We’ve been having some interesting discussions about poems, poetry, and poetics on the PoetryEtc list — some of it focused around my own recent work. Frederick Pollack offered some thorough and pointed criticism of my poems — and my ‘kind’ of poetry.
What is my kind of poetry? Mainstream, I gather. Lyrical, perhaps. Not, certainly, his favorite sort.
While I’m unlikely to change the kind of poetry I write, Frederick’s critiques and perspective are being very helpful. I find myself thinking, for the first time in too long, about what I’m doing, and why; how I do it, and to what end. I’ve been lazy lately. The poems have come too easily, and I’ve posted them too quickly.
I read poems, and I read books about writing poems; but I don’t often read, or think much about, criticism or theory. Perhaps, twenty years in, it’s past time.
Frederick’s advice:
Two tips: 1. Distinguish between your genuinely
subjective experience and your narrowly autobiographical experience.
The former is what counts. As I said before, neither “I” nor “you”
(nor parents, siblings, Aunt Tilly etc.) are at all important in
themselves; only as functions of a poem and how it engineers its
reader’s experience. 2: Realize that a narrative, a story, is a
metaphor. In a narrative poem, the guiding incident is the poem’s
metaphor. (Stylistically, therefore, there should be as few other
metaphors as possible.)
While the first point is familiar to me, the second brought me up short. Not regarding narrative poetry, which I seldom attempt, but regarding what I do write. I thought about how image-heavy my poems tend to be. Then I looked around the room.
My house is just the same. Every wall is covered with art. Every room, even the bathrooms, the kitchen, the closet/ dressing room. Tables and shelves are covered with books, magazines, artifacts. There are goldfish in the garden, parakeets in the sunroom, a small aquarium in the living room, and cats and dogs wherever they please. Everywhere, memories, totems, collections. Also dust, dishes, and pet hair.
I conclude that my house, and my poems, reflect my mind: cluttered, personal, eclectic. Dusty. And I wonder — have you noticed such correlations in your own writing? Do your poems look like your house, minimal and modern, or traditional, or Bohemian, or . . . ? Would an attempt to change the style of your writing be like an attempt to change the style of your rooms? And would that be easily done, or not?
I love my house, and don’t plan to change it. But you might expect to see some experimentation here.
Leave a Reply to Brad FrederiksenCancel reply