You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [44]
"Literature," William Stafford said, "is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement." Poems are not reproductions of life. They're translations, experience passed through imagination. We make changes to "life" for the sake of the poem. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. It's more important than minor facts and details, too. Emily Dickinson makes this point in "Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant" (#1129):
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm
Delight The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
To "tell it slant," we come at truth from a bit off center. Bald truth makes for dull poems, so we circle round it. We come upon it by chance. We discover it. If that means we must alter some fact to discover it, then we alter fact for the sake of the poem. If that means the interstate we drove would better be an oak-shaded country road, then an oak-shaded country road it is. We write what's best for the poem. Don't be so intent on truth that you deny your imagination. In the end, we need be true only to the heart of the matter, the heart of our poems.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Create a persona and write a draft of a dramatic monologue. The persona may be an actual person or an invented character. At some point in the narrative, whether part of the main action or an incidental event, have a fender bender occur.
2. Choose ten words at random from the dictionary and write a draft using all ten. Title it "Sympathetic Music" and include two instances of synaesthesia.
3. Write a draft based on a dream, but don't announce that it's a dream. Treat the dream as though it actually happened. When in doubt, invent. End the draft with a simile.
10
FROM START
TO FINISH:
THE FIRST DRAFT
It's better to begin a poem in wonder than in certainty. It's better to explore and discover. Sometimes, though, in a flash of inspiration, you see a poem in its entirety. Likely it took up residence at the edge of your thoughts, and you've mulled over it subconsciously. That's a way to explore, too, thinking things over without thinking them over. But you must still translate the poem in your head into language. Will it take the shape of a narrative, a meditation, a lyric? Will it consist only of images that evoke your emotions and ideas in the reader's heart and mind? Who are the characters that populate the poem? Where does it happen? What figures of speech encapsulate the emotions and ideas? Form or free verse? You must craft a first line that captures the reader's attention. You must create the tension that draws the reader through the body of the poem. And how will it end? Will it snap shut like a door closing tight, will it end abruptly like a cry suddenly silenced, or will it trail off like a half-spoken sentence that the reader intuitively knows how to complete? For each poem, you make numerous decisions, but you must also recognize the sudden impulses and fortunate mistakes that contribute, despite your best intentions. Now comes the work and play of writing the poem.
What Do You Have in Mind?
Some poems end up being written from the end to the beginning. Others are written from the middle out to the beginning and end. Most start at the beginning and progress to the end. Whichever the case, the poem begins with a first draft and goes through a number of others before reaching its finished, polished incarnation. Days and weeks—sometimes years—may pass before a draft becomes a poem. Rare is the poem that comes out perfectly the first time. Extremely rare. A great deal of thinking and writing goes into even a short poem. In fact, a great deal of thinking and writing goes into starting a poem. Once a poem does get going, it often develops a mind of its own and goes where it will, but before that you start from scratch. A blank page—or a blank computer screen—can be a daunting sight. The trick is to put words