You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [3]
I'll also present poems for you to read, some old and some new, and recommend other poems and poets for you to read. You can learn a great deal about writing from reading poems. I encourage you to read deeply and widely, because in addition to its pleasure, reading is a way to see what can be done with words. Poems I've read in various books and literary magazines have been among my best teachers. I read and learn from them. When I'm ready to learn more, I read them again.
Here, for example, is a poem I admire and read several times a year, a poem of loneliness and love, written around 1530 by an unknown poet:
WESTERN WIND
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!
This is an old poem and its syntax is slightly different from what you're used to. Read the second line as "so that the small rain down can rain." The speaker of the poem (in this case a first-person speaker, the I) asks the wind to blow in a storm so the sky will release its rain and, in a sense, cry. The drops of rain become tears, a further expression of the speaker's loneliness. (This is an instance of imagery, which we'll cover in chapter four.) "Western Wind" is a simple poem, and its emotional power resides precisely in its simplicity, in its direct statement of desire: "Christ, if my love were in my arms, / And I in my bed again!" One thing "Western Wind" has taught me is that while poems often work subtly, through implication, an artfully rendered direct statement can provide or intensify a poem's intellectual and emotional power.
We'll also look into some of the intangibles of poetry: whimsy, sounds and echoes, sense and nonsense, poetic questioning. The art of poetry is more than the craft of poetry. The art of poetry depends on the poet's ability to see and hear clearly what others do not, to say precisely what others haven't the language to say themselves—sometimes offering answers, always posing questions. These intangibles are the impractical and absolutely necessary aspects of poetry. They're part of the curiosity and questing intelligence of the poet.
It's better to have more questions than answers, because poetry thrives on the uncertain. It savors exploration. It lives on discovery. Poets rarely write because they know what they want to say. Rather, they write to discover the words that must be said. If you do this, if you set out to explore, you'll discover the words you have to say. In that discovery, you'll create poems. With practice, much writing and revision, you'll create the poems that only you can. As a poet, you have a responsibility, to yourself and to the readers of your poems, to make each poem as good as it can be. Revision, the spit and polish of poetry, is the process through which you make art of your first writings.
But that comes later. We're at the beginning now. There's more to come: knowledge and practice, reading and writing, the poems you have in you now and those that will follow. Exploration beckons. Discoveries await. Welcome to this grand adventure. Again, welcome to poetry.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Describe a photograph, preferably an old photograph. Describe what appears within the framed scene. Describe the day the photo was taken. Describe what's just outside the framed scene. Describe what the photographer was thinking. What did the photographer want to preserve by taking this photograph?
2. Write down a dream. Don't try to make sense of it. Instead, describe it in as much detail as you can. What aspects of the dream are most vivid? What aspects interest you most?
3. Explain why the chicken crossed the road.