You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [20]
BUILDING A NEW HOME
The generator kicks and whines,
steam shovel treads grind limestone
to dust; hydraulics, hammers,
and someone on the roof shouting
orders for more shingles.
I got up at dawn,
the first blue light anointing
the loose clouds, the sweating back,
both eyes burning, essential salt
leaking down my scalp.
New buildings
break away from the red broken clay.
Excavation before foundation—
five thousand nails per plywood frame.
We're working towards something
better—full of daylight, and easy
to enter.
This must be
the song my father taught me:
build each one as if it were my own,
take care of my tools—hammer,
drill, the silver saw-blade edge—
they are the only things that matter
in this world, they will make me
known among these men.
The imagery here is more concise, more directly functional, but it's just as concrete and specific, just as evocative. These images fit the poem and its subject. The first image ("The generator kicks and whines") sets the scene and creates action. The images that follow do likewise. They're images of action rather than description. Like the labor they present, they waste no motion. They're smooth and efficient, to the point, which is to show the work of building a house. The images complement the subject. They also suggest more than they say. The phrase "five thousand nails per plywood frame" is an especially effective image: We see the hammer swing and hear the crack as it strikes nail, all without the poem ever directly saying so.
The subjects of Geiger's and Schilpp's poems are vastly different, and their images reflect that. Geiger's images are active and sparse, while Schilpp's are detailed and lush—each to its purpose. Images must serve the poem. If they aren't relevant, if they're only decoration, then they clutter up the poem. They're laundry scattered across the room or, worse, litter on the roadside. But well-crafted images are valuable. They present the world of the poem and invite the reader into it. They give the reader points of reference. They present specific details the reader responds to. Images serve the poem best by making its world concrete and specific and by directing the reader's attention to what's important.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Stop somewhere you don't usually stop. For ten minutes, note the sensory details of that place. Make use of all five senses and be precise.
2. Write a draft describing a color photograph. Begin with a wide-angle view, then focus on a specific person or object in the photograph. End the draft by describing the color in the background.
3. Write a draft about a room you haven't been in for at least ten years. Make use of all five senses.
4. Write a draft, at least thirty lines in length, about traveling to a place you've never been. Consult a map if it helps. Why are you going there? Do you travel by car, plane, train, bobsled? What sights do you see on the way? What sounds, smells, textures and tastes? Who will meet you there?
5
AN ASIDE:
ON THE
FUSSY DETAILS
Betty Becker stood a smidge over five feet. She was slight of build and slow of step. She wore a shawl. Her gray hair was wrapped tight in a bun. Her voice quavered, the mild hesitations that come with age. And I cowered before her. Six weeks into my high school Senior English class, she padded down the aisles and returned our midterm essays, with comments of praise and dispraise. At the back of the room, she stopped to pay special attention to me. "If I were your mother," she said loudly, and my classmates watched as I withered under her attention, "I'd have you over my knee for such poor performance." Despite the quaver in her voice, she had lost none of her authority. She held out my essay, with a grade I'd rather forget marked large in red ink. "English," she sniffed, "is your native tongue, is it not?" The pages of my essay looked like a road map, red highways shooting across its pages linking major metropolitan centers of errors. My grammar and punctuation were terrible, and Betty Becker vowed before the class that