The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Lockward

I. Generating Material / Using Time

Those who have caused us early pain and loneliness,

the sources of our art:

should we detest them or kiss their feet?

—Wesley McNair

Craft Tip #1: Where Inspiration Waits for You

—Bruce Dethlefsen

Identify your best sources of inspiration. Return to them when needed. For me, it's the Three R's: Reading, Regarding, and Remembering.

When I read a poem that knocks me out, I try to figure out how the poet did that to me and where can I go with this. It's as if the poet built a swimming pool of ideas. Do I want to jump into the deep end or the shallow end, stick my toe in from the ladder, or soar from the diving board? After reading such a poem, consider the following:

1. Is there an image that grabs you? If so, try to imitate it in a new poem.

2. Is there something about the syntax, some unusual sentence structure that you might try your hand at?

Regarding and observing is my second best source of inspiration. When I was in college, I sat at the bus terminal and watched people come and go. Good poets belong in a witness protection program. Make the following practices part of your routine:

1. Never leave home without a small notebook.

2. As you quietly observe, take some notes. If you don't, those observations might be gone by the time you get home.

Remembering is my third best source of inspiration. I've constructed a big house with some sixty rooms for me to visit any time I want. I choose a room and look around, say room thirteen, where I see myself at the sock hop, in my white socks, hoping to work up the courage to ask some girl to dance. On any given day, you can begin this way:

1. Make a list of important events from a particular year or part of a year, for example, the summer of '66.

2. Choose one and freewrite about it. See where it takes you.

Poem and Prompt

Flying

I have a flying dream,

have since I was a kid.

In it, I remember suddenly

how to fly, something

for some reason I've forgotten;

by getting to a certain place

in my mind, I'm able simply to rise.

I go up only about sixty or seventy feet,

but that's high enough to look down on

my house, the one I grew up in,

in Tuscola, look down on it

and the trees of the neighborhood;

it's high enough to watch my father

from above as he leaves for work,

to see my mother as she gathers grapes

from the backyard arbor,

to see my sister in her pretty dress,

pulling all her friends in our wagon

down the long, new sidewalks,

to see our many dogs over the years—

high enough to see the blur of childhood,

to put my quiet shadow over all of us

early on. In the dream it's a summer's day

and I might sometimes also

be the one looking up, squinting hard

and seeing way high above

birds moving, black spots against the blue.

—Philip F. Deaver

Deaver takes a conventional approach to the poem of imagination, that is, he begins with a dream. This allows him to make the impossible possible, to make us suspend our disbelief. He goes back in time to childhood and places himself in the sky. From there he looks down on his childhood home and gives us a catalog of things he sees. He uses first person, and, although he's writing about past experience, he uses present tense. Thus, the scene is dynamic, and we feel as if we are witnessing it. Let's give this way of approaching memory a try.

Put yourself into a dream-like state and go back to an earlier time. You might return to your old house, but you could also return to school or summer camp or the hospital. Now recall images and memories. (Feel free to invent.) Quickly write them down. Select the best ones and the ones that work together. Where could you be as you observe the scene—in a tree, on the ceiling, on the roof? What imaginative way could get you there?

Now do a 10-minute timed draft using the images and memories.

Notice how Deaver brings some complication into his poem by introducing the shadow towards the end, the shadow he cast over his family. Makes me wonder. But I'm glad that he doesn't explain this. Leave some mystery in your poem, too. Avoid the temptation to explain or edit out what's mysterious.

Deaver uses free verse. Note his line breaks. Pay attention to your own.

In subsequent drafts, consider how your poem might change if you used past tense and third person.

Sample Poems

Mistaken

Only in the dead of night my mother,

lost to the seismic quake in her chest,

returns to my unbridled delight.

Not gone at all.

She wastes no time in preparing

chicken pot pie,

lasagna,

a big, thick steak.

From the head of the table, she pours wine.

In our gold-washed room, I crouch at her side,

press my face against her flushed cheek,

inhale her honeysuckle,

feel in her kiss the soft landing of a Monarch.

And my family, we—

all laughing and talking—reach

for seconds, for one more hunk

of honeyed bread from her hands.

