The End of the Line

When you're writing, you just write, like now, right?

Sometimes, yeah, off-the-cuff does the trick. And for poets, when we're in the thick of composition, that first blast is what we use to launch a poem -- and it often flies offhand.

But that's when planning and thinking ahead works for you. So, when the time comes, you and your mechanical pencil, Sharpie, Etch-A-Sketch, or whatever, are ready to go.

The last word is important in every line of poetry. Just look at the poems that have truly impressed themselves on your psyche over the years: they usually have very strong end words for every line. Clean, powerful, resonant end words can almost serve as a map for the basic sense of the entire poem.

So, when it comes time to rhyme -- those end words become doubly important. And that's why your planning, your aesthetic, your understanding of structure, your basic sensitivity to rhythm ("pulse"), etc. start to show their importance. They become like fingers on the potter's hands: they know where to go all by themselves, even while the clay is still spinning under the running water.

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As an aside, something may be worth mentioning in these, Our Troubled Times: it's during economic slides downhill when people look to the arts for help the most. That's when diverse movements in the arts often find the most sustainable growth (think: The '30's or the '70's).

Often, when the boom times start their "squeeze" cycle, many artists and writers get spun out in the mad scramble for "mo' munney." We then have to pick ourselves up and/or put ourselves back together (with help from our friends) -- and we use our material to help us.

But in Times Like These, The Folk depend on us to do our very best. To paraphrase John Mellencamp: "Our Time is Now!"

Systole/Diastole

"Pulse action." Works in dishwashers. Works in verse.

But at what pressure? You decide!

His Dead End

I think it was the summer of '77 or '78 that I finally figured out "sprung rhythm." The prosodic invention by English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins started out as an experiment in poetic language, then evolved into a full-blown poetic technique that allowed Hopkins to write some really memorable verse.

The details are outlined in letters that Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges, who became poet laureate of England. The two shared an interest in "quantitative" prosody, where you count syllables not by stress/unstress, but by "weight" (my term). These letters were reprinted in a paperback of Hopkins' work (by Penguin?) that I bought from a used bookstore in, I think, '75.

I won't spoil the fun for you (if you're just starting the scans I mentioned a few posts ago, you've got a ways to go, anyhow). But, if you're really interested, I suggest you focus first on Milton -- especially the way he handles resolutions across the caesura. (You'll have fun Google-ing that!)

A bit on NPR last week about Hopkins started me recalling all this. The "expert" being interviewed (who was expert on Things Historical about GMH) got it all wrong on the poet's verse technique. He may have gotten it confused with "fourteener" verse, where the unstressed syllables in a line are not counted as strictly (which is why it's often used as lyrics in songs).

For the record: Hopkins did count the unstressed syllables in his lines. It's just for what that matters. (Hint: It made the heavily stressed ones "spring" off the page.)

But, near the end of his short life, Hopkins complained bitterly to Bridges that he'd hit a creative dead end. The self-imposed "rules" to sprung rhythm just grew and grew over time, and they seem to have hemmed him in creatively.

Letting things get too complex can do that. Study the rules of formal verse, for sure -- just be sure to loosen things up when you write.

We're looking for those interstices, remember?

Angle of Dissent

There's this funny thing about censorship: it reveals more about the psychology (or, better, psychopathology) of the censor than anything else.

Yes, censorship is destructive, for sure. And that hurts all of us (especially you and me, dear readers -- which is the subject of today's post). But -- in and of itself -- what the censor chooses to black out, cut away, chop up or otherwise destroy says a lot about him or her. Primarily (pun intended by sheer accident), it describes what they're most afraid of.

And what they're most(ly) afraid of -- usually, anyway -- is revealing their ignorance. About what? That is often the most revealing factor in the equation.

OK, on to today's subject: The Purpose Behind This Entire Thing. ("Ooooo, is he really going to tell us this now?" Um, yeah.)

And What This Is All About (I've decided) is metapoetics. Nobody that I know of ever did an update to Ari's old lecture notes on poetry (guess what it's called), the way Boole and his friends did to Ari's lecture notes on formal logic.

You see, I'm a believer in the old school. I'm also a believer in using the bricks of the old school (and the tips and tricks of its masons) to build the new one.

And it's in the irrational interstices within the fabric of traditional verse where the New World of poetry lives. But when we censor (ourselves or anyone else), all we're really doing is willfully ignoring that meta-reality.

Together, I think we will find the "book beside the Poetics" (really bad inside joke here). I really do.

Tie One On

I rarely open the post editor of this blog with any firm idea of what I'm going to write about.

There have been exceptions, especially at first and recently. But Spontaneous Me just can't stay away long. Today is (another) one of those days.

In this blog, I've tried to give you some options for setting your own guidelines for writing poetry from the traditional point of view. I think they may work equally well for free verse, too. But not for me. When I'm free, I gotta be ME!

Not that writing traditional verse (I'm not fond of the term "formal verse" -- it implies starched collars, scented drawing rooms and a well-developed taste for antiques. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of that -- it's just not my approach, that's all.) is necessarily The Poet In Chains. It, to me, means the reverse: you're in control, not the poem.

So, where does inspiration enter the picture? If your muse is insisting "Write this!" -- how do you deal with it if she happens to be wearing formal attire at the time? Dispassionately.

Duh ... aren't you supposed to be "passionate" about something to do it well? Isn't that what "they" all say? "They" might, not me.

I'm here to be straight with you, my friends. And I'm telling you that you need to develop a dispassionate sensibility for your poetic passions -- especially when your muse sets you alight.

(Hint: look up "dispassionate." Open a new tab {or window, if -- like me today -- you're using IE6} and go to Wiktionary and look it up! Right now! See what I mean? Being "dispassionate" doesn't mean you don't care, it means caring enough to do your very best -- my apologies to Hallmark (tm).)

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OK, so I've now decided it's OK to say "formal verse" if by it you mean your muse had a really nice evening gown* on when she struck the match.

*or tux, or ... . (You get the idea, I'm sure. ;) )