Since this is POETRY MONTH I thought I’d post something about how we novelists can benefit from the poet’s labor of love. As I see it, POETRY is all about the pure pleasure of language, the way it can wash through you, bringing fresh images, giving sound and shape to thought.
When I read a poem I let the language have its way with me, but I often return to those I’m particularly captivated by to understand why they reached more deeply inside me than others. Here are a few things that I admire in good poems and that I keep in mind while writing my prose.
Poets are an economical bunch. They use few, but powerful, multi-tasking words to create their stories. I think prose writers can learn so much about the fine art of word selection by reading poets, old and modern.
Here’s one of my favorite classics A Shady Friend for Torrid Days by Emily Dickinson. In three stanzas she covers the ups and downs of human relationships and she does it with such tactile images.
Is easier to find
Than one of higher temperature
For frigid hour of mind.
The vane a little to the east 5
Scares muslin souls away;
If broadcloth breasts are firmer
Than those of organdy,
Who is to blame? The weaver?
Ah! the bewildering thread! 10
The tapestries of paradise
So notelessly are made!
Poets weave the sounds of their language in such a way that they create special rhythms and harmonies.
I can’t read Vachel Lindsay without hearing the beat of the drums or feeling the heat of The Congo. It’s not among my favorites, but it’s one I hear long after reading
Sandberg brings the city of Chicago to life as no tourist guide book could ever do. Read these lines and you are there as the poet was those many years ago.
Tool Maker,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
Alliteration: The repetition of the inital consonant sounds.
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
My grandmother loved Tennyson. I remember her thick book of his work and how fascinated I was by it as a girl. She kept it in a special place but sat with it unopened on her lap quite frequently. And at times she would read from it. So here's to Tennyson and to my grandmother's appreciation for his poetry! It's funny the things we remember — the things that wind up being part of our adult lives one way or another.
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass remains my fave.
And as far as lyrical, poetic prose, Ray Bradbury's novels do it for me.
Hey C.Lee. Great post and one that rings true for me. I think I often fall foul of the poet that lives on my left shoulder. She whispers lilting words into my ears when I write and I often have to shush her into silence.
My writing is very much influenced by the poet in me – I often look for the way a paragraph reads in the length of the sentences and the sound of the words as I read the paragraph aloud.
I sometimes think that some writers have a natural instinct for the rhythm of words and thats what draws us deeper into their stories.
Great post and some pretty astute musings from your commenters.
thanks
Tee
Great post, C.Lee. I wasn't familiar with that poem by Emily D., but I'm going to write it off and memorize it now!
Yes, Bish. I love that image of fog and the cat feet. WB Yeats is always a joy.
We need to read more of it. IMHO.
Didn't Carl Sandburg also write about San Francisco and fog and cat feet?
I'm particularly fond of William Butler Yeats's early works.
I've always had a bit of envy for those who write poetry. My seems so clumsy in comparison.
There is something inspirational about poetry. I always want to "write something" after I read it.
Loved the stories behind those wonderful poems, Christopher. Thanks for sharing them here.
Oh this was AWESOME! It makes me want to go write. 😀 Thank you.
My favourite poem is 50/50 between Ozymandius by Percy Bysse Shelley and Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. With your permission I'll reveal the first lines.
'I met a traveller from an antique land…' This is Ozymandius who is Ramesses an ancient Egyption ruler. The poem is inspired by the remains of his statue which is now in the British museum in London. Shelley wrote it as part of a bet with a friend to write a poem about a moral that mighty kings eventually fall and leave nothing.
'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…' was supposed to be a poem that came complete in a dream to Coleridge who woke up and frantically tried to write it down, but he was famously interrupted by a 'person on business from Porlock' and when the person left he tried to finish the poem but had forgotten the rest of it, which is why it remains unfinished.
What I love about both poems is that they take the reader away to exotic far off lands in such few words. But also I love the fact that both have interesting stories surrounding the writing of them. They are both must reads in my eyes.