CHAPTER FOUR

Inspiration and Risk

“Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.” -Muriel Rukeyer

Years after I left her classroom, I attended a reading by one of my teachers and mentors, Brenda Hillman. Toward the end of her reading, she asked us all to pause and take a deep inhalation of breath and then a voiced exhalation before she read a poem.  

“Do me a favor,” she asked in her chirpy voice. “Breathe in fully and stop when your lungs are full at the top of your breath. You have completed inspiration. Now, exhale forcefully through your nostrils. You have completed exhalation.” The poem she read was inspired by seeing lichen on a hike, and she wanted her audience to be part of the poem, just as the lichen was part of the tree and the tree part of the lichen, so she included the audience in its inspiration.

Hillman took a risk by asking the audience to vocalize breath before a poem. In fact, one surly poet in the audience chortled, and she chimed, “Yes, even you [ __ ], breathe.” And he did.

The act of creativity or inspiration is tied to inhalation. The OED says that “inspire” comes from the Latin (inspīrāre) meaning “to blow or breathe into.” The act of inspiration, in biology and art, is life sustaining.

Hillman, perhaps because she is also an advocate, is no stranger to risk. In Loose Sugar she has snippets of stanzas that appear in the margins of the pages. She called these phrases, “verbal drippings,” and explains that when writing the poem, she knew these words belonged on the page, but not in the poem. Courageously, she explored the parameters of a poem and a page.

Risk and Routine

There is a paradox in risk and routine. One cannot exist without the other. You take a risk to break out of a routine. Sometimes we stay in a routine to avoid risk. In writing, both are important. If you take your writing seriously, you will establish a routine for your practice. As you write, if you become bored with the process or product or start to worry that you sound too much like yourself, then take a risk. Try using a form you normally wouldn’t, begin your poem in an odd way, or use a writing prompt. Do something out of the ordinary for you.

Reading is another way to take a risk. I have yet to meet a serious writer who doesn’t read like the act of breathing. I’ve found a process of reading that worked so well to get me out of a writing rut, that I now routinely read this way. I alternate what I read. I typically start with a poet whose work I know well, one my “touchstone” poets or a poet whose aesthetic or voice is similar to mine followed by a poet who is new to me or someone whose work is deeply different from mine. The dichotomy between the reading experiences is deeply satisfying, and opens new ways of using language and perception.

Additionally, there are many books written to inspire young artists at the start of their journey. One of these quintessential texts is Letters To A Young Poet by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Rilke’s passion for living and writing leap off the page, even over a century later, "I would like to beg you [...] to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”

There are many resources for writers, and libraries or used book shops are a great place to preview them and decide which ones speak to you. The takeaway is this: a writer is always reading. Here are a few books that have resonated with me and my students. This is not an exhaustive list, just a place to begin.

• Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within by Kim Addonizio
• How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch
• The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio and  Dorianne Laux
• A Poetry Handbook Paperback by Mary Oliver
• A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry by Gregory Orr

Tension

The poems I love startle and disturb me. Good art should disrupt us, make us pay attention, make us do a little work. In his TED Talk, “The Clues to a Great Story,” the filmmaker Andrew Stanton says that an audience wants 2 + 2, not 4. In other words, the audience wants to be engaged. Think of the shows and films we watch–there's always an obstacle, some drama, a crisis. In fiction, we’re familiar with Freytag’s Pyramid: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. You’ll recall from the introductory paradigm of poetry and fiction in this text that poetry doesn’t have the same elements of fiction such as plot and setting, but all art contains struggle. In poetry, I’ve heard this described as “tension” or “what’s at stake” in a poem.

This is not to say that excising all the trauma and drama onto a page creates tension, or even creates a poem. Many young poets mistake trauma for poetry. Any poetry teacher can tell you that they’ve read a number of poems that revel in trauma, depression, and darkness with zero tension. Tension doesn’t come from these places. Somewhat sardonically, but accurately, the poet William Matthews (1942-1997) offer this ur-subject index for lyric poetry in a 1984 Bread Loaf lecture, “Dull Subjects:”

1) I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.

2) We're not getting any younger.

3) It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.

4) Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice-versa, and in

    any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what.

Basically, every subject has been explored in poetry. There are no new subjects, only new treatments of those subjects. The new treatment on these old subjects comes from tension, experimentation, and innovation of language and image. The Brownings are a perfect example of this. In their lifetime, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was a phenom in the 19th century English poetry scene, whereas her poet-husband, Roberbt Browning (1812–1889) experienced obscurity in her shadow. However, his work is standing the test of time compared to his wife’s more traditional and schooled verse. He’s regarded as one of the most important poets of the Victorian era with creepy dramatic monologues and psychological angles that add tension and attention to his verse.

So how do you create this tension? Take a risk, write something strange. Don’t start with an idea, such as, I am going to write a love poem. Starting with an idea is writing an idea-driven poem. Instead, start with language, so you start with a language-driven poem. You can even have a vague idea what you want to write about–love, but start with words: daffodils, urgency, weak spring sun, and let these words guide your poem. Don’t write idea-driven poems. Write language-driven poems. American fiction writer, George Saudnders, says that your stories are terrible places for your ideas, meaning, writing is an act of discovery.

In his book, On Form, Robert Hass recalls a panel he was on with Seamus Heaney who remarked, “that a poem for him almost always began in dissent, by saying no.” Hass expands this idea with, “Thought begins in disagreement, the terms of which demand to be articulated.” A poem is a kind of thinking-through an experience, idea, feeling, situation–imagined or real. To see a poem that works with this kind of negation, read Marvin Bell’s (1937–2020) love poem, “To Dorothy.” Look at how the first two lines contradict each other, “You are not beautiful, exactly. / You are beautiful, inexactly.” The pattern of negation from line to line repeats with the poem, just as the two stanzas that make up the entire poem offer contradiction. There is surprise in dissent and contradiction, and thus, tension.

Imitation

The old adage, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery is sage advice for a young poet. I remember reading Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “In the Waiting Room,” and becoming transfixed and transported, just as the young Elizabeth was in the dentist’s waiting room as she heard her auntie bellow out in pain. I became a devotee of Bishop’s work and wrote many bad sestinas. The point is, find poets whose work inspires you, and copy their line breaks, syntax, diction, patterns of thought and imagery. We learn through doing, and imitating a poet whose work you admire helps you define your own voice. Don’t worry, this isn’t plagiarism. It’s learning how to think and move in poetry. Quickly enough, you’ll find that you will move on from the object of inspiration and add others, but some of their touchstone traits will remain in you, and they will evolve with your voice.

Maria Nazos is a poet we’ve published in the NAR, and recently her poem, “Afraid,” was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Contest. Below is her poem, and what follows is a short craft essay she wrote for this book that explains the poem’s origin of inspiration, and lastly, she shares an early draft of the poem with typos and all. Spend some time looking at the differences between the final draft below and her early version which appears after her craft essay.

Afraid by Maria Nazos

We were afraid of everything: tornadoes, love, skateboards,

Shelly Cooper and the brass-knuckled earrings she wore.

We were petrified of the human papillomavirus, how

it was Latin for butterfly. We were afraid of butterflies,

their migration. Pot smoke when blown into our mouths

by a boy. We were afraid of Mike Rex, the older man who spat

rap and lived in a mobile home and had long, dark curly

hair, a sweaty forehead, and sold whole sheets of LSD.

We were afraid of being tied to fences, being handcuffed

together, of parties, red-and-blue-lights. Afraid

of the Wisconsin border where people crossed to drink.

Afraid of drinking, cigarette butts imprinted with lipstick stains.

We were especially afraid of the older girls who had babies

and boyfriends, whose clothes, it was rumored, they'd sliced

to ribbons. When they laughed you could see their fillings.

When they lifted their arms to chug a beer-bong, we saw

their spiny tattoos. We were afraid of tattoos, parties

in cornfields, tiny white pills, the dead and the living. Shards

of glass, mirrors, and the fallen salt we tossed over our left

shoulder where our grandmothers told us the devil lurked,

waiting to enter our bodies. Bodies were frightening:

Couldn’t banish the memory of the man who emerged

from Hamell Woods, stark nude for us to see. The way

he held himself in unashamed offering. The world

opened and offered itself, and that was terrifying, too.