Greedy, we demand more

and she hurries to the kitchen,

doesn't return. A cloud blinds us.

In the darkness, we keen like wolves.

And then I awake,

the aftershock

more shattering than the dream.

—Linda Simone

The Dream

A great soft arm

reaches down from the sky,

turned up for me to climb.

I dance in the palm,

shimmy my way up, heel

a little jig, and drop to curtsey

before two huge eyes,

open as a schoolhouse

airing itself out, its dusk echo

an invitation to the past. Yes,

I remember this. Tetherball,

hopscotch, my pet rock Sally.

When I lost her, I cried.

Same when I skinned my knee,

killed my favorite frog. See me there—

child of heartache

and tangled vines, tall forts

and trampolines—taming whole

universes with my star-tipped wand.

The seats of my swing set—

cushions on thrones.

What can I hope for now

that I couldn't imagine then?

I might stretch my own

great arm to memory, smudge

these fingertips with dream stuff,

and turn my palm up to everything

that wants to dance with me.

—Melissa Studdard

Craft Tip #2: Using Another Poet As Muse

—Cecilia Woloch

One strategy that's often helpful to me in the generative phase is to simply immerse myself in the work of a single poet whose language and music excite and, ideally, also mystify me a bit; I read and then I try to write my way into that language, that music, that sensibility—which is, of course, impossible. But the effort tends to lead me into a different place in my own sensibilities and relationship to language, and that takes me wherever it takes me.

Once I get going on something, I'm happy. Even if it doesn't result in any new poems, the exercise, alone, of trying on another poet's voice, seems worthwhile to me—a kind of cross-training and a way to experiment without being too self-conscious about it. And since I don't want to repeat myself—as Anne Carson has written, I'll do anything to avoid boredom—this exercise moves me away from saying and doing what I've already said and done.

To assure that my new poem is not too derivative, I read its lines backward—that is, in reverse order, from last line to first. This helps me to hear each line individually, and to hear how it's working as a unit, and also to hear if the overall music of the poem is really working. Sometimes this exercise has resulted in my re-ordering the sequence of lines in a poem or turning the whole poem upside down.

Poem and Prompt

More Lies

Sometimes I say I'm going to meet my sister at the café—

even though I have no sister—just because it's such

a beautiful thing to say. I've always thought so, ever since

I read a novel in which two sisters were constantly meeting

in cafés. Today, for example, I walked alone

on the wet sidewalk, wearing my rain boots, expecting

someone might ask where I was headed. I bought

a steno pad and a watch battery, the store windows

fogged up. Rain in April is a kind of promise, and it costs

nothing. I carried a bag of books to the café and ordered

tea. I like a place that's lit by lamps. I like a place

where you can hear people talk about small things,

like the difference between azure and cerulean,

and the price of tulips. It's going down. I watched

someone who could be my sister walk in, shaking the rain

from her hair. I thought, even now florists are filling

their coolers with tulips, five dollars a bundle. All over

the city there are sisters. Any one of them could be mine.

—Karin Gottshall

Have you ever had an imaginary friend or relative? Perhaps that person filled some emptiness or loneliness in your life. Or perhaps the invention satisfied some creative urge inside you.

For this prompt use the palimpsest method, that is, impose a new poem on top of the model poem. Place a piece of paper to the right or the left of the poem. Then begin at the beginning and go line by line, doing what the poet has done. Let the first stanza introduce a lie. Try to keep to the sentence structure used by Gottshall. Where she has a metaphor, you have one, too. Follow her pattern of enjambment from line to line and stanza to stanza.

In subsequent drafts, feel free to abandon whatever doesn't seem right. Let the poem go where it wants to go. Chances are that the poem you end up with will bear little, if any, resemblance to the original.

