The Everything Writing Poetry Book (25 page)
Reprinted with the permission of the author
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Writing about family during a holiday will provide you with a measure of the changes in your life. Compare a holiday when you were young to a celebration you attended last year. What has changed within the family? Who has left the group and who has arrived? Take careful note of all the differences. Are you better or worse for these changes?
The Good Times
While all families endure tragedies and hardships, most also experience good times. Recalling holiday celebrations is a great way to rediscover these happy days. Though your impulse may be to focus on the negative aspects of your family's past, don't forget to relish the joyful memories you have. Be sure to recall Easter egg hunts with your cousins, pool parties at your aunt's house, and picnics you had with your parents and siblings. Create poetry to present to your family, to honor a loved one who has passed away, or just to reflect on your life experiences.
Enduring Loss
Death is an inevitable part of life. However, though everyone knows it's coming, it is still heartbreaking to lose a loved one. Most individuals also feel awe, fear, or dread when they consider how death will come to them. Poetry about death can run a wide gamut, and can highlight any of the many aspects of this universal fate.
The traditional poem about someone else's passing is the
elegy
. This form features the speaker's sadness but also includes praise for the departed. The tone is usually somber but some memories about the departed can bring a measure of contentment. In a well-known elegy by Thomas Gray “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” the speaker contemplates with wonder the many lives of the people buried in a churchyard.
Writing about someone's death is bound to stir very strong emotions within you. However, try not to let these feelings dominate the poem. As with other topics, you must concentrate on concrete details to make the experience more real for your reader. Focus on the physical aspects: location, clothing, sounds, and foods, for example.
Many other poems on this subject tend to be more personal than Gray's. They often focus on the speaker's emotions and on some key events shared by the speaker and the departed. Ben Jonson's poem about his son's death, discussed in Chapter 7 (page 88), is an example. To write about the death of a person close to you, you must let your own feelings be your guide. Are you devastated? Are you angry? Are you even a little bit relieved? Describe any emotions you felt during the experience, and then write out the events that triggered each emotion.
Treasured Relationships
The person you are today is a result of the influences that friends and family have had upon you throughout your life. You may have chosen to embrace these people and make them a part of your daily routine, or you may have broken all of the ties that once linked you. Regardless of your true situation, you can always reflect on your family in your writing.
The Importance of Childhood
When you were a child, your parents and siblings offered you your first taste of love, comfort, trust, and companionship. They trained you on how to interact with other people and gave you a view of the world that you likely held into adolescence. Your family might also have been your first source of pain and betrayal, possibly giving you a negative view of relationships.
One popular theory holds that the relationships men have with their fathers determines the relations they have with coworkers, while the relationships men have with their mothers determines the relations they have with friends and lovers. For women, it's the opposite.
As you get older, your friends help to shape your life as much as, and sometimes more than, your family. During your teenage years you likely spent lots of time with your friends. During your college years and young adulthood, your friends likely seemed to take the place of your family. Unfortunately, friends, like family, can cause you pain. Even though you might have endured hard times when you were young, you shouldn't forget them completely as you move on in your life. These memories continue to shape your present self and will help you create stronger poetry.
Hanging On
You hold friends and family close for two opposing reasonsâfor the love, laughter, and good times they bring, and for the bitterness, regret, and anger that you cannot let go of. Through your interactions with these people, you have learned how the world operates, but you have also learned many valuable lessons about yourself. Those three essential elements of inspirationâchange, discovery, and decisionâwill mark points in your personal development, but your interactions with others will help you see how you have grown. In other words, try to think of these people as your mirror.
Including details of memories in your poems helps create a bond between you and your reader. It is difficult to create realistic stories and situations with your imagination alone. Pulling from personal experience is a much better method.
As an exercise, write down a list of things you have learned with the help of your family. Next, write down a list of things you have learned with friends. Finally, try to think of lessons you have learned completely on your own. You will likely find that others had an influence on you during almost every major stage of your life.
Ideas for Writing
As an exercise, write an ode recalling one of the things your friends or relatives have done for you. You can follow the traditional ode guidelines and make it a song of praise, or you can give it an ironic twist and concentrate on the negative. The elements of love poetry discussed in Chapter 10âJeredith Merrin's ideas about surprise, context, and shadowâcan help you here. For example, you can choose a surprising event, set it in the context of what you were doing at that time in your life, and give it shadow by exploring any obstacles or negative aspects that existed.
Another good exercise to try is to write a poem to one of your friends or relatives about any anxiety you are currently having. You can write the poem as a monologue or as a dialogue, but be sure to address this friend or relative as “you” throughout the poem. To get started with this idea, come up with a list of words that describe the anxiety you feel. You can construct a sestina with the list as end words or you can turn the list into refrains for a pantoum or villanelle.
You might also start with another descriptive passage of forty to seventy words, as you did for the sonnet. The subject matter can be a description of your mother's appearance, a loving memory of your son's first steps, or an angry reply to a friend who betrayed you. If you find yourself going over seventy words, don't stopâcontinue until you have expressed the entire thought. Then, as before, break the passage into lines using a syllable count. Next, try different stanza patterns (couplets, tercets, quatrains, etc.), and then work with a foot pattern and rhyme scheme, if appropriate.
Chapter 12
Writing about Home
A
ll aspects of one's homeâthe rooms, furniture, decor, appliances, etc.âcan be the subjects of poems or the settings for poems about other subjects. The word
home
can have several different meanings as well. It can represent a hometown, a birthplace, or a place you visited for only a short time. Therefore, home doesn't have to be restricted to the place where you live now. It can be a combination of all the places from which you draw your identity or into which you retreat for privacy and strength.
Starting Outdoors
Using your home as the subject or the setting of a poem will force you to pay attention to your surroundings. Do you live on a street bordered by sidewalks, lit by streetlights, and populated by passing cars, or is your home on a dirt road surrounded by fields and grazing livestock? Does your house perch on the side of a cliff overlooking ocean waves, or does it sit in a quiet, green valley brightened by wildflowers? The atmosphere of your home is created by its appearance against its environment, so pay attention to both of these aspects when you write about this place.
One popular form of literature, called
gothic
, depends a great deal upon a house and its appearance. The house is often raised to the level of a character that acts, communicates, and even seems to show emotion. Think of the house in
The Addams Family
television show and movies, for example.
As you describe the house and its locale, use concrete detailsâthe height of the house, the building materials, paint colors, window and door placement, balconies, gardens, terraces, porches, garage, and so on. Pay attention, also, to the time of day. Your house will look one way in daylight and another at night. During the day, does sunlight reflect off the front windows, or does your house sit beneath the shadow of trees? At night, is your house dim and silent, or is it brightly lit by lamps and candles, with smoke curling up from the chimney?
Stepping Inside
Once you have examined the appearance of your house from the outside, go to the entrance of the house. Is it welcoming or does it give the house an inhospitable feel? The entrance gives a visitor (or reader) his first impression of the house, so you must describe it in detail.