There were so many things we didn’t see but believed.

Black ice, slick sidewalks, falling in love, or just falling and being

laughed at. Being the center of attention, eye contact, suburbs

named after cut-down trees: Timber Estates, Maple Falls—

We were afraid of leaving them. Becoming lost and adult.  

Nail salons cropping up like corn. Nipple-hair, Dutch Elm

disease, and yellow tape circling a tree. The smell of cow

manure when you drove out too far. Pigeons and how they’d stare

with inbred-red eyes. Afraid of standing, alone, in the middle

of America's heart: its beat that called us to a place that burned.  

My Creative Process Behind “Afraid” by Maria Nazos

I’d be remiss if I didn’t begin by thanking Dorianne Laux; much of my work results from

studying hers over the past few decades.

The reason behind “Afraid” was that I was trying to write about a Midwest upbringing

without being too branded. I used Laux’s “Fear” poem from her collection entitled

Smoke as a jumping-off point.

What I love most about Laux’s poem and her work is her unrelentingly crisp,

monstrously specific details. All too often, when we write about certain psychic and

physical terrains (“we” as in “I”), we default to reincarnated clichés.

I wanted to dive deeper and provide concrete imagery from my life that spanned beyond

the exterior landscape and into the speaker’s interior condition. I sought a poem that

moved past an itemization of the outside world but took the reader through patterns that

break and make repetitive and cognitive leaps into and out of the narrator’s coming of

Age.

One of my favorite processes for limbering up my creative muscles includes the

imitation poem—ask my students. I believe in teaching exercises that I actively

implement throughout my life. When I say I teach “imitation poems,” my students ask,

“What do you mean by ‘imitate’ a poem? What parts do I imitate and how?” My answer

is everything!

When imitating another author’s poem, I like to begin by literally “connecting the dots”

by emulating the original poet’s syntactical, imagistic, and rhetorical strategies.

However, many other ways exist to imitate another writer’s poems, whether through

word choice, form, or syntax. I was striving for all of the above while drafting “Afraid,”

but mainly focusing on borrowing from Laux’s repetition, lexical choices, and imagery.

After all, the universal is in the personal, and we tend to forget that.

Early-career writers opt for vague language and nonspecific imagery because those

facets “are more relatable” to readers. My counter-question to those students is this—

Which sentence is more relatable? Phrase A, “I want to do something cool with my life,”

or Phrase B, “I want to sip cheap Cabernet out of a chipped mug while sitting on the

floor of a Parisian youth hostel shards of moon glitter into the last moments of the

night” But I digress.

Laux’s success stems from the way components of craft create and manipulate pacing—through repetition, imagery, and syntax. It’s also worth mentioning that pacing, according to Stephen Dobyns’s; essay “Pacing: The Ways a Poem Moves” in his craft collection Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry, entails the reader playing what they do know against what they don’t know. In a list/repetition poem, you must find ways to provide specific expectations for the reader, break them, and intentionally return or veer away.

Returning to my writing process, I noticed how imagery, repetition, and syntax moved in

Laux’s verse and tried to do the same with mine. The whole time, as I was writing by

hand (I write all my drafts by hand), I kept asking myself, what’s the purpose of this line

here? What’s the pacing doing? Where’s my reader now?

For me, when a poem rises and swells with repetition, the images, syntax, and pacing

must gracefully swerve along with those aspects. The volume must rise, fall, and build;

the tempo must speed up, slow down, and skip a beat. And all the different craft

components must work in symphony with those goals.

With a repetitive list poem, you’ve got to throw the reader’s ear off, then bring it back.

You can accomplish this feat by dropping in off-rhymes or aural surprises. You can

suddenly stop the repetition and then return to it. You can go from a lengthier syntax to

a more staccato one.

Meanwhile, my editing kept the reader moving forward throughout the repetition. Any

time you employ a chant, it can overwhelm or space out your audience. Have you

noticed the trance-inducing effect of the ocean’s waves or the mellowing of the drum’s

beat? That disembodied yet soothing feeling occurs due to a physiological reaction;

your brain registers repetition as oddly calming.

