CHAPTER ONE

A Poetry State of Mind

“No matter how much pain it causes you to write the poem, while you are writing
it you are actually happy.” – Louise Glück

Let’s begin with a paradigm.

Look at this photo.

"The living room and bedroom of the Beeding Tollkeeper's cottage (built ca. 1808) at the Weald and Downland Museum" by Anguskirk is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

What do you know after looking at this image? What room in a house is this? What’s the time period? What’s the economic status of the people living here?

The table, brick oven, copper cooking pots all indicate that this is a kitchen. The candle sticks, mirrored candle sconce, an oven powered by wood, are evidence this room was built before electricity. Folks who know about antique pottery and furniture, could even more accurately estimate the date; let’s estimate it around the turn of the 19th century. The handmade rug and meager furniture all indicate the people who live in this cottage are of a modest, working class family. A setting, scene, and possibly characters are starting to emerge: a young English woman enters the cottage, and walks purposefully to the corner by the oven. She drops the corners of her apron, which she’s been holding to make a pocket and kendling falls amidst the logs lined on the wall.

Now, look at this photo.

"arte astratta - abstract art - 40" by Raffaele1950 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

What do you know after looking at this image? What room in a house is this? What’s the time period? These aren’t questions we can answer, because they are not askable questions about this piece. What do you see? Maybe fall leaves? Maybe it’s a close up of a butterfly’s wing. Are there two cats in the bottom left corner? Is it a fire? Of course, you’ve figured out that this is abstract art, so it will not represent a specific thing, but still, what’s going on here? Instead of asking what, ask why. Here’s a better set of questions: How do you react to or with the photo? What is this image doing to or for you? Simply put, how does this photo make you feel?

The image might evoke feelings of contentment or comfort, maybe even excitement because of its warmer color pallege and similarity to autumn foliage.

This paradigm is about the expectations we bring to reading fiction versus poetry. Think of looking at the first image like reading fiction. We have a time, setting, and characters. At the first words of a story, we start piecing together a narrative. The second picture is like reading a poem. If we try to force setting, characters, and scene onto a poem, we are asking questions that can’t be answered, because they aren’t relevant. Instead, ask what is the poem doing to or for me? How do I feel? What is the occasion–in other words, why was it written?

In his 1944 introduction to The Wedge William Carlos Williams wrote that “[a] poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words”; or “poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. Machines make or do things. Art should make or do things. Poems are tiny machines that make or do things to us. We’ve been conditioned to ask of poetry (and likely art in general) what it means or what it’s about? But this question mainly yields a didactic engagement. For a dynamic engagement, ask how the poem or art is made.

The word “poetry” comes from the Greek “poesis,” which means “to make,” so a poet’s job is to make. To make is to create, to bring something into existence. I recall an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert on the subject of creativity. She points out that our species is linked to creativity. She explains that in the past we had to make the threads to make our clothes, grow food, build our homes; in short, create everything we needed and wanted. Yet, in our modern world these activities have become consumer-based and transactional, but we have not lost our creative impulse. Writing is a creative impulse.

Why Write?

As an undergraduate, I entered school college with unexamined ambitions for a career in medicine, but after my first three semesters on this track, I wasn’t engaged by the information. At an advising appointment for my third year, my wise advisor told me to take just one semester and sign up for everything opposite of my previous classes, so instead of chemistry and biology classes, I took art history, a survey of British literature, and it’s how I wound up in my first creative writing with the poet Richard Jackson. I’d never been in a class where everyone was so engaged, conversant, and very serious about their work. We met every Monday might from 5-8, and I took Rick’s workshop the rest of my time in undergrad. This class made poetry feel necessary, gave us a way to articulate human experience, provided us a way to make meaning, to belong.

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, George Saunders maintains that writing makes him “more aware of the things of the world and more interested in them.” In Graywolf’s The Art of Series, Dean Young opens his craft collection The Art of Recklessness with this simple assertion, “Let us suppose that everyone in the world wakes up today and tries to write a poem. It is impossible to know what will happen next but certainly we may be assured that the world will not be made worse [...] To write a poem is to explore the unknown capacities of the mind and the heart.”  Indeed, the writer will not likely yield a perfect poem in a day, maybe not even a good poem, but to attempt writing a poem is one of the more perfect ways to spend the day. It is a time machine, forward and backward, carrying the luggage, trinkets, our great loves and losses of our one life.

Why do you write? Regardless of why you’re in this class, I suspect you have a curiosity about the world, that creative impulsive Gilbert described surfaces in words and stories for you. The poet Ralph Angel says, “Poetry has always existed and will always exist, because there will always be the need to say that which cannot be said.” Poetry tries to capture the ineffable, and it’s that ambitious pursuit of saying the impossible, word after word, that draws us to read and write poems. While you use this text, keep curious, chase what’s ineffable, and keep making.

