You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [9]
Nor are there poems without practice. Here's your first practical lesson. One of the basic forms of metaphor is "______ of ______." The first blank is usually a concrete noun (something tangible), and the second an abstract noun (an idea or emotion; see chapter four for more on concrete and abstract terms). Start with "a teacup of ______." Now write a list of abstract nouns to fill in the second blank. Here's a start:
a teacup of joy
a teacup of sorrow
a teacup of hope
a teacup of despair
a teacup of gossip
a teacup of insult
a teacup of silence
a teacup of restraint
a teacup of abandon
a teacup of wit
Now take those abstractions in the second blank (joy, sorrow, etc.) and for each, list several concrete nouns to fill in the first blank. Notice that changing one part of the metaphor changes the entire metaphor. A teacup of wit is different from a garden of wit and from a crankcase of wit.
This is practice, but it's also play. It's fooling around, with a purpose. When you practice, you generate ideas. You experiment with the language, putting words—or sometimes just sounds—together in ways that you otherwise wouldn't. You end up writing lines and entire stanzas. You end up writing poems. You can practice metaphors, iambic pentameter and imagery. You can practice such devices of sound as alliteration (the repetition of initial consonant sounds, as in brown bag), assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds, as in I rise) and rhyme (the repetition of vowel and consonant sounds, as in night light). You can practice writing in the voice of a particular persona (a character you create to speak the poem, such as the coldhearted duke in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess"). Work at these sessions. Play at them. Fool around, with the purpose of honing your skills.
Poets need to practice, because they must feel comfortable with the language, the words they use to create poems. Just as a chef practices with different spices, a carpenter practices with tools, a basketball player practices the jump shot, hook shot, layup and slam dunk, the poet practices writing to perfect the craft and to free the imagination. The more you write, the better you write. William Stafford said, "A writer is a person who enters into sustained relations with the language for experiment and experience not available in any other way." Stafford's selection of the word sustained is important. Writing poems is an ongoing endeavor. It's a way to think and feel, to experiment and experience, to discover what you didn't know you knew and felt. Practice, play and let these lead you to poems. Enjoy the work, so each poem, as Robert Frost said, "begins in delight and ends in wisdom."
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Create metaphors in the "______ of ______" form. Write five versions of each of the following: a sheen of ______, a blizzard of ______, a garden of ______, a cinder block of ______, a museum of ______. Repeat this exercise as you like.
2. Select one of your lists of abstractions and write five new versions with new concrete nouns. Repeat this exercise as you like.
3
AN ASIDE:
ON READING
POETRY
Inscribed on the door of the library at ancient Thebes was this legend: "Medicine for the soul." People came to read the plays and philosophic essays, the lyric and epic poems. They came to learn and be entertained, to be informed and to think, to experience the adventures and meditations housed there. Our situation hasn't changed much over the past two millennia. We read for those reasons, and reading continues to be a balm for our troubles and a wellspring of numerous pleasures. Medicine for