The Everything Writing Poetry Book (31 page)
To re-create sounds in your poetry, mimic them with your mouth firstâ hiss like a steam engine or growl like a motorcycleâand pay attention to the positions of your tongue, lips, and teeth. What letters would you normally produce in those positions? Write them down and create words to generate those sounds.
Pleasures and Pastimes
Working knowledge of your pastime can go a long way toward creating poems that you will enjoy just as much as the pastime itself. Say, for example, that you enjoy sewing quilts. Each scrap of cloth gathered from a favorite dress, a child's pajamas, or a father's handkerchief, stands as a reminder of that time in your life and opens a floodgate of memories.
Example Poems
The following poem about quilting is called “A Fixed Celestial,” by Neide Messer:
Snip thread, guide it
through the needle's eye,
knot the end. Pull
the quilt hoop close
and stitch. The last two
I pull out, try again.
This time three stitches,
then three more. Soon
they come quick and even, in and out,
along the edge of each piece
in a thrifty star pattern.
A collision of florals and solids
in hues of rose, navy, bone,
the shapes run into one another
.
Like stars years ago
in a box canyon. A swath of lights
edge to edge in crystalline
winter shimmered in our eyes
as we gazed upward at Hubble's discovery,
the expanding universe, all
celestial masses moving farther apart
foreverâgalaxies, constellations,
the north star, Pluto and Marsâ
even Orion
spinning slowly from us
.
This is not a distance
I comprehendâlight years away
already, but I know about
separation, all our heavenly
bodies on this blue-green earth, bound
by gravity and promises, yet
disconnected. We hover,
drift away, leave alone.
Here in this sewing room
I piece together what I can,
not people and planets but this
milky way of fabric.
With thimble, needle and thread,
one by one, my hands
stitch the star down
.
Reprinted with the permission of the author
.
Any reminders you have from your pastimesâfabric pieces, photographs, ticket stubs, autographsâmake excellent beginning points for poems. To work toward the creation of a poem, first write a narrative about the details of the reminder. Did you wear that shirt to your very first football game? Was that photo taken on your ninth birthday? Once you have established a narrative, take out concrete details that appeal to the senses and work them into a poem.
Another poem, “Camping, Northern California,” by Chad Lietz, describes a moment of awareness that overcomes the speaker while looking into the night sky:
We drop dried flesh into our mouths & chew
the night's wide scope into a tunneled pulse,
a geodesic dome of insect sight
.
Head thrown back you wait along the road
& watch the stars explode or spin, fractals
of sky & grainy jagged light; I'm lost
behind, among the same, slackjawed & smiling
.
Only a breath from that far space to here
The grove begins to sag like Joseph sheaves
in dreams. I pull a string & bend the trees.
Arbored arms unbind the sky & wrap
themselves around this spot where earth revolves
beneath our feet. This flesh we share in touch
explodes, competes with stars in fractured light
.
From
Red Rock Review,
Issue 16 (Fall 2004). Reprinted with the permission of the author
.
Don't simply talk to yourself when you work with your own memories. The memories may be vivid to you, but your reader was probably not there with you at the time. Like Lietz, you must include significant details to bring your reader into your experience.
Writing about Your Pastimes
Pastimes, like jobs, can be performed with tools, gadgets, and machines. A sewing machine, for example, makes a special hum-click sound as the needle works through the cloth. A butane stove used at a campsite makes a distinct hiss. The wheels of a skateboard rumble one way when you ride on concrete and another when you ride on wood. Be sure to include the music of these tools and machines when you write about your pastimes.
You can also try a “what if” poem. For example, if you are a fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team you probably know that the team has not won a World Series since 1908. What would it be like if the team finally won? Describe how the winning moment would play out on the field, where you would be at the time, and what you would do to celebrate.
Another topic for writing could be the moment you learned how to perform your hobby. Say, for example, that you tried to paint a watercolor of the bowl of fruit on your dining-room table. However, in every attempt, you ended up blending the oranges, apples, and bananas into a brown mess. But one day, something magical happened. The colors stayed in their places, the shapes held, and the fruit bowl appeared! What a feeling of triumph! This is the sort of moment to describe in detail in your poetry. This moment may also have taught you something about yourself as a person. A newfound skill, strength, or talent is something you can work into the context of your poem.
Chapter 15
Writing about Culture
T
he aspects of a culture communicate to others what is important to a particular group of people. It shows how they live now, how their forefathers lived, what they fight for, and what they believe in. Writing about your culture's popular trends, history, music, foods, and religions not only gives voice to your own perspectives but also, in a small way, redefines what they mean. In other words, you are helping to shape your culture by writing about it.
Popular Culture
Pop culture is always reinventing itself. The music, clothing, hairstyles, and movies that are popular one day will be outdated the next. Though trends disappear as quickly as they arrive, they often make comebacks at later times. On the one hand, such change is dizzying and disorienting. People often feel they are losing track of these changes if they do not read every newspaper, magazine, or book and watch every program on television.
