You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [33]
4. The Show Must Go On
Kid, we live
from deception to deception.
You keep me on stage.
My final trick?
Look at me and I'll live forever;
turn away and we'll both disappear.
I'll say with a fair amount of certainty that Mark Drew isn't the son of Harry Houdini. (The title tells us this: "My Father as Houdini.") In place of truth, the poem gives us imagination and an extended metaphor: In a poetic transference, the speaker's father becomes Harry Houdini and tells us of tricks and magic. "Poof!" he says, "I'm gone." As part of the extended metaphor, death becomes a magician's trick. In the final section, memory becomes the magician's stage. "Look at me," he says, meaning remember me, "and I'll live forever." It's the magic of memory.
If a poem is completely literal, if it's completely true, then the imagination has failed. Really, a poem cannot be completely true. It's a translation of life into language. We each write from a certain subjective perspective. We know only bits and pieces, not the whole. Certainly, we should write honestly about a situation, an event, our reactions to it, our thoughts about it, our emotions. But a poem is a presentation. It's a performance, much like an actor's performance on stage, or a magician's. For truth, readers go to a newspaper. They come to poems for the performance. When you write poetry, let your imagination guide you. Look at the imagery as it appears on the page. Believe in the metaphors. Listen to the sounds the words make. Feel the rhythm of the language flowing across the line. All these aspects of poetry are in play at the same time. At their best, they work together, each contributing to the whole, and thus they create a poem. They're the necessary mechanics of poetry, the craft. But they're nothing without the imagination. Let your imagination guide you, always. Be ready for surprises.
"The practice of writing," William Stafford said, "involves a readiness to accept what emerges, what entices. The sound of words and Phrases, the associations of those sounds and syllables in words, the emerging trajectory of thought and feeling." He goes on to say, "A writer coasts into action with willing involvement, always ready for something to happen that may be a first time, not a repetition of something already accomplished."
Say you write on a rainy evening. The rain spatters on your window, a light percussion of raindrops. You have a beginning right in front of you: rain. Does it evoke a mood? Does the rain play a sad melody? Or do you see it brightening the grass and leaves? Does the rain lead you to a memory of another rain—a thunderstorm, a fine mist? What of the events of that earlier day? What simile or metaphor can you derive from the rain? The rain may roll in like a train from the countryside, boxcars loaded with red apples. For each subject that draws your attention, ask what if? Put yourself on the other side of the window, on the outside looking in. What do you see—a window lit with the soft glow of a single lamp? What do you feel there, standing in the rain? Or are you walking by the lit window, on your way to—where? Is the lit window a beacon in the storm? Does it mark a safe harbor? Does it warn of a dangerous reef? What if you were above the storm? What if you were waiting for the storm? What if it had just passed?
What then? For every word you write, there are thousands you may write next. Make your poems move and continue to move. Say another thing. Every time you reach a what then, say several things. An hour after the rain, the water still rushed down the gullies. When the rain stopped, I stood on the porch and listened to the calm. The next morning, the neighbor child placed both hands, fingers spread far apart, into the mud and wondered at the small outlines. What then? Where does your imagination lead?
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Write a draft about the best thing before the invention of sliced bread. Begin the draft with a metaphor, include an image of someone's hands at work, and use three slant rhymes.
2. List five