Words
Spin and tumble in my head,
Churning, spinning,
Building pressure like steam in a kettle,
Seeking escape.
Words
Buzzing in my brain
Like a wasp on a window,
Watching with alien malevolence
Waiting for me to approach,
To smother or smash into complacency,
Only to be stung as the words demand release.
Words
Burning like a flame,
Searing their path through my mind,
Consuming, devouring,
Building to a raging inferno,
Demanding complete submission.
Words
Erupting like lava,
Cascading in fiery torrents from my fingers,
Flowing from my brain,
Liquid stone, blazing with heat,
Destroying my peace, shattering my world,
Until the passion settles.
The words rest cold and hard,
Set in hexagonal columns
Like basalt,
Form immutable.
Words
Lie before me,
Holding all the fire
of my empty soul.
Words.
Nothing more,
Nothing less,
Only
Words.
I hope you enjoyed today's piece. Sometimes I attempt poetry. This one I like.
Jaleta Clegg
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Writing Poetry intro by Jim Fowler
Hi folks,
I'm going to be throwing out blogs on what I think of poetry and how to write poetry. I've been having poems published for over fifteen years and been teaching poetry for nearly ten. I edited an anthology of poetry "Heartbeat of New England" (Tiger Moon Productions, 2000). Yes, much of this you can argue with, but keep an open mind, I might get you thinking.
What is poetry? What makes a poem a poem? That’s a difficult question and one every school of poetry or every poet has a different answer to. There have been many modern poets and poetry critics who think too much modern poetry is just prose with line breaks. There have also been many who think that there’s some prose that’s just poetry in disguise. Poetry falls somewhere in between those views. I like to say if you call it a poem, it’s a poem. But it might not be a very good poem.
Words are the building blocks of poetry. Poetry is making art of those building blocks. Let me use a metaphor, saying one thing to mean another. When I took a folklore class in undergrad school, we each had to learn a folklore. I learned how to put up stonewalls. Not the tight fit, cut the stone to fit walls, but the old fashioned stonewalls. I’ve built stonewalls. I start with a pile of stones and erect a wall. There’s a stone for every place and a place for every stone. The art of building a stonewall is finding the right stone for every place.
That’s what the art of erecting a poem is, finding the right word for every place. If the art is done correctly, once built the poem goes beyond the individual words. Just like a stonewall goes beyond the individual stones. Yes, I could place a good stone but not the perfect poem and chink in small stones to make it fit, but it won’t be the same as the perfect stone. Years later water will dribble down in the hole and freeze and the ice will push out the chinking and the wall will fall. The same thing applies to a poem. Yes, I can make a good word work, but eventually the poem will fail because it’s not the perfect word. And sometimes in my search for the perfect stone, I find the stones around that place aren’t quite right, so I have to replace a row of stones.
Poetry works that way too. Sometimes it’s not the word that’s wrong; it’s the words around the word that need to be changed. Writing a poem is as much work as building a stonewall. Poems generally fail because of lack of care by the poet. Poetry goes beyond prose because of the care and work. Poetry calls for self-criticism, for a desire to write the perfect word. A poem is not finished until it has been read. A poem like any other work of art must evoke an emotion in the reader or listener. A poem should give the reader a new view of the world, bring pleasure and be self-defining. Emily Dickinson once said that she knew a good poem because it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A good poem forces me to say ‘ah.’
After 9-11 people all over the country reached for poetry. They needed to find understanding and healing. Poetry can help us when we’re confused and hurt. But not everyone will like the same poem though some poems reach more people than others. If we all liked the same poem, there would only be one poem. If you want to write poetry, read poetry. If you like a poem, look inside it, look at how it was built, discover why you like it. Then you’ll know what to put in your poems.
When I learned to build stonewalls, I found a master craftsman to teach me. He sent me out to look at the various styles of walls and to study how they were put together, then we sat down and he gave me instructions and then we went and worked on a wall together. I built it under his guidance. Finally, I put up a wall on my own and he came afterwards and criticized my work.
The same procedure works for writing poems. If you’re willing to put in the effort, anyone can write poems. Without the commitment to the crafting… To paraphrase and revamp a Basho statement, anyone can write one good poem, it’s the second poem that’s the problem.
I'm going to be throwing out blogs on what I think of poetry and how to write poetry. I've been having poems published for over fifteen years and been teaching poetry for nearly ten. I edited an anthology of poetry "Heartbeat of New England" (Tiger Moon Productions, 2000). Yes, much of this you can argue with, but keep an open mind, I might get you thinking.
What is poetry? What makes a poem a poem? That’s a difficult question and one every school of poetry or every poet has a different answer to. There have been many modern poets and poetry critics who think too much modern poetry is just prose with line breaks. There have also been many who think that there’s some prose that’s just poetry in disguise. Poetry falls somewhere in between those views. I like to say if you call it a poem, it’s a poem. But it might not be a very good poem.
Words are the building blocks of poetry. Poetry is making art of those building blocks. Let me use a metaphor, saying one thing to mean another. When I took a folklore class in undergrad school, we each had to learn a folklore. I learned how to put up stonewalls. Not the tight fit, cut the stone to fit walls, but the old fashioned stonewalls. I’ve built stonewalls. I start with a pile of stones and erect a wall. There’s a stone for every place and a place for every stone. The art of building a stonewall is finding the right stone for every place.
