One of the best aspects of writing poetry is the surprise that it so often lends – not to the reader, but to the writer. Me.
I am currently revising a poem that I’ve spent a great deal of time on. I’d tried it several different ways and it’s always felt stilted and contrived. But I’ve decided to do something different.
It’s actually not different. It’s something I haven’t tried in awhile. Like years. Namely, to borrow devices from the avant-garde poets, who I have criticized rather harshly. It just seems right for this poem.
I needed a way to work with my theme that would allow me the freedom to deploy word play to such a degree that the language, rhythm, music, and metrical line breaks – broken into strophes, not stanzas – worked together to create a certain mood. The way I was doing it wasn’t working so I decided to give myself the liberty to break the glass. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
This is actually in keeping with my poetic philosophy, Pillar No. 2. Here is the operation:
(Original Post) There is no room for prejudice – All previous schools of poetics are worthy of study. All poets and all movements have something to teach us about poetic expression and therefore should be made available for study of craft.
All devices are open for study and use by any poet. If a certain device isn’t working for you, try something else. Free your mind. Open up all possibilities. Let the poem surprise you.
I tend to let my poems write themselves. They talk. They have minds. They know where they want to go. It is simple to just step aside and let them go there. But first I have to go on my own expedition, an expedition of study. I need to know what is available to me. And I do that by reading what other poets have done. Some of it I will like and some of it I won’t. But it’s always good to know it’s there and if I learn a new technique or device or mode of expression then it can only help me.
And now I’m off to finish the poem ….
As you know, although a poet at heart, I don’t restrict myself to just poetry. What gets me, after thirty-six years of writing IS the fact that I never quite know what’s going to happen when my pen hits the paper. It’s like the day I walked across the Clyde and heard the line: “Milligan and Murphy were brothers,” in my head. God alone knows what that thought was doing in my head at six o’clock in the morning but there you go. What is more surprising is, that by the time I had crossed Glasgow Green and my sentence had become a paragraph, I knew I was writing a novel.
Someone wrote a review recently and as I was reading through it, I got to a quote that the author had inserted and I thought, That’s a damn good quote. And, do you know what, she was quoting me. It’s nice when a line or two hits you fresh like that and you’re reminded that, hey! you actually can write. Sometimes we need to be reminded.
Whatever you said is in harmony with my own opinion. However as an emerging writer, I find it a little hard to restrain myself to just one medium of expression. A writer is like a free bird, which if tried to be incarcerated to a certain dimension, the hindrance in the flow of the creative juices will be inevitable.
The way you have elucidated your feelings for your poetry, its almost the same way I feel about my poetry. Its almost as if those collections of words have a mind of their own. The very realization enables us to let our thoughts run their own wild course until they are decanted into the mould of rhythm and words.
Mehreen, while it true that the words seem to have minds of their own and almost write themselves, I can’t rely on that alone. Inspiration is the beginning of a poem for me. The rest is hard work. It is still an intense thought process to get to the right word, the right line break, the right punctuation, etc.
Thanks for stopping by!