The Loose-Fish

--a prose guide to understanding and writing poetry


I had the good fortune to hear Mary Oliver read at UNCA on March 31, 2007. She is a gentle spirit with a wonderful sense of humor and great talent. Her guide to understanding and writing poetry is as graceful and quiet as she seems to be on the stage--much more about introspection than fancy fanfare. It is accessible and a wonderful tool, especially for beginning poets. It is a short book of 126 pages, and yet she covers the basics. I'll give you only a few highlights, as to do much more would be to quote the whole book.

Introduction

--This book is about the things that can be learned. It is about matters of craft,
primarily.

Getting Ready

Oliver describes writing poetry to a courtship, and the mind must make appointments with the heart and keep them, or nothing happens.

--The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem...learns quickly what kind of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evening..it waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to arrive when you do...if you are only there sometimes, it will appear fleetingly or not appear at all....For the would be writer of poems this is the first and most essential thing to understand. It come before everything, even technique.

Reading Poems

--In looking for poems and poets, don't dwell on the boundaries of style, or time, or even of countries and cultures. Think of yourself rather as one member of a single, recognizable tribe...the differences you will find between then and now are interesting. They are not profound.

--There is, in other words, nothing new about it. To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air.

Imitation

--...in the world of writing it is originality that is sought out, and praised, while imitation is the sin of sins. Too bad. I think if imitation were encouraged much would be learned well that is now learned partially and haphazardly. Before we can be poets, we must practice: imitation is a very good way of investigating the real thing.

Sound

This was one of my favorite chapters. Simple but clear about the power of sound in poetry.

--Now what is the difference between a rock and a stone? Both use the vowel o (short in rock, long in stone), both are words of one syllable, and there the similarity ends. Stone has a mute near the beginning of the word that then is softened by the vowel. Rock ends with mute K. That K "suddenly stopes the breath."

More Devices of Sound

--Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part--the content, the pace, the diction, the rhythm, the tone--as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it.

The Line

This chapter deals with metre as well as enjambment.

--No two poems will sound exactly alike, even though both are written in, say, iambic tetramater rhyming couplets. Every poem has a basic measure, and a continual counterpoint of differences playing against that measure. Poems that do not offer such variations quickly become boring.

Some Given Forms

Basic information about "design" and ordering poems: information on stanzas, sonnets, syllabic verse.

Verse That is Free

--Free verse is not, of course, free. It is free from formal metrical design but it certainly isn't free from some kind of design.

--Enjambment--as I have said before--gives the writer an ability to restrain or to spur on the pace of the poem.

Diction, Tone, Voice

--Diction means word choice. The overall effect of the diction of a piece of writing, in addition to other elements...is called tone. The term voice is used to identify ...who is speaking through the poem. This voice or speaker is often called the persona.

--Inappropriate Language...poetic diction...the cliche...inversion...informational language

--Appropriate Language...syntax...variety...simple (beginners)...complicated (advanced)

Imagery

--Figurative language: Simile...Metaphor...Personification...Allusion

--Figurative language can give shape to the difficult and the painful. It can make visible and "felt" that which is invisible and "unfeelable." Imagery, more than anything else, can take us out of our own existence and let us stand in the condition of another instance, or another life. It can make the subject of the poem, whatever it is, as intimate as honey--or ashes--in the mouth. Use it responsibly.

Revision

--In truth, revision is an almost endless task...this is the usual way: hard work, hard work, had work.

--It is good to remember how many sweet and fine poems there are in the world--I mean, it is a help to remember that out of writing, and the rewriting, beauty is born. It is good also to remember that, now and again, it is simply best to throw a poem away. Some things are unfixable.

Workshops and Solitude

--A workshop can be helpful in a number of important ways.

--It is no use thinking, however, that the writing of poems--the actual writing--can accomodate itself to a social setting...it cannot.

--finally, one realizes that one may be ready for the real work. On that day the writer understands that solitude is the necessity, and leaves friends, and workshops, and handbooks, and heads for it, diligently and resolutely.

Conclusion

--the poem is not an exercise. It is not "wordplay." Whatever skill or beauty it has, it contains something beyond language devices, and a purpose other than itself. And it is a part of the sensibility of the writer...

--A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry. Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision--a faith, to us an old-fashioned term. Yes indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, Indeed.

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