That’s what the art of erecting a poem is, finding the right word for every place. If the art is done correctly, once built the poem goes beyond the individual words. Just like a stonewall goes beyond the individual stones. Yes, I could place a good stone but not the perfect poem and chink in small stones to make it fit, but it won’t be the same as the perfect stone. Years later water will dribble down in the hole and freeze and the ice will push out the chinking and the wall will fall. The same thing applies to a poem. Yes, I can make a good word work, but eventually the poem will fail because it’s not the perfect word. And sometimes in my search for the perfect stone, I find the stones around that place aren’t quite right, so I have to replace a row of stones.
Poetry works that way too. Sometimes it’s not the word that’s wrong; it’s the words around the word that need to be changed. Writing a poem is as much work as building a stonewall. Poems generally fail because of lack of care by the poet. Poetry goes beyond prose because of the care and work. Poetry calls for self-criticism, for a desire to write the perfect word. A poem is not finished until it has been read. A poem like any other work of art must evoke an emotion in the reader or listener. A poem should give the reader a new view of the world, bring pleasure and be self-defining. Emily Dickinson once said that she knew a good poem because it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. A good poem forces me to say ‘ah.’
After 9-11 people all over the country reached for poetry. They needed to find understanding and healing. Poetry can help us when we’re confused and hurt. But not everyone will like the same poem though some poems reach more people than others. If we all liked the same poem, there would only be one poem. If you want to write poetry, read poetry. If you like a poem, look inside it, look at how it was built, discover why you like it. Then you’ll know what to put in your poems.
When I learned to build stonewalls, I found a master craftsman to teach me. He sent me out to look at the various styles of walls and to study how they were put together, then we sat down and he gave me instructions and then we went and worked on a wall together. I built it under his guidance. Finally, I put up a wall on my own and he came afterwards and criticized my work.
The same procedure works for writing poems. If you’re willing to put in the effort, anyone can write poems. Without the commitment to the crafting… To paraphrase and revamp a Basho statement, anyone can write one good poem, it’s the second poem that’s the problem.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Poetry and Manic-Depression
At my personal blog I just posted a piece on manic-depression and poetry. Poets suffer from manic-depression more than other artists, some reasons for which I offer.
My new book, "Unexpected Light," explores manic-depression among other subjects. In fact, portions of the book were reconstituted from a previous ms. called "Sine Wave," which was devoted to the experience of the disease.
It's fortunate that that ms. was not published--in the new book the poems about my mood disorder are spaced between other subjects. A whole book on manic-depression would have been too much for me, much less the reader.
How do I define poetry? "Language distilled into its most powerful form." It's the caviar of literature, and as such is not for everybody. Poems must be slowly delected, they cannot be rushed to find an ending. They should endure in the mind and the heart, vignettes of a deeper life. But poetry must allow for humor as well, as in my poem "God and Cheetos" or "Tonic." The latter is a rather childlike attempt at self-encouragement:
Tonic
I will love myself today.
Here are some fuzzy slippers
and a lollipop,
a warm hug and a wet kiss.
Let me tuck this
old familiar blanket
around my shoulders
and read this poem
before I nap.
Whatever I do today,
I’ll approve.
If I spill milk, I’ll clap.
If I button my shirt wrong
it’s a new style.
If I wet my pants
it was on purpose.
My, how well I walk!
How well I speak!
It’s so good to be
good to myself.
Where have I been
all these sad, long years?
So poetry doesn't have to be depressing, it can also be uplifting, even if that means heavy lifting. Too much of poetry in general revisits the "sad, long years." I would like to see more celebratory poetry from myself and others. Walt Whitman, though long-winded, provides a good example of this, as do William Carlos Williams and Frank O'Hara, though the downside of celebratory poetry can sometimes be a lack of depth. We must have grief and joy, anger and fear, the whole panoply of human emotion compressed into a few lines to succeed as poetry. Have you written a poem lately?
Thine,
C. E. Chaffin
My new book, "Unexpected Light," explores manic-depression among other subjects. In fact, portions of the book were reconstituted from a previous ms. called "Sine Wave," which was devoted to the experience of the disease.
It's fortunate that that ms. was not published--in the new book the poems about my mood disorder are spaced between other subjects. A whole book on manic-depression would have been too much for me, much less the reader.
How do I define poetry? "Language distilled into its most powerful form." It's the caviar of literature, and as such is not for everybody. Poems must be slowly delected, they cannot be rushed to find an ending. They should endure in the mind and the heart, vignettes of a deeper life. But poetry must allow for humor as well, as in my poem "God and Cheetos" or "Tonic." The latter is a rather childlike attempt at self-encouragement:
Tonic
I will love myself today.
Here are some fuzzy slippers
and a lollipop,
a warm hug and a wet kiss.
Let me tuck this
old familiar blanket
around my shoulders
and read this poem
before I nap.
Whatever I do today,
I’ll approve.
If I spill milk, I’ll clap.
If I button my shirt wrong
it’s a new style.
If I wet my pants
it was on purpose.
My, how well I walk!
How well I speak!
It’s so good to be
good to myself.
Where have I been
all these sad, long years?
So poetry doesn't have to be depressing, it can also be uplifting, even if that means heavy lifting. Too much of poetry in general revisits the "sad, long years." I would like to see more celebratory poetry from myself and others. Walt Whitman, though long-winded, provides a good example of this, as do William Carlos Williams and Frank O'Hara, though the downside of celebratory poetry can sometimes be a lack of depth. We must have grief and joy, anger and fear, the whole panoply of human emotion compressed into a few lines to succeed as poetry. Have you written a poem lately?
Thine,
C. E. Chaffin
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