 A Note on Notebooks

Take all notebook advice regarding what kind to use, how to use it, what time of day to use it, etc. with a grain of salt. Writers have *opinions* about notebooks. What’s not up for discussion is whether or not to use a notebook. Use one. A notebook is a place where you record thoughts, ideas, inspiration, things you hear, things you want to look up, books you want to read, phrases you overheard or thought of, what you are reading, what you did that day, etc. I am religious, yet chaotic about notebooks. I start them in an extremely orderly and optimistic fashion, then about two weeks later, they look like I rescued them from the bottom of my thirteen year old’s backpack. In a rush to record something, I have opened them to any random page and started writing. A page of potential titles is next to a grocery list, is next to a journal entry. I now accept this is how my mind words–cluster among chaos–so I take great delight in flipping from start to finish through a current notebook to find a phrase or draft that I want to experiment with.

The point is, keep a notebook, one that works for you. It does not matter if this is a series of post-its, your note apps, a pocket sized notebook you keep on your person, a spiral bound notebook you journal in at the same time each day, or any combination of these. Some writers are ritualistic, recording their daily actions in a Didionesque style, while others or more sporadic. Experiment with a few techniques: paper v. digital, scheduled v. sporadically, different kinds of notebooks to see what works with you. Just be honest with yourself and remember the point is, keep a notebook, one that works for you.

A Note on Writing Space

Like notebooks, writers also have *opinions* about where and when to write. The poet Billy Collins likes to write after waking up, before spoken conversations cloud this thinking. He uses the liminal space between wake and sleep and thinking language versus spoken language to write at his desk in the morning or after a nap. Many poets report writing first thing in the morning, often waking up before others in their house to claim a few quiet hours. The fiction writer Michael Chabeon retreats to his basement and only emerges for a few hours at a time while working on a project. Many fiction writers do report retreating or isolating themselves while working on a novel, or something that is more plot or narrative driven. Some writers like to write in private, like at a desk in their own home, while others enjoy the vibe at a local coffee house and the public accountability. Find what works for you.

My writing is more inconsistent when I fit it into the small space I have left over while working full time as a single mother. I’ve found that if I save my writing time for the end of the day, I don’t have as much creative energy to bring to the process. Virginia Woolf was correct in her essay, “A Room of One’s Own.” My writing is more consistent when I block off calendar and physical space. I now think of my writing time as a meeting I hold for my writing practice, so I mark my calendar as “busy.” Accountability helps, too. I set up workshops, prompts, and virtual writing sessions with some fellow poets. I no longer write at the end of my dining room table, where I had to move projects daily to make room for dinner; I now write from a desk I purchased just to be my writing desk, and it’s surrounded by books, papers, and knick-knacks that bring me joy. It’s a space that I want to go to. It took me about twenty years to figure this out. I hope you figure it out sooner than I did. Experiment and find what works for you–a coffee house, a corner of your bed, or a cozy spot on the couch.

Speaker v. Poet

In poetry, the convention is that the poet writes a poem and the speaker is the persona or “character” that either speaks or lets the audience into their mind. Even if the poet is clearly writing an autobiographical poem, it’s still the speaker who narrates or guides the poem. The poet is never the speaker, which should give the poet license to take bold risks. Take them.

First Person

In addition to “speaker,” consider “person” and “point of view.” A poem that uses the first person pronoun “I” is very different from a plural first person “we”. Speaking from a plural position automatically includes a shared agency of action. The use of “I” could signal narrative or introspection or confession. Look how a pronoun, in this case, a first person singular “I,” can change even the least narrative of poems, haiku. Issa (1763-1828) a haiku master, sometimes used “I,” and the personal perspective adds humor. Here are a few haiku by Issa translated by Robert Hass.

Second Person

An email or letter has a specific audience, so does a poem. When second person “you” is used there is a kind of imperative, implied or stated, and there is also an audience. The The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says audience comes first from the Latin verb (audīre) meaning “to hear,” then refashioned through Old French (oiance) a noun meaning “attention to what is spoken.” Every poem, no matter if it uses first person, second person, third person, or no person has an implied or specific audience, but I mention audience in second person, because to use “you” is to construct a speaker and a hearer.

If a poem uses second person, pause to consider the audience. The OED also notes that audience, when used abstractly, is not plural, but this doesn’t mean one single listener. Is the audience one or many? Is the audience public or private? Intimate or formal? We certainly talk to a lover differently than a stranger in line at the store. External or internal? Rhetorical or real? Sometimes, the speaker of a poem may use “you” to refer to themselves, a kind of self-talk.

