Some thoughts on writing poems:
Being retired from teaching, I have more time to think about things that matter to me, at least in terms of a joie de vivre. My wife might say more thinking on my part is a curse rather than a blessing. That may be true but discursive thought often creates leaping associations from which interesting observations come. So, if you like to read and/or write, it’s possible you might appreciate this one. I just finished reading Louis Menand’s epic tome entitled The Free World, Art and Thought in the Cold War. The book is over 700 pages of explication specifically related to the period when I, as a Baby Boomer, was born and raised and became a young adult.
The book was recommended to me by my good friend Tom, who is much smarter than me. I would say better looking also, but neither of us has bragging rights on handsome. Tom is an erudite man and I’m sure his comprehension of Menand’s broad thesis was far greater than mine. But I found several chapters that opened new pathways for me to consider, or maybe re-travel some old ones.
One of those chapters had to do with the Beat Generation writers and their influence during this era. You’ve probably heard of the more famous ones like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder. I haven’t read much of their work in the last thirty years, but I devoured it in my youth. The writing seemed spontaneous and free. It wasn’t, of course, but life is often not what it seems.
Anyway, one of the ideas that fascinated me was the philosophy of “first word, best word” because it meant anyone could be a great writer, or even a poet. You just pour out any words you want and disregard revising anything. Most of these writers didn’t actually practice this and it’s terrible advice for anyone who wants to write well. After I grew a little older that concept seem shallow, and the Beat writers began to bore me.
I was reminded of them by this chapter in Menand’s book and that reminded me of a book I read twenty years ago that counselled the opposite and has greatly influenced my own writing since then.
This book contains thirteen of Stephen Dobyns’ essays on poetics. He’s a prolific writer, having completed over ten collections of poetry and over twenty novels. I don’t know where he found the time to write these essays. Of the thirteen in the book, three stood out in my mind as being superior to the rest and those are the ones I’ll comment on. In chapter 2, Metaphor and the Authenticating Art of Memory, Dobyns raises this question in my mind—is something defined by its function?
Many of the French Symbolists poets would argue that a poem is not necessarily written to fulfill the expectation of communication with a reader that it is, in fact, just there. If this were completely true, wouldn’t a poem be like Mt. Everest? Sir Edmund Hillary climbed it simply because “it was there.” So, must we view each poem, according to the Symbolists, as a mountain to be vigorously and arduously climbed with the possibility that some mountains remain forever unassailable? Even some of the early 20th century American poets clung to this notion. T.S. Eliot is a notable example.
On the other hand, many poets believe there is a line between communication and symbolic obscurity and, if it’s crossed the poem is lost. William Butler Yeats and William Carlos Williams, both of whom were contemporaries of Eliot, could fit into this category quite well. In this essay, Dobyns argues that the two extremes, popular communication and poetic obscurity are found, must be found, concurrently in all poetry. I believe there has to be balance in a poem, if it is to function and communicate something to a reader, but it also has to meet some artistic standards, engage in some complexity of thought, or it becomes mundane and clichéd. So, at this level, I agree with his premise. The question arises though, how is it possible to reach this necessary balance?
He argues that one way is through the use of metaphor (i.e. including simile, analogy, and allegory) and the other way is by authenticating memory. The poem must stimulate and trigger our senses, enabling us to enter it either at the level of personal experience or imagination. He draws a distinction here between mystery and vagueness. Mystery lends itself to the search for understanding while vagueness leads to confusion. Every symbol, by virtue of its existence, would be connected somehow to something it symbolizes. I pictured what would happen if this weren’t the case by imagining the confusion generated by the symbol for a railroad crossing in a country that had no railroads.
One thing I learned and really appreciated about using metaphors is that with them you can describe what would normally take pages to describe without them. This is true, however, only in so much as you can link the metaphor to something that will stimulate a memory process in your reader, particularly a process that heightens a reader’s self-awareness.
In chapter seven, The Voice One Listens To, Dobyns emphasizes that a writer may suffer a confusion of values, not being able to decide what ideas or emotions are guiding the whole, or what makes one word better than another. When this happens, everything seems arbitrary. He gives several reasons for this, but some seem more important to me than others. I think the fact that writing is a solitary occupation, but what we write is totally enmeshed in the world is a paradox that we all have to deal with. Dangers arise.
First of all, we expect readers, so our word choice matters. However, the very fact we hope our work will be read sometimes causes us to judge that work by outside standards rather than our own. Secondly, this give and take between the private and the public clouds our ability to choose between important and unimportant language.
This paradox is extremely challenging to me because it raises the questions of whether we make word choices based on a fear of our work being rejected or of our self being rejected and the question of how much we should allow an audience to dictate the conditions of our art. His claim stipulates that art is important to understanding who we really are personally. Art is life – life is art.
He takes an interesting stand on page 181, “It is in areas of potential taboo that a writer is more likely to engage in self-deception, to confuse psychological restrictions for aesthetic restrictions.” There again is the private-public paradox. I remember writing a review of an Allen Ginsberg poem several years ago. I was told by the editor to delete the phrase “limp-wristed” from my description of Ginsberg because homosexuals would be among the reading audience and would be offended, not because the phrase was aesthetically displeasing. This was, I think, the first time I noticed the paradox Dobyns writes about, but I have remembered it ever since. It certainly complicates the art of composing poetry.
What he finally comes to in this essay is that all of us must write with complete freedom, even if it means not being published. I agree with the premise, although it sounds a bit superfluous coming from a writer who writes popular fiction and poetry so widely published.
Chapter thirteen begins with a quote from one of his collections entitled Cemetery Nights. “While the stars give off the same cold light/ that all theses dead once planned their lives by.” It gives me a headache just trying to visualize all the images that come to mind from this one line. Maybe the essence of poetry is to create a series of images that cascade down a waterfall of thoughts into one crystal clear epiphany. I like the idea in this chapter that a work of art can remove us from our isolation and join us in a community of shared human experience. This is what makes words rise above the sum of their parts, our perception of what we read as something we all are or have all done. Poetry is timeless because its truth is a common reality, because it translates experience rather than explains.
I write a lot of poetry and have been lucky to get five volumes of it published in just a few years. But I don’t write that much about the art because I really don’t know enough to speak on the level of theoretical expertise that would require. So, this book has been helpful to me over the last twenty years. I’m glad there are generous writers like Stephen Dobyns to share with me.
Jim McGarrah, Author 