Therefore, for a poem with many repetitions to work, you must be strategic in

modulating the momentum. You want the piece to be something other than a sonic

wash or a drab staccato. You must manipulate all the elements of surprise to keep

pulling your reader along with you.

If you check out my draft, you’ll notice that many of my revisions are plug-and-play. I

was tinkering with images to ensure they provided that push-and-pull in speeding up

and slowing down the reader. I also wanted to be intentional about where the imagistic

pile-up crescendoed and where it needed to ebb. Reading drafts of the poem aloud

helped me edit, add, tweak, and subtract to figure out the perfect timing and pacing.

An  early draft of “Afraid” by Maria Nazos

We were afraid of everything: tornadoes, love, skateboards,

Alyssa Gromek and the brass knuckle-earrings she wore,

We were petrified of the human papilloma virus, of the way

it was Latin for butterfly; we were afraid of butterflies,

of migration, of being called a lesbian, of being a lesbian,

of elastic bra straps, pot smoke when it was blown into

our mouths by a boy. We were afraid of Mike Rex, the older

man who spat his own rap verses and lived in a mobile home,

and had long dark curly hair, a sweaty forehead, and a whole

paper of LSD. We were afraid of being tied to fences, of being

handcuffed together, of parties, of red-and-blue-lights. We

were afraid of the Wisconsin border, where people went

to drink, afraid of drinking, of cigarette butts imprinted

with lipstick stains. We were especially afraid of the older

girls, who already had babies and boyfriends whose clothes,

it was rumored they’d cut to ribbons, and when they laughed

you could see their fillings, and when they lifted their arms

to chug a beer-bong, you could see their spiny urchin tattoos,

we were afraid of tattoos, of parties in cornfields, of tiny

white pills. We were afraid of the dead, the living, broken

shards of glass, broken mirrors, fallen salt, of the man who

was said to emerge from Hammel woods completely naked,

of the way rocks protruded from the ground, of black ice

and slick sidewalks, and falling. We were afraid of falling

and being laughed at, of falling in love, of the suburbs

named after cut-down trees: Timber Estates, Maple Falls,

Willow Brooks. We were afraid of leaving, of becoming

Lost and adult, of cities, divorces, losing touch in the way

That adults seemed to lose touch, we were afraid of being

stupid, a loser, too loud, too smart. We were afraid of being

called out for being fake, we were afraid of being real, and

afraid of what would happen if we were: we were afraid

of being wild, of not being wild enough, of our youth

never finishing or going on forever, of pimples that erupted

beneath our chin, our father’s pornos left on the computer

screen of a large-breasted woman opening her shirt,

of the way she thrust her head back in abandon. We were

terrified of being abandoned, of abandoned houses,

of R-rated movies and the way a woman swept her tongue

down her lover’s belly. We were afraid of pierced eyebrows

and tongues and speaking in tongues, the churches with

the purple velvet curtains and harsh lights and people who

collapses on the floor, drunk with the holy spirit. We were

afraid of the Holy Spirit, afraid of darker ones too, because

one of the boys said, on a bad acid trip, he saw his soul run

across Black Road and never return. We were afraid of Ouija

boards, of summoning up souls, flickering candles, being picked

last for soccer, of pierced tongues and eyebrows, of the father

we’d heard ripped them out of his son’s face. We were afraid

of the boys who got into a fight because one slept with

the other’s girl, we were afraid of ataxia, a word we’d only

just learned, of the mother who slowly became wheelchair

bound as her daughter helplessly watched. We were afraid

of mothers, we were afraid of becoming our mothers, of the way

they sat with us, smoking at the kitchen table, telling us

about their men, their medication, their past of paisely

and lost babies, or drinking Tab and having black roots

and empty eyes, and then fell down the stairs drunk, and

could never drive again, and called their daughters The Little

One and the Big One, until they gradually began to speak

And learn to eat on their own again. We were even more

afraid when that mother recovered, and along with it,

stopped smoking, stopped drinking, stopped her medication,

we were afraid of change, afraid of recovery, of raw chicken

and salmonella, and fish eyes and the father’s footsteps