Another use of “you” is a kind of poem called a dramatic monologue where an imagined speaker addresses a listener, who is often silent. Robert Browning (1812-1889) is known for his dark and eerie dramatic monologues. Read his poem “My Last Duchess” to determine who is the speaker, the audience, and what’s being discussed and confessed. “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) is another common example of a dramatic monologue, but one more situated in the speaker’s internal anxieties and fears.

Third Person

When a poem uses third person: “he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” this is third person. As you read the poem published in the NAR below, take note of how the pronouns work.

Child Bed Fever by Kelly Rowe

The house grew quiet,

as a field grows winter.

The sycamore outside the window

leaned in close,

reaching with bare arms,

as a woman in a gray dress

leaned over the bed

to do her work.

The light rustle

of last leaves,

the rasp of a soapy rag,

moving back and forth

along an arm,

lifted, set down,

with what faith

in gentleness

could still be found.

In this poem, there is a woman and the pronoun, “her” is used once, in reference to the work of the woman tending to the new mother who is dying after childbirth from infection, then known as “childbed fever.” The arms of the sycamore, its leaves, and the weather outside have more action and agency than the two women in the poem. What’s the effect of this in the poem? Using third person allows the poet a number of options to tell someone’s story or shift focus to objects, moods, and things within a poem.

Sometimes, there’s no obvious speaker in a poem. Think of William Carlos Williams’ famous poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Poems can be a kind of meditation, without an obvious sentient-speaker guiding the language.

Exercise 1: The List Poem

One of the simplest, yet consistently fruitful poetry prompts is the list exercise. The idea is to make a list and then use those items on your list in one poem. Once you’ve made a few lists of your own and written some poems from them, you’ll see why this is a generously generative prompt, and a good one to begin writing poetry.

Some common list poems ideas are: list ten things in your fridge right now and include them in a poem or list ten things in your writing space and use them in a poem.

You and a fellow poet can come up with a list together. Here is a list a writing partner and I created. Use these ten items in a poem:

• a word from a foreign language
• something you’d find on a map
• a color
• a body of water
• two adverbs
• a specific deciduous tree
• something you’ve burned (literal or figurative)
• a body part
• a day of the week
• the last thing you ate

Lastly, here is a list that I adapted from a writing retreat “Writing Poems With a Generous Heart Facing in Ten Directions” I took with Jane Hirshfield. This is a more complicated type of list poem because each list item includes 3-5 options, and the prompt establishes an objective for the list.

• 3-5 words or phrases from the poems
• 3-5 invented colors (for example, the color of a cat at night that you can’t see)
• 3-5 sounds
• 3-5 smells
• 3-5 kinestic adjectives (kinestic relates knowing through feeling, for example, hot stones in summer
• 1 factual personal statement
• 3-5 places (not limited to geography, also think about places on the body)
• 3-5 living creatures
• 1 thing grand or precise that you are currently thinking about regarding gift giving
• Opposite concepts or feelings
• 3-5 objects in the natural world

Write a poem about a gift you have yet to receive or one you would like to give and include one item from each of the bulleted points.

Exercise 2: Go to your Notebook

This will be a multi-step prompt that you complete over a few days. If you have a writing notebook you already use, great. If not, establish one. Take your notebook and go outside and observe. You can sit in a park, go on a walk, sit on a public bench and notice what’s around you. Record a list of the sensations you experience: touch, taste, sight, sound, smell. If you overhear someone say something odd or interesting, record it. If a strange tangle of language pops into your head, write it down. The point is to make a list of observations. You should do this a couple of times before your writing session.

A few days after you’ve completed your last observation, go to your writing place as described above if you already have one. If not, try out different spaces as you complete the exercises in this text to see what works for you. Use your observations from your notebook to complete a poem that uses the two truths and lie icebreaker. Except in this poem, imagine a speaker and include two lies and one truth about them.

Exercise 3: Dramatic Monologue

Few things are as freeing as living in the skin of another. Perhaps this is why we go on vacation, watch films, read, dress up, post on social media. For this exercise, free yourself by writing a dramatic monologue, which is an imagined speaker addressing a silent audience. You create the speaker and the audience.

The key to a dramatic monologue is to think about occasion and space. Also, as a poet, what’s the farthest speaker’s voice you’re willing to inhabit? Where are they? What are they saying, asking, confessing, demanding, silencing?

Why is the speaker speaking? To whom are they speaking? Is it a public or private audience? Who is listening: one or many? How well does the speaker know their audience? Why is she talking to them now? Does he have control of the scene or not?

What’s the medium? Is this spoken or written? If it is written, where: email, letter, text, legal document? If it is spoken: is it a speech, a conversation, recorded? Is it a dialogue, and if so, how do we hear the other?The conversation?