You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [10]
As readers, we open a book not simply to lose ourselves in it. We are caught up and carried away, but on a deeper level we become involved in experiences outside our own. We take part in other lives. We live in other eras. We explore difficulties and successes we'd never otherwise know. The written word gives us the thoughts, emotions, aspirations and deeds that have created the weave and fabric of civilization. It is our storehouse of knowledge and experience, through the ages and across cultures. It makes us human, and it makes us humane.
As poets, we read poetry to be entertained, experience the pleasures of its music, catch our breath at its drama and meditate on its reflections. We also read poetry to learn the craft. Mary Oliver, a contemporary whose poems I admire, says that "to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers." All poets have favorite authors who stir their hearts, enlighten their minds, stimulate their imaginations and teach them more about the art of poetry. And this knowledge comes in addition to the pleasures poems bring.
But whose poems should you read first? We have centuries of poets and poems. We have thousands upon thousands of books. Begin with a favorite poet, with the poems that interest you most. Begin with Shakespeare's sonnets, John Keats's odes, Walt Whitman's lush poems about the heart of America, Emily Dickinson's tender, witty poems. Venture further back in time and read the ancient Sumerian epic Gilgamesh, the story of a king who lost his best friend to death and tried to return him to life. Read Homer's epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Or read Beowulf. Begin with what you want to read and let it lead you to other poets.
Poems have been some of my favorite teachers. I read and reread them. I read the poems of the old masters and of such strikingly different contemporary poets as Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Jorie Graham, Philip Levine, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, Lucille Clifton and Robert Hass. They're poets whose work I enjoy and learn from. As a reader, I delight in and admire their poems. As a poet, I study them. I read their books, and I read the literary magazines in search of their latest poems. I also seek out new poets whose poems will teach me more about the art of poetry. Whatever can be taught by a poem, I'll try to learn it.
Where should you begin? Visit the library and check out several books of poems. Visit a bookstore and browse through the selection of poetry. While you're there, browse through the current literary magazines for the newest poems by contemporary poets. Look at Black Warrior Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest and Quarterly West. There are hundreds of magazines that may interest you, and they offer a variety of poems by different poets. A good bookstore will offer a dozen or more literary magazines and several hundred books of poetry.
You may pick up a book of poems by e.e. cummings and in it see what strange, wonderful things he does with the language, as in these opening lines of an untitled poem:
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
This is the poem's opening stanza (a group of lines distinct from other groups of lines; in this case a quatrain, a four-line stanza). Untitled poems are generally known by their first lines, so this poem is commonly called "my father moved through dooms of love." It's an odd, difficult, beautiful poem, and it goes on like this for sixty-eight lines, all in honor of his father. Despite the difficulty of these lines (Do they make literal sense? Sort of, but not easily), you may notice the sounds these lines make, their music. Read them aloud, several times. Notice the assonance in the first line, the long o sounds in moved, through and dooms. Notice the slant rhyme (an imperfect rhyme) in the final words of the first and second lines: love and give. Notice the true