RAP: Bend to Beginnings

L.L. here, with Random Acts of Poetry. “When a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. So why not simply write? After all, writing poetry is a healthy mode of expression; it can also, according to poetry therapist John Fox, who even uses poetry with cancer patients, be a mediator of personal healing.

Maybe we do not write poetry because we do not believe we can. Or perhaps we have not taken time to cultivate our own receptivity. Both might ask us to assume the attitude of a child… bold, curious, ready, hungry. This can require a willingness to go back to beginnings. As Marianne Moore said, “To realize originality one has to have the courage to be an amateur.”

What would it mean to be an amateur to become a better poet? With the attitude of a child, we might begin to read with an open mind and a gracious heart. (So what if we don’t understand every word of every poem… remember how the child learns language and the conventions of story and song? The child absorbs without berating himself.)

Yes, we begin to read. But we also begin to write and share. On that note, let me tell you about my daughters. My youngest seems to be a “natural poet.” My eldest, not so much. Until this week when I wrote a villanelle, a particularly challenging ‘form poem.’ Suddenly my eldest decided to pore through the Norton Anthology’s The Making of a Poem. In one day, she wrote two good villanelle’s and an approximate sestina (okay, I felt intimidated by this twelve year old!)

Point of the story? It seems my eldest child is very much a poet if she uses the receptacle of ‘form.’ Without experimenting, she never would have discovered this about herself.

This is why I’m so tickled that Laura Boggess is reading Samuel Hazo to her boys. She’s experimenting and they are responding. (Says Laura, “Their favorites are the ones where he curses.”) Let me say that Hazo was the State Poet for Pennsylvania. His poems are marvelous and I think the boys like him not just for the brash little words but for the depth of passion he communicates in plain language (I went to hear Hazo do a reading and he managed to put me in tears).

All this to say, just because somebody made you read Milton and you fell asleep, or you couldn’t master the free verse of Whitman, doesn’t mean you cannot appreciate or write poetry. You may have to search around for what delights and what frees your words.

To that end, I thought to suggest a few places to start*…

Books on Writing Poetry
Finding What You Didn’t Lose, by John Fox
Poetic Medicine, by John Fox
The Poetry Home Repair Manual, by Ted Kooser
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Forms, eds. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland

Poetry Worth a Read
Sinners Welcome, by Mary Karr
Nine Horses, by Billy Collins
The Song of the Horse, by Samuel Hazo
Where Many Rivers Meet (and all other poetry titles), by David Whyte
Two Men Fighting with a Knife, by John Poch (who is also the editor of 32 Poems)
Tabloid News, by John Leax
Sleeping Preacher, by Julia Kasdorf
Given Poems, by Wendell Berry
New and Selected poems, by Samuel Menashe
A New Hunger, by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Celebrations, by Maya Angelou
Valentines, by Ted Kooser
Basho, the complete haiku, translation of Matsuo Basho
Against Love Poetry, by Eavan Boland

Also, look through The Best Poems of the English Language (be patient with Bloom’s high language and lofty thoughts… that’s just the way he is) or other collections that include Wordsworth, Hopkins, Yeats, Shakespeare, Rosetti, Rumi, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Frost.

A Few Good Places for Poetry On-Line
Pristine Poetry, in 140 characters on Twitter
Catapult Magazine (scroll through to find their art and poetry section “Gallery”)
Verse Daily

And of course I must share my eldest daughter’s villanelle. (Her other villanelles and sestina are at The Garden Still post). A few others tried the villanelle too. Be sure to check out Barbara’s in my comment box. And Yvette’s Through You. This week, some of us also tried the prompt “I look at you as if for the first time.” I’ll share a few snippets below. And you? I hope you’ll read, write, bend to beginnings, and let your poetry march straight out the front door.

Igloo (an almost nonsense villanelle) by Sara.

Some on the ship have seen Arur
a family has a small pet bear,
the sails unfurl
the ship is on the waves of curls.

Excerpt of Monica’s Her Hands

On maroon-cushioned pew-chair to my left: beloved friend, soul-companion.
For the first time, I see her hands, and my panicked breath rushes.

Lines of years. The beginning of old age
In her hands.

Excerpt of Jennifer’s Words in the Wind

…blades sweep the air,
seven stories high
on steel towers rising up from dirt
to catch the breath of God.

I catch my breath.

Excerpt from Laure’s And We Can Remember

slender-sloped back of the broadtail,
glistening with suddenly
at the edge of goodbye.

Erica tried the villanelle, then wrote this free-form poem in response…

Bound by form

Words turn
to granite blocks
square and smooth
to be pushed, shoved, rolled
arranged and re-arranged
sweat drips from my brow
as I line up square walls
back to the cool grey slab
pushing, pushing

If you would like to participate in Random Acts of Poetry, read here for instructions. Also, if you would like to try a prompt for next week’s RAP, why not take a crack at the villanelle? Alternately, you could begin, middle or end any kind of poem with “it felt like home.”

All RAP participants
Monica’s Her Hands
Yvette’s Through You
Jim’s First Sight
Deb’s Unearthly Humus
Jennifer’s Words in the Wind
LL’s A Song of Sudan and At the Window
LL’s daughter’s The Garden Still
Laure’s And We Can Remember
Erica’s Link in the Golden Chain
nAncY’s Daydream
Joelle’s Begin Again
Brian’s Titles into Poems
Laura’s The Pen
Marcus’s A Noiseless Patient Zombie

Woman artwork by Gail Nadeau. Used with permission. Post written by L.L. Barkat. *Note that if you decide to purchase any poetry titles through our links here, you have a chance to support Culture Is Not Optional, one of our non-network friends.

Tagged as: how to write poetry, Poetry, random acts of poetry