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Diving Deeper: Notes along the Way #5 - On PoetrySandra said Sep 3, 2007, 9:19 AM: |
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Diving Deeper: Notes along the Way #5 - On Poetry  “The grand power of poetry […] is its power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them and of our relations with them.” Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism From Sandra: As many of you know my own predilection for writing is fiction or memoir. I have felt that our poets have been rather left out of the Diving Deeper process because of this, and this is why I asked Ron to be our Poetry moderator. We have had a few chats about poetry, and I decided to put together some joint thoughts for our many poets – and actually, for all of us here. One of my concerns with poetry in general is that I feel it is an ‘easy’ outlet for emotions. I know I used the genre myself this way. I needed to express what I was feeling, and wanted it to ‘look good’ and I wanted to be heard, I wanted to justify what I was feeling by calling it art. I’m not sure I ever moved beyond this in my poetry. Maybe one or two poems written when I wasn’t in a ‘big state’. I then discovered Freefall from Barbara Vesselago Turner, which guided me to both express my deepest feelings and go beyond the self-orientated circulatory diary-type ramblings and move myself and my words into a larger field. It sounds like I have a judgement about diary writings ( or that kind of writing ) – I don’t. I feel it can be a deeply necessary part of our unfolding, both as people and as writers. And, creativity and life is movement. At some point it’s time to shift. And who knows when this time is. I do know that I was rarely satisfied with my inner-dialogue personal pieces. I felt like I was licking open wounds and doing nothing more, other than saying ‘see, look how I hurt/desire/love' I am forever grateful for being taught how to turn my writing more outward, so I could connect self with other and begin to let go of ‘my story’ as being that which identified me. This allowed me to write the stories from my life in a very different way – I see my life as a treasure chest of material for creating art rather than a variety of events to feel either good or bad about. And, poetry is an amazing genre. It can take me into a state of being akin to meditation. It can make me see the world in a totally different way – often much quicker and more deeply than a piece of fiction. Reading some poetry I can give images to connections I feel in my gut. Some poetry can make me feel that I'm not alone in my visions – “I sense these unameable things too, and this poem has somehow named the unameable.” I believe there are many writers who have the ability to write both prose and poetry, but there are a few who are truly only poets. I’m not sure a writer can know this until they have experimented with all forms – most true poets will end up writing prose poems if writing narrative. And of course there are narratives and poems which cross all borders, and cannot be confined to genre. No one needs to make a choice about what kind of writer they are unless they want to. And, there are some writers where it seems there is no choice; they are poets and that is that. The main thing that I know about poets is that their writing displays two qualities above all – an ability to create stunning imagery and a gift for metaphor. Barbara called it the ‘primacy of image over incident’ – in other words, prose/fiction writers tell ‘stories’ that have a series of connected incidents, while poets create images and make connections (metaphor) that stretch our imagination. This is a generalisation of course, but a helpful one. Personally, I love writing which mixes both – story and image. I would very much like the poets to experiment more with narrative pieces and I would like the story tellers on Diving Deeper to experiment with poetry or prose poems - or at least to look at ways to describe situations using imagery which stretches them as a writers and us as readers – and to experiment with metaphor if it is not something that comes naturally - I believe it is something that can be learned. I often talk about ‘showing’ vs. ‘telling’ when I comment on narrative pieces. I believe the same point holds for poetry. If your poem has a generalised or abstract word – e.g. “love” – see if you can find an image – one full of sensuous detail – that can convey what that word means to you. Find concrete sensuous images that ‘show’ us the feelings you are writing about. Be specific. The more specific you are the wider your range, the more you will connect the utterly personal to the utterly non-personal – that which is All of us. As in fiction or memoir, a single well described / depicted moment can stand for a lifetime, a grand idea, a generation of relationships…the whole of being. For me, all the diving deeper precepts can be applied to poetry: Do not plan what you are going to write about when you sit down to write. Yes, write notes, always. Take a notebook when you are out and about, when you go to sleep. But at the point of writing, just face the blank page, and be willing for what wants to arise and write that. Do not direct traffic. Go slowly. This is not automatic writing, it is writing in while in a ‘witness’ state. Breathe. See the images “more clearly” rather than struggle to find the ‘right’ words. Look for the details, specific details. Do not edit as you write, do that later, much later. Sink into your body, let your body be your guide. Feel, see, hear, smell. Dive into the world you find yourself and explore it as deeply and specifically as you can. And last but not least, write what makes you sweat… write 'fearward'. So. Those are my notes for now on poetry. Below is what Ron has written, and I agree with him. We cover the much of the same ground but he says it so much more poetically of course. The only thing I would add is T.S. Eliot to his list of poets to read. ~ From Ron: One of the challenges we faced from the outset here on Diving Deeper was moving ourselves out of a blogging habit into a true diving deeper state within the confines of a blogging institution. In some ways this public on-line format facilitates diving deeper. There is no direct confrontation and the weight of the group (1500-2000 lbs) looming over one. So in that sense people may feel less inhibited. But of course the give and take of physical contact is more real. Or maybe not so much more real as riper. I think we are actually doing well in the face of this. DDT (diving deeper together) is being approached everyday. I would say that much of the impulse to write poetry is basically an autobio-graphic malaise with unrequited feelings. This impulse is part of diving deeper, but it can be limited to a diving only into psyches and emotional charkas. There is more to the confines of our beings. We all need to let the world in. The world of ideas and feelings is great but we need to ground ourselves in the other senses and thereby begin to see the possibility of eating the details of the world and not just our inner world. Notice if your writing is limited to a sexual orientation/attraction and see if you can move it into the rest of the imagination. Connections are so important. Metaphor is not a technical word. It is that place where the mind meets the world or as Wallace Stevens said, the palm at the end of the mind. If we think we have nothing new to say, it is only because we don't want to stretch that hand a little further. Push past that supposed boundary, not necessarily a social boundary, but the self-imposed boundary of the imagination. Don't worry about what others may think about your connections. Run up that flag and let it flap in the breeze. It's the flag of a country no else has ever seen, your country. Read the poetry of people who do this well and do it endlessly. Neruda, Rilke, Rumi/Coleman Barks, Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Bly to name a few. Not to mimic them, but to see what is possible. The amazing thing about Neruda is how his seemingly disparate images connect and affect us in ways we can't imagine. A good anthology that I'm reading now is called Staying Alive, subtitled, Real Poems for Unreal Times, a paperback. Almost five hundred amazing poems. One can get a copy used on Amazon.com. Memory is important, very important. What you saw yesterday, a few hours ago, last year, or ten years ago. Most of us are not specific enough in our vision. Details. Even in an emotional sense, details. And finally imagination. Anything is possible. The light is green, green, not yellow, not red. We are afraid to let our minds go into uncharted connections because we impose a judgment on whether this metaphor or that comparison makes sense in a practical way. Will people understand it? How will this look to someone else? The tree is orange and purple or blue or yellow and yeah green too. Make a stew out of your experiences. And read good poetry. Read it. Suggestions: If you write a narrative poem consider a fiction piece and vice versa. |
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Re: Diving Deeper: Notes along the Way #5 - On PoetryGabriele [no longer around] said Sep 3, 2007, 11:14 AM: |
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wonderful. thank you, both of you. |
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Re: Diving Deeper: Notes along the Way #5 - On Poetryjenni said Dec 7, 2007, 1:00 PM: |
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I just read this and I found it very helpful and inspiring. thanks jen |
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