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poetry conversation
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From: Helen Frost <helenfrost_at_comcast.net>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 23:22:35 -0400
Dear friends,
thank you for this conversation. It’s so nice to hear from different corners of our universe. I’ll see if I can respond to the things that have been offered in today’s posts (writing late Saturday evening).
Charles, I was delighted to see you posting a poem. Don’t you love the economy of poetic language? The beating and torturing of a poem that this poem describes is “learned behavior”—what I think Megan was talking about yesterday—and in my experience, it’s not the way kids approach poetry on their own. I’ve seen teenage boys in a court-ordered violence-prevention program fighting over Shakespeare poems because they have found something that says how they feel about their girlfriends (I had put out a pile of poems on a table and invited them to help themselves).
A different passage I love is this one, from William Carlos Williams’ poem, “Asphodel, that Greeny Flower” (I hope the line breaks will come out right).
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”
Sheryll and Roseanne, you have beautifully put into words and images how this writing process feels for me, with different elements coming forward and receding at different times. Thank you. I love the kids-in-the-car description. (Roseanne, you could totally be an English teacher.)
Elsa asks:
“Helen, how do you decide what poetic form you want for a particular story, whether a classical one such as the sestina, or a form of your own invention? Do the elements of the story--plot, theme, characters, setting--seem to call for a particular form; or is it a more gradual process, that you develop in the course of writing?”
Each book is different. It almost doesn’t feel like a decision. I remember Frances saying about a draft of The Braid that I thought was more-or-less finished: “I think you are close to finding your voices and your form.” I kind of gulped. And then I went back into it and soon figured out that complex formal structure that amazed both Frances and me--the discovery that it actually worked, that language really is that strong and flexible and will do the heavy lifting if we let it.
Sometimes the right form is very hard to find. I wrote about 1000 pages of Hidden to get to the 176 pages in the final version, because I kept writing about 60 pages of something that didn’t work—forms and inventions I was trying that interfered with the story instead of helping bring it forth. Or maybe there was some other resistance that I wasn’t acknowledging; I’m never sure.
Maggie, thank you for saying you don’t ask, “Why does this story have to be told in poetry (or verse)?” I never understand that kind of reading, or approach— thinking about how a story might be otherwise told, rather than entering it on its own terms. In my books, I’m working the shoreline of story and poetry, pulling in some elements of each, and I can’t worry too much about people who might ask “But are these poems?” or “Is this a novel?” It’s both and it’s neither. I know it may sound audacious, but I don’t think it’s glib, to say that I write my stories in poems because I’m a poet. There’s a richness in the form that I love to explore, and I really appreciate readers who are willing to enter the exploration with me.
You say: “Poetry is such a big part of MY world that I forget how peripheral it is elsewhere.” Yes, I know. Sometimes when I’m on the way to a conference where I know lots of poets will be (AWP), I love walking the aisles of the airplane and seeing half the people reading poetry books and literary magazines, and I think what a cool world it would be (for me, anyway!) if that were a regular occurrence. Your panel sounds really interesting.
Before I sign off here, I feel like sharing another story about Frances’ editing of Crossing Stones. It was hard to depict Ollie’s confusion without confusing the reader, and here’s an early-draft editorial email that still makes me smile: “I’m not really clear about what happened to Ollie, just how he lost his arm. Is this intentional, or did I just not get it? I know there was a rat in the foxhole and Ollie is confused. So am I.”
Goodnight, and thank you, everyone.
Helen
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Received on Sat 19 Apr 2014 10:23:23 PM CDT
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 23:22:35 -0400
Dear friends,
thank you for this conversation. It’s so nice to hear from different corners of our universe. I’ll see if I can respond to the things that have been offered in today’s posts (writing late Saturday evening).
Charles, I was delighted to see you posting a poem. Don’t you love the economy of poetic language? The beating and torturing of a poem that this poem describes is “learned behavior”—what I think Megan was talking about yesterday—and in my experience, it’s not the way kids approach poetry on their own. I’ve seen teenage boys in a court-ordered violence-prevention program fighting over Shakespeare poems because they have found something that says how they feel about their girlfriends (I had put out a pile of poems on a table and invited them to help themselves).
A different passage I love is this one, from William Carlos Williams’ poem, “Asphodel, that Greeny Flower” (I hope the line breaks will come out right).
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”
Sheryll and Roseanne, you have beautifully put into words and images how this writing process feels for me, with different elements coming forward and receding at different times. Thank you. I love the kids-in-the-car description. (Roseanne, you could totally be an English teacher.)
Elsa asks:
“Helen, how do you decide what poetic form you want for a particular story, whether a classical one such as the sestina, or a form of your own invention? Do the elements of the story--plot, theme, characters, setting--seem to call for a particular form; or is it a more gradual process, that you develop in the course of writing?”
Each book is different. It almost doesn’t feel like a decision. I remember Frances saying about a draft of The Braid that I thought was more-or-less finished: “I think you are close to finding your voices and your form.” I kind of gulped. And then I went back into it and soon figured out that complex formal structure that amazed both Frances and me--the discovery that it actually worked, that language really is that strong and flexible and will do the heavy lifting if we let it.
Sometimes the right form is very hard to find. I wrote about 1000 pages of Hidden to get to the 176 pages in the final version, because I kept writing about 60 pages of something that didn’t work—forms and inventions I was trying that interfered with the story instead of helping bring it forth. Or maybe there was some other resistance that I wasn’t acknowledging; I’m never sure.
Maggie, thank you for saying you don’t ask, “Why does this story have to be told in poetry (or verse)?” I never understand that kind of reading, or approach— thinking about how a story might be otherwise told, rather than entering it on its own terms. In my books, I’m working the shoreline of story and poetry, pulling in some elements of each, and I can’t worry too much about people who might ask “But are these poems?” or “Is this a novel?” It’s both and it’s neither. I know it may sound audacious, but I don’t think it’s glib, to say that I write my stories in poems because I’m a poet. There’s a richness in the form that I love to explore, and I really appreciate readers who are willing to enter the exploration with me.
You say: “Poetry is such a big part of MY world that I forget how peripheral it is elsewhere.” Yes, I know. Sometimes when I’m on the way to a conference where I know lots of poets will be (AWP), I love walking the aisles of the airplane and seeing half the people reading poetry books and literary magazines, and I think what a cool world it would be (for me, anyway!) if that were a regular occurrence. Your panel sounds really interesting.
Before I sign off here, I feel like sharing another story about Frances’ editing of Crossing Stones. It was hard to depict Ollie’s confusion without confusing the reader, and here’s an early-draft editorial email that still makes me smile: “I’m not really clear about what happened to Ollie, just how he lost his arm. Is this intentional, or did I just not get it? I know there was a rat in the foxhole and Ollie is confused. So am I.”
Goodnight, and thank you, everyone.
Helen
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Received on Sat 19 Apr 2014 10:23:23 PM CDT
