I've got a gap in publications this month since DecomP is waiting to publish until December, but I've got poetry and writing on the brain and thought I'd share some thoughts. . . Years ago at a library book sale, I picked up a
copy of Clement Wood’s “The Complete Rhyming Dictionary” written almost 100
years ago. It begins like this:
The desire to write poetry, or at least
acceptable verse, is almost universal.
The achievement of this desire may be gained by anyone without excessive
effort.
I’m not sure what acceptable verse is, and I’m
sure I don’t write it, but I do consider myself a poet, and most things I’ve
written have likely been the result of excessive effort. And I’ve considered
myself a “poet” for many years. Long
before I knew what the job of a poet is.
I still don’t know what it is, but I think
while writing rhymes may be relatively straightforward, Wood was wrong about
the effort. Poetry is a job. The job description is constantly changing,
and to be a poet you must at least wonder about it. You must be working in service of that job
every time you write. The job often
encompasses other actions. Usually to
chase/woo, sometimes to capture, other times to maim, occasionally to
kidnap. Often, a poem starts with
whimsy, and ends in enlightenment.
Sometimes it ends in a satisfying confusion. That’s a hard job to do. Don’t write a poem if
it’s not at least trying to do a job.
“To essay” is to try, and even poetry has the word “try” in it. This is not to imply that fiction doesn’t
try, though sometimes I wonder; instead, let me just say, that there’s little
worse in literary terms than an unemployed poem.
At the same time, I refer to the work I send
off as “prose poetry”. There’s a proud
tradition in literature of no one knowing the job of prose poetry. Sometimes it’s narrative nonfiction. Often, as in the case of the “godfather of
the prose poem”, Russell Edson, it operates in the territory of tiny surreal
fictions, as if Italo Calvino had followed up Invisible Cities with
increasingly strange and small locations: invisible towns, invisible neighborhoods,
invisible homes, and barely opaque kitchens.
Meanwhile, in the last 10 years or so “flash fiction” has taken
off. So what’s the difference?
Judging by Russell Edson and myself, the
boundaries are somewhat porous. First, characters in prose poetry are
archetypes: the father, the woman, the daughter, the steam engine. In flash fiction they almost always have
names, like “Jeff”. Flash fiction *tends*
to have a more realist edge, and realists demand names for things. Additionally, flash fiction, by informal
survey of guidelines, is “500 words or less”.
I rarely crest 150 words. I have
a few pieces that go to nearly a full page, and quite frankly, these feel too
long to me. So maybe I write nano
fiction or micro fiction. To this I say
“no”. Why? Because I am a poet, and we
are prone to flimsy presumptions reached after staring at the crabapples
fermenting beneath a tree in October, after having just finished a full bottle
of sake, that we could ill afford. Li Po
did it.
But I’ve thought deeply about the effort and
job of poetry, and there’s a little more to it than writing acceptable verse,
swooning at the unutterable glory of nature, describing our unique deep dark
pits, or even telling very strange stories.
Instead of taking Clement Woods’ advice, take mine:
1. Lines make poets lazy. The meaning is not in the lines. The form of the poem must follow its
function, or it’s job. If the poem is
meant to house something, its lines cannot be arranged haphazardly like a game
of pick-up sticks, unless it is a poem about a game of pick-up sticks.
2. Rhyme is either for those committed to
“forms”, i.e. not prose poetry, or for doggerel. There are many beautiful poems written in
forms, and occasionally I turn to form as an exercise, though usually the
sonnet in question transforms into a prose poem on the first full moon, and
never goes back.
3. Everything needs rhythm. A poem that pays no attention to rhythm is
not a poem. Any writing that pays no attention to rhythm might as well be a
shareholder’s report or the Terms and Conditions that we blithely agree to. Someone has to write all that, and virtually
no one ever reads it. I imagine everyone
who writes Terms and Conditions is a failed poet, and I’m sorry for them.
4. The number 13 has died a noisy death, unless
your poem is about bar mitzvahs. Do not
write a “13 ways of. . .” poem. That’s
the buzzfeed click-bait of poetry.
Wallace Stevens may have been a prophet, but 13 is not holy. It may just so happen that you think best in
groups of 13… I believe I’ve heard of this disorder somewhere, but please find another
title to your poem. Shakespeare never titled his work, and now they’re known by
there first line. That’s what a title is
to me. It’s a bud, or a stunted first
line. Or a job title, while the poem is
the job description.
5. In 8th grade, suddenly, everyone’s favorite
word was “defenestrate”. It’s okay, I
guess. My favorite word is “galvanize”. Or “dotage”.
Or “wooly”. I use the word
“genuinely” a lot when I talk, but never in poetry. Why not? You must choose the right words, but
fine words genuinely do not make a poem.
These days, I try to write poetry that an inquisitive 12 year old could
read; mostly simple words, with a couple that an adolescent may look up in a
dictionary. Here are some words it is
time to ban from poetry: vellum, pomegranate, persimmon, fate, infinity, [and] ephemeris.
6. Okay, so we shouldn’t ban words. You may be writing about a persimmon orchard. But let me just say, the sky is not cerulean,
nor is that swimming pool, or “her eyes”.
Few words infuriate me like “cerulean”.
About 10 years ago everyone discovered it, like “defenestrate” in 8th
grade. The swimming pool is cobalt, the
sky azure, and her eyes are kyanite. But
whether cerulean or cyan, the job of poetry is not to introduce precocious 12
year olds to fancy words, it is to use the best words. For fancy words they can
try the Oxford English Dictionary, David Foster Wallace, or PSAT study guides.
7. The order is more important than the
words. Don’t just know your tone. Know your syntax. Know the rules of grammar and punctuation,
and then, if you must, make your own.
That said, there’s never a reason for double commas or triple
semi-colons. There’s plenty of exotic
and wild punctuation out there: lure it in and put it to use. Personally, I’d like to see more
emoticons/emoji in poetry. Nabokov
advocated for emoticons, and if he didn’t turn his nose up at it, well then
¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
8.
Writing the narrative of a personal experience? Why aren’t you writing an
essay? What job are lyrics and line breaks doing that an essay wouldn’t? Know the answer. If you don’t know the answer you are probably
writing florid and lazy nonfiction. You
have just created another unemployed poem.
The unemployment rate of poetry is unacceptably high. There’s no safety net for unemployed
poems. If they don’t work they just
contribute to national poetic deficit.
Everyone’s poem can work; sometimes they just need to consider a new job. Like poets.
9. I’d
rather not identify what I write as flash fiction, prose poetry, or even poetry. I’d rather my work were tossed into the
waters of a literary journal, and then classified according to the ripples it
makes. Fiction floats. Nonfiction sinks. Poetry lilly-dips. Prose poetry obeys its own rules. It bounces on water, then bobs. It expands to fill the space. It spreads like oil. It sinks ships, and
before they drown, the sailors thank it.