Sample Poems

Waiting for My Friend

Sometimes I say I'm going to meet my friend in the park—

even though I have no friend—just because I'd really

like to have a pal, a buddy, someone to listen when I talk

That sounds so nice—my friend is waiting for me—

the same as in the conversation I heard last week about

two friends who did everything together—talk, walk, shop

Today I carried a book and walked alone along the tree-lined street

stopped at a public bench—as though expecting someone

to meet me, looked at my watch to check the time

Anyone observing would think my friend were late

and I a patient person counting on his or her arrival

Someone might ask and I would say we were going to a party

for yet another friend—who was waiting for us at the door

of the restaurant, ready with a quick hug and cheery welcome

Then I watched someone who could be my friend get off the bus

looking around for the expected greeter and when she appeared

they walked off together keeping pace with each other's footsteps

as I pretended that the next person off the bus might be my friend.

—Ann DeVenezia

From a Lithuanian Courtyard

Today I am going to say I am Lithuanian—

though I have no Baltic blood at all—

because I want to know friendship like a bee,

because I want to have rain at my core.

Today I think I have always wanted to be

Lithuanian, to inflect with ease, palatize

my Ls like a Lithuanian, feel them soften

in my mouth—now resinous, now hard.

My language only knows one L, and allows

only one negative at a time. In Lithuanian,

I am not Lithuanian never. My history

branches back to everywhere, no accumulation

anywhere. But today I'm going to walk the streets

of Vilnius and wait for rain to fall in great drops

from a sudden sky, and get wet like a Lithuanian, briefly,

before stepping out of the road like a Lithuanian

into the shelter of a passageway to a courtyard.

At home there are no passageways and no courtyards,

only the great organized concourses of houses

and lawns, side streets and highways,

and the forested hills beyond scattered

with tumbling stone walls enclosing nothing.

I like the candor of a courtyard retreat,

its acknowledged need of an exit. For one day,

I am going to lie, say I am Lithuanian—

a bee who knows my friends' survival

depends on the dance of my language,

and on my setting out, and on my return.

—Lisken Van Pelt Dus

Craft Tip #3: Scratching

—Michelle Bitting

One of the greatest obstacles writers face in developing a strong creative practice, especially those of us raising children and holding jobs outside the home, can be carving out the time to actually set pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. As if striking generative gold, the excavation of scintillating syntax, language, and turns of thought and emotion weren't challenging enough.

During periods when life piles on unruly mounds of work and domestic duties, bereft of real writing time, I grow increasingly anxious and moody. I worry I will slip out of the creative zone I've worked so hard to tap—ideas will fade, metaphors atrophy—I'll wake up an exile from my own poetry country.

The good news is I know I'm not alone. And I know one of the greatest tools we possess is the ability to scratch, to jot something down on paper in the briefest, skinniest interstices of the busiest day, week, month, year. It's an old and obvious practice, but I believe it is essential to anyone interested in maintaining a true writerly life.

I remember reading that poet Mary Jo Bang would scribble random thoughts and observations walking or riding the train during her busy teaching week when that was all she could grab. Nuts and berries gathered into the basket of a pocket notebook that eventually might transform into a poetic fare as it marinated along in her unconscious.

The great choreographer Twyla Tharp devotes an entire chapter in her book, The Creative Habit, to the subject of Scratching, suggesting it's like clawing the side of a mountain to get a toehold, a grip, some sort of traction to keep moving upward and onward … It's primal and very private.

Julianna Baggott, a highly prolific writer, suggests a daily practice broken down into three parts that focus and make specific one's scratching routine:

1. Memory Exercise: Jot down three memories from the distant or immediate past. A sentence or two or even just a sensuously descriptive phrase.

2. Eavesdropping Exercise: Write down three things overheard during the day. Snippets you catch in line at the grocery store, from the radio, from someone blabbing too loud on his cell phone.

3. Image Exercise: Notice things. Gestures. Junk. Movement. Detritus. Smoke billowing up behind the supermarket bakery. The Psychedelic Anarchy sticker someone slapped on the top of the signal lamp at the crosswalk where you are standing.

When time finally permits, pick a few of the items from each category and use them to create something. Coax them gently without forcing it too hard, letting the thoughts and images bob and bounce, having faith magic may surface that resonates. Even if the sum of the parts doesn't converge into a keeper poem, you've done a little scratching to stay in the zone and keep up your writerly chops. There may be one item, one berry you've collected that spins you off into a wonderland of unexpected thought