The Everything Writing Poetry Book (3 page)

Recently, Tina, one of the authors of this book, was invited to read one of her student's poems. The student had been hurt when her boyfriend broke up with her using their high school's public address system. He didn't shout “It's over!” for all to hear, but instead dedicated “Three Times a Lady” to another girl, who happened to be the student's best friend. The student was so upset by the dual betrayal that she decided to write a poem. She used the opportunity to displace her strong emotions and titled the poem “Three Times a Jerk.”

Displacement happens all the time in everyday life. If you have a fight with your wife one night and then overreact to the broken water cooler at work the next day, you have displaced your personal frustration onto an inanimate object. The key is to focus these emotions on your writing and not on other people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gaining control of your feelings, and effectively displacing them, can help improve your poetry and your mental state. Don't be discouraged if this method doesn't work for you the first time. The more you practice this, the easier and more natural it will be for you.

Indulgence

Almost any experience you have can translate into strong poetry. Even if it's something as minor as stepping in a puddle, if an experience resonates with you and causes you to feel intense emotion, it can be great inspiration for poetry. No one has to know that stepping into a puddle on a rainy day made you feel as though you were drowning, and you never have to reveal the other circumstances in your life that led you to have that feeling. The important thing is that you channel these thoughts and emotions into your art. You can embellish to your heart's content—that's the beauty of poetry!

After some practice, you'll be able to identify your emotional triggers with relative ease. You may notice that rain clouds make you feel lonely or ice cream trucks cause you to long for your childhood. Make lists of these occurrences and think of them as your trigger symbols. Whenever you want to write about (and displace) your loneliness, think of dark, brooding rain clouds. And whenever you want to create a poem about your childhood, begin with memories involving the ice cream truck. Indulge yourself—that's what poetry is all about.

Drawing from Memory

Many poets, young and old alike, use their memories to create their poetry. Memory is a deep well from which to draw inspiration. However, it is also an area of creativity that beginning writers require time to adjust to. Memory can provide you with endless ideas for poetry, but you should not let it restrict you in any way.

Shaping Reality

As teachers, one of our favorite writing exercises that calls upon memory requires students to bring a photo album to class. We ask the students to randomly turn to any page in the album and pick a photo to write about. After fifteen to twenty minutes of nonstop writing, most students set down between 500 and 700 words. Most of this writing is disjointed, and if not disjointed, it is more than likely a narrative surrounding the taking of the photo.

We then ask students to prune their words into single lines of description: one line each for the location, people, weather conditions, etc. After some initial shaping, the student writers find they've created the first draft of a poem. But as they continue the revision process, they tend to impede their own progress for fear that their creativity is replacing the truth of the moment.

Many writers wrongly assume that the contents of poems must be true to life, and thus, they work to make their poetry replicate moments in time. But poetry is not nonfiction; it does not claim to be memoir. In a way similar to the method of a fiction writer, the poet should free up her memories and embellish them. You will still be drawing upon your own life experiences and observations, but you should feel free to enjoy the flexibility of the genre. Shape reality to make it fit your feelings.

Our literary canon contains abundant examples of reshaped reality. For example, Tennessee Williams's play
The Glass Menagerie
was loosely based on his own family. Williams coupled his own memories with his talent as a writer and depicted the pained lives of the Wingfield family. The events in the play do not match those of his own life, but the primary reality of the story gives it more strength.

Using Memory

As you look through your photo albums and search the recesses of your mind for forgotten memories, you'll realize that your memories have been affected, if not enriched, by distance and time. Use this to your advantage. Find ways to recall those memories and make them feel new again.

One of the best ways to invoke a memory is to allow your senses to reawaken the past. As you breathe in the aroma of your morning coffee, think back on a scene of your mother preparing breakfast for your family. Or, as you peel an onion, recall the vision of your father's eyes tearing as he chopped onions for Thanksgiving stuffing. You can also use this method to recollect negative memories. Poetry doesn't always have to be pleasant.

Music, film, and other forms of stimulation might also help your memories resurface. If you want to remember times spent with your grandmother, rent and watch her favorite movie or play her favorite song, and try to imagine the way she would react to the sights and sounds. If you used to go fishing with your grandfather when you were a young boy, try going out in his old rowboat to reawaken those feelings. Once you have captured enough images and emotions, put them on paper and begin your poem.

A Fly on the Watt

The contemporary poet Dorianne Laux describes the act of writing poetry as “private, mysterious, and criminal.” She names the writer a thief: “As you might steal a heart or a flower from someone's garden, writing is often a theft of some sort, stealing an image, an idea, a scrap of conversation from an unsuspecting passerby.” Like thieves, writers are perceptive listeners and spectators and are acutely aware of their external environment. In this regard, as a poet, you can think of yourself as a fly on the wall.

The Fly's Collection

As you observe the scenes around you, keep in mind that you will eventually have to break down these experiences. You will gather a wealth of information and then decide what essence of the observation you will bring to your poem. Remember, you do not want to retell the moment in its entirety. Instead, try to pluck from the scene a sentence, a giggle, a scent, or a posture.

This sensation of observation is present in the poem “The Last Man to Know Adam” by Todd Scott Moffett. The speaker of the poem, an older man, remembers what it was like to live in the company of the biblical Adam. In the last several stanzas of the poem that follow, the speaker describes his childhood memory from one night when he followed Adam and spied upon him:

We feared him, father of us all
,

this man who had seen in his second son's

death-marbled eyes the fate he'd wished
,

who despite his gray-maned hair stood

a full head taller, a full shoulder wider

than his offspring. His back and torso

still held muscle firm and rippled

from his clay molding. His eyes, wild

as a squid's, stared at his grown

children as if they were the whale's teeth
,

we kids snares to his path-weary feet
.

He glared when family gathered, joked

through stories, ate wheat bread, drank

honey beer, slaughtered the ritual lamb

and drained its blood into stained pots

while raising hands to our unnamed God
.

One night, from our ring of tents and sleeping

cookfires I followed him into a rocky

darkness climbing to a moon-swaddled cave
.

At the mouth he lit a lamp, uncloaked

brushes and a small stone pot. Inside
,

a smoke-yellowed wall, stone smelling

older than the earth's nine hundred

years, face rising two man-heights
.

And look! What we learned later to call pictures—

deer, elk, lion, bear, rooster, cow:

some creatures familiar and some

fantastic, unrecognizable
.

At the top, thin lines smooth and rounded
,

the animals gamboled in twos

through oaks, beeches, figs, apricots
,

broad-leafed maples
.

Then below, sharp, hard-lined
,

each animal charged alone through a barren plain

to the last low empty corner

where he squatted and set the lamp
.

His thick strokes stabbed the wall, knifed

into being a creature with mane
,

wings, claws. Then readied a stick man
,

arm cocked with spear
.

And whizz! whizz! his brush gored

the creature, the lions, bears, deer, elk, eagles
,

slew all he could reach, a great final hunting
,

calling their names back to him
.

Because the speaker acts as a fly on the wall, the object of his attention (Adam) has laid bare a side of his personality that brings the speaker into Adam's world. To craft the poem, the poet begins with a description of Adam himself and of how he related to his offspring. Each person and item, including the speaker, is linked to Adam. Yet the speaker—if recognized at all—is nothing more than a cause for suspicion, in Adam's eyes.

Places to Be a Fly

In order to successfully make observations as a fly on the wall, you first need to find good locations. In general, these should be places where you can blend into a crowd, observe people from afar, or huddle in the corner of a room, unnoticed. Here are some places you might try: