[lit-ideas] Re: Poetry and Madness
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:26:51 -0700
Irene:
IC/AA: "Can someone teach me to write poetry?"
You must first of all make up your mind that there is a difference between
poetry and prose. If you were asking, David Ritchie, for example to put the
meaning of his poem into prose then perhaps you don't really want to write
poetry. For if a poem can be entirely rendered into prose then the poet
wasted his time in calling it a poem. Perhaps you want to write pretty
prose -- no change that: perhaps you want to write magnificent prose.
That's a worthy ambition. Fine writers of prose are to be admired.
But poetry now is a different matter. You ask me how to write poetry and I
tell you how to blow glass. In my mind I have answered your question. Of
course I wouldn't claim this as an ultimate answer reserving for tomorrow
the right to answer it differently.
How do you write poetry? If you can see the blowing of glass as an answer,
or better yet an example, then you have seen that you must go beyond prose.
In prose one answers such a question with declarative sentences. But poetry
is not declarative sentences.
On the other hand, how does one know whether one has gone beyond prose?
Consider the following "poem":
PACK RAT
Years ago I
Wrote grand
Ambitious
Poems of little
Worth, long
Since discarded.
Now that I
Have grown
Truly worthless,
I have learned
To write small
Humble poems
And save
Them all.
Now this "poem" perhaps goes somewhat beyond prose, but perhaps it is more
clever than poetic. I am not sure. I wrote this back in 1992 and saved it
as I have several other similar "poems" and yet I have some doubt about
them. Which brings me to step 2 which is to write. You should write,
write, write. Write one or more poems every day bearing in mind that most
of them won't be any good, but you are under no obligation to show them to
anyone. Read them a month later and then throw them away -- unless
something strikes you in the poem, maybe just a turn of phrase, but
something that redeems it in your mind and then save it. A few years later
read all the poems you've saved again -- and then throw them away -- unless
you want to save them as bad examples when someone asks you how to write
poetry. If your facility has grown perhaps in a few years you will have
produced one or two poems worth of the name.
Lawrence
Other related posts:
