Recently, I was asked to give a talk on writing poetry. What I learned from preparing for that talk was that I don’t follow many rules of writing poetry. Or maybe I do and just don’t realize it. One of my biggest influences on my writing style has been the late William Stafford, a Kansas born and raised poet. When I was a student in the Wichita State University MFA program, I consulted his book, Writing the Australian Crawl, quite often. It was helpful in freeing me to write the way I saw fit rather than the way others thought I should write.
A quote from Pico Iyer, an Indian essayist and novelist, is also helpful for poets. Iyer said: “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing. And though reading is the best school of writing, school is the worst place for reading. Writing should … be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent … and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”
Back to Stafford, who uses a line from William Blake’s “Jerusalem” to illustrate his philosophy of writing poetry.
I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.
Stafford says, “The stance to take, reading or writing, is neutral, ready, susceptible to now: such a stance is contrary to anything tense, or determined or ‘well-trained.’ Only the golden string knows where it is going, and the role for the writer or the reader is one of following, not imposing.”
Here is one of Stafford’s poems, one he wrote about an ordinary event, a car trip with this family. At the end of the poem, he uses lines that he, as a child, heard his mother say often.
The Trip
Our car was fierce enough;
no one could tell we were only ourselves;
so we drove, equals of the car,
and ate at a drive-in where Citizens were dining.
A waitress with eyes made up to be Eyes
brought food spiced by the neon light.
Watching, we saw the manager greet people—
hollow on the outside, some kind of solid veneer.
When we got back on the road we welcomed
it as a fierce thing welcomes the cold.
Some people you meet are so dull
that you always remember their names.*
*From Traveling Through the Dark, Harper and Row. Copyright 1962 by William Stafford.
Stafford’s poem comes from a childhood memory. Notice the words he capitalizes. Notice also his feeling about riding in the car. In a child’s eyes, these items would be significant in a way that they wouldn’t be to an adult. Through the eyes of a child, he perceives that the manager is a phony, something an adult might not notice. Stafford’s parents were the kind of people we like to think of as true Kansans—plain-spoken, not above themselves, honest. Stafford brings that sensibility to his poetry.
When I first started writing poems, I didn’t worry about form. I did what Stafford advised. I followed the “golden string.” I listened to the voices around me and in my memory. We all have a sense of rhythm that has been instilled us from the womb. We hear the rhythm of language around us. If we grew up in, say Kenya, we would hear another rhythm. Those who live in the south hear a different rhythm from those who live in the north or the Midwest. For example, when I first moved to Michigan, I felt like I was living in Holland because so many people up there spoke with that touch of Dutch in their voices. By contrast, many Michiganders thought I had a southern accent. The upshot of this is, whatever the rhythm of your home is, that’s the rhythm that you write in.
Many of my poems come from listening, watching, touching, or smelling—sensory impressions, in other words. I don’t worry about iambic pentameter or blank verse or all that other technical stuff I studied as an English major. In fact, I had to forget all that when I first started writing poetry.
One poem I wrote for a project developed by the current Kansas poet laureate Wyatt Townley is a cinquains with the theme of home:
Home
Raised in
the wood frame house
that once housed my father
around me the ghosts of laundry
roamed free
The poem comes from the memory of my mother hanging the wash in the kitchen on cold winter days. The poem was published in several newspapers around the state.
I find a great deal of inspiration from listening to my husband talk. One day, he started listing all the things he would do if I died before he did. I laughed at his list, but then I started writing and this is what I came up with.
After
He says, if you die before I do, I will cancel
the cable, get an antenna, rabbit ears.
I will move our money to a credit union
I will put a basket on my bike, ride
it to the grocery store, shop daily
for my food, European style.
She listens, thinks of the void her absence
will make, the hole in the world they inhabit,
clawing their way to get to this place.
She thinks of the shadow that would fall
on her if he would go before. Thinks,
but does not say, does not want to say
such a thing aloud into the lamp-lit room.
She turns her face to the dark outside
the window, to the quarter moon.
Published on Kansas Time & Place
Most of what is in this poem is what happened. My husband was frustrated that Cox cable costs so much, even though he loves watching KU basketball on a cable station. He has a bike, but I think it’s a pipe dream for him to ride it to get groceries. We did go through a great deal of angst to get the peaceful place we now inhabit. And I did look out the window and I saw the sliver of the moon. Some may think this is a depressing poem. I don’t. My husband isn’t anxious for me to die. He’s be in a world of hurt without me and he knows it. He’s just imagining an alternative life that I won’t let him have.
As for writing a poem, don’t make it harder than it is. Just stop, look, listen, and write.
poetofacertainage 