You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [47]
The third type Moss notes is "not really a first line though it comes at the beginning of the poem." He calls it "a syntactical diving board" that "has no particular interest in itself." Such a beginning is crafted to sound completely casual, an offhand comment, a word in passing, but it's like a door that opens into a surprise party. Such a beginning lulls the reader before the poem springs its surprise. Mark Halliday begins his poem "Population" with such a line: "Isn't it nice that everyone has a grocery list." At first, this seems a nondescript line with its nondescript word nice. Isn't it nice rings of small talk. But after this understated first line, the poem investigates more heady subjects: lust and loneliness, the need for companionship, our desire for happy endings. Who'd expect such a casual beginning to lead to such complex subjects? Surprise.
The first line sets up the reader's expectations for the poem's language, sounds, meter and tone. It also sets up your own expectations. It sets your goals for the poem, your ambitions. The lines that follow must rise to the quality of the first line. They must be as good, or better. Anything else proves disappointing. As you write a first draft, you may write ten, twenty or thirty lines before you reach the line that actually begins the poem. Those earlier lines may or may not end up in the poem. They may be the prewriting that starts the poem going. What's important is that you recognize the first line when you write it, whenever you write it. It should stand out, the line you've been looking for, the perfect beginning. Your poems need good first lines not only to interest the reader, but also to challenge you to write better lines in the body of the poem.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Over several days, write twenty to thirty first lines. Don't write the drafts; concentrate on beginnings. By turns, use exotic words, images, figures of speech, devices of sound, internal rhyme and various meters. Experiment with tone. Set the first lines aside for a week, then return to them and select the best five. Save them for future use.
2. Look over your previous drafts. Select the five best final lines. Write five new drafts using those final lines as first lines.
3. Begin a draft of a narrative poem in medias res. Introduce the main characters, one at a time, every three or four lines. End the draft by referring back to the first line.
4. Listen to conversations and note the most casual statements. Select the statement that suggests the most potential. Use it to begin a draft in an offhand manner. Consider the words of that statement and free-associate: What do the words lead you to? Write the draft in a completely casual tone.
Straightaways and Curves
William Carlos Williams called a poem "a machine made of words." Poems must move. Their gears must mesh, belts churn and pistons pump. Strong beginnings and endings are indispensable to a poem, but the lines between them, the middle of the poem, that's where the poem does its work. After you've discovered your subject, written a dozen or more first lines and found the one true first line, now you build the engine of the poem. You build it from scratch. This is the first draft, the prototype, with no guarantee that it will run. That's okay. If it doesn't run, you unbuild it and build another, until you have the first draft revved up and ready to move to the second, third and fourth drafts.
Your first line establishes patterns for the poem, its language, sounds, meter and tone. The question now is whether you stick to those patterns, vary them slightly or vary them a great deal, thus establishing new patterns. The first line also establishes