into a stepsister’s room, we were afraid of long silences

at night, of the girl who gave birth to another baby, of

the boy who loved other boys and wore black lipstick

and had cuts on his arms. We were afraid of dusty old

Christmas ornaments, port-a-potties, of military drafts,

of guitars with broken strings, old mattresses piled

on the sidewalk, fish eyes, and cunnilingus and fellatio,

and being mocked for being too big, too smelly, too

tight, too loose. We were afraid of broken toilets and

cats dragging their broken tails across the road and

HIV and peach trees that never grew and flooding,

especially when someone’s brother caught a carp

in the street. It was what fascinated us and did not

understand that drew us in most: tinted windows,

pot holes, graffiti on the silo, the emergency exit

behind the bar, leg stubble, the cigarette becoming

one cylindrical ash in a passed-out mother’s mouth,

the smell of propane, the stink of burned rubber,

squealing tires, foreclosed houses with dirty stuffed

animals littering the floors, condom wrappers, and early

mornings of quiet. We were afraid of glassy-eyed dolls,

of getting older, of staying young, of the invisible

people we could become, moving to cities, getting

divorces, of the metal detectors at school, of in-school

suspensions, of the way that building was entirely

mirrored, an old ballet studio, so you could not look

away from your face. We were afraid of spiny thistles

that caught on socks, of being fingered, of the silence

between songs at parties, of the land which seemed

to never end, of the liquor stores and tanning beds

and nail salons that kept cropping up around us,

of nipple-hair, Dutch Elm disease and yellow tape around

the tree, the smell of cow manure when you drove

out too far, of the pigeons and the way they would

land and stare with strange red-eyes, of standing in the center

of the continent, right in the middle of America’s heart,

certain that we could hear a beat, and that, as it grew

fainter, it would call us away, to where we could not name

or see.

Ekphrastic Impulse

Just as no art is written in a vacuum, no art exists without other art. As a species we make visual, aural, physical, and written art, and that influences other artists. The word “ekphrastic” is Greek for “description.” An ekphrastic poem is a poem that describes another work of art. A notable example is John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Imagine Keats, dying of tuberculosis in his early 20s, turning a Greek urn from scene to scene, writing about a future that would never arrive for him, but finding solace in the funeral object! No wonder this poem yields some of the most famous lines in English poetry: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Another well-known ekphrastic poem is Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Archaic Torso of Apollo,” and talk about another attention-getting ending: “You must change your life.”

Once you know what an ekphrastic poem is, you’ll start to see that they are everywhere. I like to think of them as art’s fascia, or connective tissue, a kind of rosetta stone between mediums. Writing an ekphrastic poem is one of those sui generis prompts, much like the list poem from the first chapter, that yields generous results. Art, afterall, is a conversation. Ekphrastic poems come from many sources, not just visual art, but music, installations, performance art, sculpture, plays, songs, lyrics, other written works, concerts, etc.

There are a number of ways to signal that your poem is an ekphrastic piece. As in Rilke’s poem, the allusion is in the title. Often an epigraph can provide context, as in the poem “Black Boy,” by Jordan Franklin, who won the 2017 James Hearst Poetry Prize and appears below. Another poem we published in the NAR follows, “But Beautiful” by George Kalamaras, and the indication that it’s an ekphrastic piece occurs in the dedication.

Black Boy by Jordan Franklin

        After “Glen” by Jean Michael Basquiat, 1985

The choleric shakes

of his reprimand careen

from thought to larynx. His

love is mayhem; it sparks the

ritual burning of branched

fingers once plump with olives.

When the whistling stops, the

tree must relearn its true weight

and dislodge his tired,

dark fruit. Fire is his

sacrament, its home the stoked

back of his throat. His crown

of barbed wire forms a brooch

across his neck–His fruit,

not even the started birds

will eat.

But Beautiful by George Kalamaras

        for Freddie Hubbard

Finally, the day comes to an end.

Our work comes to an end.

Wind in the pines. Winter wind.

