The Art and Craft of Poetry. Michael R. Collings

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Borgo Literary Guides

      ISSN 0891-9623

      Number Nine

      Copyright © 1996, 2009 by Michael R. Collings

      All poetry remains the property of the individual poets

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

      without the expressed written consent

      of the author and publisher.

      Printed in the United States of America

      *

      I am particularly grateful to W. Gregory Stew­art, a fine poet—both artist and craftsman—for his permission to reprint “Robo Ben” and “Dædalus” and for his support of the Pepper­dine University Creative Writing program and its arts magazine, Expressionists.

      FOREWORD

      While many of the poems referred to as models have been posted on internet sites, some exercises in this sequence are keyed to materials in the follow­ing books, although it is not necessary to purchase them in order to explore the possibilities of poetry presented here:

      Drury, John. The Poetry Dictionary. Cincinnati OH: Story Press, 1995. [Drury]. Drury is particularly valu­able for its detailed discus­sions of liter­ary forms and movements. The sections need not be read in se­quence.

      Rosengarten, Herbert, and Amanda Goldrick-Jones, eds. The Broad­view An­thology of Poetry. Pe­ter­borough, Ontario, Canada; Orchard Park NY, 1993. [TBAP]. The Broadview Anthology pro­vides access to po­etry from Chaucer to the present, many of which will form the kernel of dis­cussion; at the same time, the an­thology allows students to explore professional-level writ­ing.

      Several additional texts are highly recommended for any writers, primarily as adjuncts to the writing process:

      Hodges, John C. and Mary E. Whitten. Har­brace Col­lege Hand­book. Current edition. Poets frequently defy the conventions of lan­guage, re-defining the functions of punctuation marks, gram­matical structures, etc., for po­etic pur­poses. However, in almost every case, the poets in question fully understand the conventions before altering them. Effective poetry must convince their readers that, in spite of experimen­tal surfaces, the poets under­stand the under­pinnings of English grammar and usage.

      Collegiate Dictionary, such as The American Her­itage Dictionary. Cur­rent edi­tion. The same caveat holds for spell­ing: contemporary poetry often re-works and reforms words, but before poets do that they must be fa­mil­iar with the standards they are rejecting. Effective poems must convince their readers that any aberrant forms are pur­poseful rather than accidental or stemming from ig­norance.

      The accompanying exercises are designed primarily for writers al­ready ac­quainted with the rudiments of poetry: meter, rhythm, rhyme, figures, images, etc. While several pages are devoted to definitions and discussions, most of The Art and Craft of Poetry concentrates on exercises and, most frequently, college students’ responses to those exercises.

      Most of the poems included as examples come from students in intermedi­ate Creative Writing classes over the past twenty years. These poems and others like them formed the basis of discussion in classes spanning over fifteen years.

      Note: Many of the student poems—here reproduced as originally submitted, without the benefit of subsequent revising—are unusually well done; others demonstrate common weaknesses, and close readings may suggest serious problems as well as ways other writers might avoid those dangers. All, however, show a commitment to writing, to poetry, and to art. They are included to demonstrate individual responses to poetry; as student works or works-in-progress, they are intended to provide models for discussion. You are encouraged to read them, assess their effectiveness as poetry for you, and emulate the strengths you find in them.

      I am particularly grateful to the following former students for allowing me to incorporate their voices into this handbook: Janna Anderson, Lisa Bates, Carter Boisvert, Joanie Chan, Ethan Collings, Ty de Long, Alex Duncan, Robert Efford, Allison Elms, Christian Hawkey, Erin Kayler, Kim Kooyers, Marnee Lewis, Mercedes Martinez, Adrienne Maxwell, Tamar Moore, Rachel Moreno, Matt Oden, Nichole Paré, Alan Regan, Keith Skilling, Michael Strickland, Amy Vicker, Jason Wall, Chad Weiss, and John Weseley. Without their dedication as students and writers, this handbook would not have been possible.

      —Michael R. Collings

      Meridian, Idaho

      March 2009

      SOME PRELIMINARY MATTERS—WHAT IS POETRY?

      C. S. Lewis argues that before we can judge the merits of anything—from a cathe­dral to a poem—we must first un­derstand what it is. Similarly, before tack­ling the issue of writing poetry, we must first understand what a poem is ... and what it is not.

      Characteristics of a Poem

      Most theorists of poetry gen­erally identi­fy four basic characteristics of po­etry:

       Lineation—often considered the only absolute dif­feren­tia be­tween prose and poetry, although some the­orists argue even this point. In most poetry, however, the poet retains absolute control over line length and division.

       Sound/Music—the effects of rhyme, repetitions of various sorts, and the effects pro­duced by specific word combinations.

       Rhythm—recurrent patterns of sound, pitch, stress, accent, etc., includ­ing both formal metrics and less formal re­petitive syntactical, gram­matical, and thematic patterns.

       Compression—the art of folding into the poem more meaning than a lit­eral reading produces; this might include not only removing linguistic deadwood but also strengthening image and symbol.

      Simple vs. Sophisticated Poetry

      “To a biolo­gist, simple forms of life are simple and complex forms are so­phisti­cated. Thus, the bird is not better in any ob­jective sense than the jel­lyfish, but it is far more sophisticated in that the potential of living matter has been de­veloped much further.

      “As an individual, the biologist may prefer a ca­nary to a jellyfish as a pet or may feel that the jelly­fish is better as an example of living tissue; but act­ing as a biol­ogist, his or her use of the terms simple and so­phisticated is objec­tive.

      “Does all poetry have to be sophisticated? Of course not. Judging by the verse of greeting cards, far more people pre­fer their poetry simple—regu­lar meter, con­ventional sentiments, and the cozy famil­iarity of time-tested clichés. Writing simple verse is a craft and there are books that teach it. But this is not one.

      “Sophisticated literature is the subject of this text. It is by definition complex, but it is not nec­es­sarily cluttered or obscure. A fly’s eye, for ex­ample, is in some ways more complex in structure than a human eye, but as an instrument of sight it is far from so­phisticated. It cannot see as well. In the same way, a villanelle with its complex systems of rhymes and repeated lines is structurally more com­plicated than, say, a three-line haiku; but in some cases the haiku is more sophis­ticated because it does more—it has a wider, more subtle range of suggestion.” (Stephen Minot, Three Genres)

      Discussion: To what extent are the following poems “simple”? Is one more “sophisticated” than the other? If so, what elements contribute to its increased depth and complexity? Is there a specific moment in each when the poem begins to falter as poem? Remember, “simple” and “sophisticated” in this context merely describe; they do not judge.

      Joyce Kilmer, TREES

      I think that I shall never see

      A poem lovely as a tree.

      A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

      Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

      A