What is popular culture?
Also known simply as pop culture, this term embodies the contemporary lifestyles, fashions, and products that are generally accepted by a given population of people. Pop culture can also include cultural trends and patterns, including those related to food, religion, and travel.
On the other hand, cultural change can signify positive progress. Long gone are the days when women could not vote, when it took mail several months to be delivered, and when people were forced into their parents' professions. Now, women not only vote but also hold public office, e-mail sends your messages instantly, and, with the right education, you can choose any profession you want.
Current Events
To write about pop culture, you must keep informed about current events. You can read and write about new technology, like the iPod or hybrid cars, or the latest toys popular among kids. You can also read and write about more serious matters, such as war, disease, and poverty. All of these events, both good and bad, make up the culture in which you live.
Charles Harper Webb's poem “Political Poem” takes a look at some of the serious events transpiring in Latin America. The speaker holds a cynical view toward the prospect of changing things for the better, but the woman he speaks to holds fast to her ideals. The compromise they work out at the end of the poem is amusingly personal.
Fog blew over us, alone on the dark pier.
As waves rolled by with the nonstop consistency
of wars, you talked about your politics,
using words like
desaparecidos, campesinos,
Chile (pronounced Cheé-lay). “I love the passion
of Latinos,” you said, “though the men see my mind
as a drawbackâa headache after a good drunk.”
You called me “a gringo cynic”; I obliged
with “All rulers stand on the crushed backs of someone.
My politics is to avoid the bottom of the pile.”
I've seen your starving
Indios
in cardboard shacks,
skeletal dogs and stick-limbed
niños
limping naked through mud streets.
I know your politics spring from a good heart,
just as I know your sympathy for the oppressed
comes from oppression; your rage at cruelty,
from cruelty to you. Altruism often
springs from private pain; I know that's true,
just as I know you needed me to voice your doubts.
I'd work with you for “social justice”
if I thought change would do more
than shift the cattle prods and atom bombs
to new oppressors' hands, shoving new victims
under revolution's wheel. I don't know what,
besides dying, will stop the pain that we all feel
.
But I know this: we walked to my room
from the pier, undressed each other,
and all night did for the cause of justice,
liberty, and love, the best
that, in this tortured world, two bodies can
.
From
Red Rock Review.
Reprinted with the permission of the author
.
The speaker in Webb's poem states that “Altruism often / springs from private pain.” Look at an issue that you have a personal stake in, or an object that you own, and use it as the springboard for your own commentary on modern culture. For example, if you own a lot of books, try to isolate the reason why you read so much. Do you read for personal entertainment or are you pursuing knowledge? Why does your culture read so many (or so few) books? Do your private practices match or oppose those of your culture?
History
As often as a culture reinvents itself, many ideas, trends, and values a culture holds come from deep within its history. History, however, does not only live within books, newspapers, and films. Many of the buildings, foods, and people around you draw from history as well. In fact, you can sometimes interact with these histories without knowing it. When you pass by a fire hydrant, do you ever wonder who invented it? When you eat a piece of candy, do you ever try to guess where it originated? Asking these questions and finding their answers can start you on the path toward great historical poetry.
Choosing Events
Historical events and people have always provided inspiration for poets and writers. You have already read one historical poem: Edwin Arlington Robinson's “Villanelle of Change” (page 118), which deals with the battle between the Greeks and Persians at Marathon. Poets also occasionally write poems to commemorate the anniversaries of memorable events. Many poets, for example, have already written verses in remembrance of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Countless poems have been written about the wars, politics, art, and music that have appeared throughout history. The key to getting started is choosing a historical event to focus on.
To write a historical poem, identify an event, place, or person that intrigues you. For example, perhaps Susan B. Anthony and her work for women's suffrage have always fascinated you. In this case, you can learn about her upbringing, the political action she took, and her other interests. Write a poem from her point of view as a child. Or imagine what she would think of the current state of women's rights if she were alive today.
Writing Personal Histories
If you ask any person in America about his or her family history you will likely hear stories of immigration, of hardships back in a home country and of acclimation into American culture. If you look hard enough at your own family history you will find similar stories. Perhaps you will find that your ancestors were slaves. They might have fought in the First or Second World War. Or maybe they fled pogroms in the Soviet Union.
Jeff Knorr, in his poem “Keep Your Dog Quiet,” examines the decades-old conflict of Latinos and Anglos in the Southwest through the two main characters in the poem. The speaker, an Anglo, recalls a friendship he had with a Mexican-American boy. Consider the following selection from the poem:
It is raining and late October.
The dog and I have chased the leaves
nearly back to home for an easy two miles.
As we pass a gate, low and Spanish
wrought iron, the black dog on the other side
wheezes at us like an inner tube being stomped on.
He lunges off all four paws, huffing harder and harder
for a moment stopping then starting again the life,
what matters most right now, cut out of himâdebarked.
He keeps at it. We cross the road and come up
in front of the quiet house with a flagpole,
stainless steel flying stars and stripes
.