It is all a rhythm,
from the shutting
door, to the window
opening,
the seasons, the sun's
light, the moon,
the oceans, the
growing of things . . .
---------------
America, I know I could do better by you,
though I stoop conscientiously three times a day
to pick up my dog's waste from the grass
with black biodegradable bags. And lest you suspect
that this is more pretension than allegiance, know
my dog was the one at the shelter no one else
would take.
---------------
The garden admires you.
For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,
the ecstatic reds of the roses
so that you will come to it with your lovers.
---------------
O tulip, tulip you bloom all day and later sway
a deep-wasted limbo above the dinner table,
waiting for a coin to drop into your well,
for the stars to pin your stem to their lapel.
---------------
I take off my shirt, I show you
I shaved the hair out under my arms
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white
---------------
I move the curtain back,
and something has gone wrong.
I am in a smoky place,
an Algerian cafe.
