Blogger: Etta Wilson
Location: Books & Such Nashville Office
Weather: Slight chance of showers
Recently an author asked me how many poems she should include in a manuscript for a picture book of poetry. I had no idea how to answer until I knew the length of the poems, what form they were in, and how they were intended to be used.
That made me think more about the distinction of poetry as a separate form from prose and how to tell one from the other. At an earlier age, we might have said poetry is either lyric or narrative. When we heard the rhythm and rhyme of spoken words, we knew we were hearing poetry. But like so many aspects of life and literature today we are ever straining toward new forms.
With so much free verse around, an audience for poetry may need either to see the way a poem looks or else be told that it is poetry. The emotion or insight or dramatic combination of elements seem more important in defining a poem than aligning the words in any particular format.
But perhaps the look of poetry is more important than we acknowledge. We get an entirely different impression from looking at words assembled in limerick format than we do from words assembled as a sonnet. Their format or their look tells us something about their content that we don’t get from reading the first page of a novel no matter how varied the type or chapter opening decorations. The poet e.e. cummings understood the importance of the looks of poetry, even to the point not using punctuation or capitalization. (Maybe he just didn’t want to use the Shift key on the manual typewriter!)
To illustrate the point, here’s the first half of “The Porcupine Poem” from Speaking in Tongues by Charles Ghigna, former poetry editor of English Journal and much-published children’s poet:
“Just when you think you are done with it, the poem turns on you, charges back for more, pricks you with its finer points . . . .”
Those words are insightful, memorable, we might even say “poetic” in the prose format above. As printed in the book, they are broken into six lines and it’s obviously a poem. The LOOK made it more poetic.
What poem have you read or written that needs to be seen to grasp some aspects of its poetic nature?
Etta:
I’m not a big fan of “shape” poetry, or poetry that requires eyes to be focused on paper or pixels to understand it’s a poem. Originally all poetry was oral, broken into lines and provided with meter to facilitate memorization and recitation. Rhyme came much later, to provide a sonic effect that meter alone didn’t provide.
When I see a poem that demands that the shape or length of lines be known through seeing it to bring out it’s full meaning, I usually pass over it.
DAT
Ah, a man with a cultured imagination! Somewhat of a rarity I think. Any poems to recommend?
“What poem have you read or written that needs to be seen to grasp some aspects of its poetic nature?”
I agree with DAT, but if I had to choose…
Delightfully, Dr. Seuss, because you can walk up and down his words like stairs. But even he did not neglect catching rhythms and rhyming words that rolled off the tongue. Too many have tried to change the definition of poetry without realizing the only way to do it is to change the medium, itself. How many children have accidently rhymed two words and proudly announced, “Hey– I made a poem!” Even in their eyes, a poem is a poem.
Looks are not enough for this most powerful of mediums, as evidenced by how few people consistently read them anymore. Little books of best-loved poems used to be traveler’s companions as they set out on dangerous seas, or wilderness places,or even in the pockets of soldiers. Those poems were small distillations of life, brought into perfect focus — just for a moment. Done well, that was all it took to perfectly connect one scene or one thought to a reader’s soul. What connects with our souls we don’t lightly let go of.
Poetry used to be wildly popular. Back then, rhyme and meter had a familiar ring, like a neighbor come calling, and readers were pleasantly pre-conditioned to “hurry to open their doors.” Poems seemed more welcome in those days. One often found tattered scraps of them in old Bibles, or boxes that only grown children have courage enough to sift through.
Maybe I’ve just become more critical as I get older. But maybe I’m not alone. Because when any person of this new millineum can type the single word, “If” into a search box that sifts through millions of information bits and still come back — IN A MOMENT — with Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem by that title, written in 1899… that tells me there are a lot of other readers out there that really haven’t changed so much, either. And somehow it reassures me to know that no matter how much milk keeps being forced on us, these days… cream still rises to the top.
While I agree with you that both life and literature of today are “ever straining toward new forms,” I wonder if it is actually possible to change the definition of poetry, itself, when it has meant something specific to us for so long. Yes, looks can fool you. But decline in the popularity of modern poetry proves that they can’t for very long.
Ann
Etta:
One of the most famous shape poems is George Herbert’s “Easter Wings”: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/wings.htm
which, when printed on its side, resembles two pair of wings. However, the shape and the words work together, with longer lines and shorter lines reflecting the meaning and gravity Herbert intended.
For something more modern, the cinquain form (5 lines or 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables, in iambic meter) probably needs to be seen to best appreciate it. I’ve had three published at “Amaze, the Cinquain Journal (don’t have the URL handy). The importance of the message should build from the first line to the fourth, as the syllable count per line builds, then the fifth line becomes a “denoument” of sorts, or an ironic throwback to the first line, or a volta–an unexpected twist. The form looks deceptively easy, but the requirements put a premium on word choice.
DAT
Hello Etta, thank you for this lovely post. I should very much like to try out an experiment with you. This is a link to my Italian poems, and although you won’t understand a word of it, but by the colours, layout and images, you will probably get the feel of what they are about. There’s also a link to English poems there but I don’t think the experience is the same because you will understand what is written and the mystery is gone. http://www.eva-ulian.eu/ItalianPoems.htm