Nine or ten deer bedded down

in the snowy cheatgrass outside

my mountain door. Cold, blowy snow

in their matted fur. Tu Fu’s “Night Traveling”

on my mind: Thin grass bends on the breezy shore

And the tall mast seems lonely in the boat.

I open the night, my own long hours of night traveling,

with Freddie’s first LP, Open Seasame, June 19, 1960.

Freddie, only twenty-two. That photo of him on the back

cover hunching all of his youth over the keys with McCoy,

going over a score. The sad of his “But Beautiful”

blowing my mind–not in the clichéd way, but sailing

me further than the day and my aching brain, taking me

to Tu Fu, his exile and loneliness, to my youth,

a wooded cottage several states away. Moon-drenched

swamps. Hickory trees. Hound dogs. Even hours

south of there to Indianapolis where Freddie first hit

those notes, finding a way to stay in the world.

I think of Tina Brooks, Sam Jones, and Cliffard Jarvis.

McCoy, of course. All coming together

for this. How can so many early years express the ancient

depth of what is to come, as if–yes–we all return

into a body, a knowing past pressing us forward? When I walk

to the door, the deer outside just a few yards away huff a little

and shift, their breath streaming the already-smoky

night. A fawn lifting its delicate face

to its mother, nudging her, pleading for something

I’m not even sure it understands what it needs. Now a young buck sniffs

the hindquarters of a doe. Instinctively. The urge for us all

to move forward. Enter the unknown. Explore

the glorious darkness. Merge with another

body and create a world. Freddie’s “Gypsy Blue”

now come on, reminding me that my home in the woods

is 1183 miles away. In years. In decades of aches

and rain. In boggy memories and all the relative dead.

In my mother’s voice, which–even now–I still struggle

to recall. Tu Fu’s years of wandering and exile

were the only thing that brought him

home. How does one decide to explore the heavens

and hold the Milky Way, like medicine,

below the tongue? To float

the river, its wind-bent reeds, and hold

these melancholy notes inside

as a way to thrive? Oh, Freedie. Whether

in Gongyi, Henan Province, or Indianapolis,

like you, we are all born, and we all

must one day leave the body and set sail

with Tu Fu down the Milo into a glorious river silk.

Your Open Sesame reminds me to open

even to that. Even if the notes know a world

my knowing does not. You are blowing

your trumpet and blowing a boat into what

we spend our lives wondering about most. Even as we try

to forget. Each breath of yours huffing us forward,

back, through the rocking moon-bit wave. Time

and again. You are gone now, Freddie.

Blown away in the blowing

of your horn. In tonights’ blowing

snow. Out there yet still

here. Yes, you are gone, Freddie. Gone.

And it is sad. All of it

sad. But beautiful. But beautiful.

Exercise 1: Ekphrastic Practice

Pick a piece of art, perhaps there’s one you already have in mind, because it's evocative for you. Of course, there is visual art, also music, and other written works. If you’re open to inspiration, see what the National Gallery of Art is featuring. Pick a piece and spend time observing it with Beginner’s Mind. What do you notice? What do you associate with it? How do you want to signify the ekphrastic connection: title, epigraph, dedication, a description of the piece within the poem?

Exercise 2: Imitate a Poem

Pick a poem you admire, just like Maria Nazos did for her poem “Afraid” after Dorianne Laux’s “Fear.” Imitate the poem in syntax, image, line length, and diction. Don’t try to control the process or force your voice in. You are a medium, channeling in another voice that allows you to take risks.

Exercise 3: Risks

Below are a few prompts that put risk, experiment, and fun first. Give yourself permission to play, and make sure the critic is taking a nap when you write. Remember, a writing exercise is like trying on a pair of jeans–only you have to see the first try. Next, you can leave them on the floor, return them to the rack, or purchase. It is all a try-on.

• When Sandra Cisneros visited the University of Northern Iowa in 2019, an audience member asked her for writing advice, and she quickly volleyed back, “ Write a poem you’d be embarrassed for your mother to read.” So write a poem you’d be embarrassed for your mother to read.
• The title of the poem is a word you’ve now learned. The OED is a great place to start for inspiration. The body of this poem is now your response/definition/use of the word, but 75% of what’s in the poem can’t be true.