On Craft


Indirect Entry: Notes on Poems in Progress


Poets & Writers Magazine


On a walk I took one winter, I passed an old farmhouse that was connected to a shed and barn. Counting the doors on the barn, shed and house, I discovered there were eleven in all, any one of which led to the house. Snow had drifted over the step of the front door; typical of the front doors on country houses in northern New England, it was never used. The house was a perfect illustration of the poem, which has no direct entry, but side-doors of imagery, voice, and music. Indirect entry applies not only to the reader of the poem but to the poem's maker, who enters a poem in progress through the same side-doors, learning by writing how to find his or her way around.

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As you write your initial drafts of the poem, think of your pen or pencil as a dousing stick with which you wander the page in search of the poem's spring underground.

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Or think of your early draft as a crude map of the territory you wish to explore. As you reread the draft, try to glimpse in a line or image the true geography of your poem.

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In Edward Hopper's painting "First Row Orchestra," the central drama takes place at the far right of the painting, where a man and a woman who have arrived early consider a program the woman holds in her hand. The woman, positioned three seats in from the picture frame, is separated from the man by her concentration and by the illusion of distance Hopper has somehow created between the two, even as the man turns toward her. So involved do we become in the togetherness and apartness of this couple and the atmosphere of their moment, we forget the curtain and the stage that dominate the painting, taking up two thirds of the picture space. A poem is like this canvas by Edward Hopper in that it also turns away from the obvious source of action to what is happening at the edges of it. To find your subject, look to one side of the main event.

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Uncertainty is a poet's best friend. The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska put it this way: "Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know,'" adding that the "little phrase 'I don't know' is small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny earth hangs suspended." The problem with demagogues, she says, is that "They 'know,' and what they know is enough for them once and for all. They don't want to find out about anything else because that might diminish the force of their arguments."

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The poet's not-knowing applies not only to his poem but to himself, since a poem in progress requires earnest and continuous self-doubt. On the other hand, it demands an abiding self-confidence. Lacking self-doubt, the writer could not adequately revise his poem; without self-assurance, he could not envision its success. Too much of the one without the other spoils the process.

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It is part of the mystery of creation that a poem develops its own intentions as you bring it to life. Writing your poem, be alert to what it wants to become, which will always be different from what you want it to be. Remember that you are dealing with a living thing.

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Contrary to the notion of the schoolroom, your slow-witted self is your smart self because true intelligence is not in quickness. Work slowly as you make your poem, so as not to give in to the quick self.

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Yet quickness is important to making poems, and it results from chance leaps that ignite the intuition. Your slow process of making a poem should invite this quickness.

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The voice of the poem that moves us most says this: "Brother or sister, we have limited time together on this planet. Let me tell you about this thing that has mattered to me."

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But if we give everything to earnestness and sincerity, our poems will be plain and dull, for the poem is also a feat of the imagination, requiring figurative leaps, counterplay, surprise.

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The night before a certain poet of the postmodern persuasion gave a reading from a new book at the local university, an acolyte turned up to elucidate the poetry for the audience, making full use of the blackboard. I was reminded of an art critic's remark that "the more minimal the art, the more maximal the explanation." Your reader has done a good deal of homework already by living a life. Speak to that life.

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A poem requires a certain linearity, so the reader can follow the sequence of its thought. Yet the insights that inspire the poem are often simultaneous, without regard for sequence. This is why your first drafts may seem mixed up, the middle at the end, and the end at the beginning. Be alert to the need to sort out your poem's sequence as you move from one draft to the next.

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As you do this sorting, consider the attention other poets have give to dramatic action. Carolyn Kizer recalls that in a class she took with Theodore Roethke, he used the following phrase from Sir John Davies to discuss the dramatic structure poems should have, later including the phrase in a poem of his own: "She taught us to turn, and counter-turn, and turn again." In the afterword of his collection In the Western Night, Frank Bidart speaks of an epic planned by Ezra Pound as "an action--a journey undertaken and suffered by the central consciousness of his poem, a journey that begins somewhere, goes somewhere, ends somewhere, a journey the shape of which has significance." Working toward action in our poems, Bidart says, "helps free poetry from so many dead ends--'good description,' the mere notation of sensibility, 'good images,' 'good lines,' or mere wit."

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Theodore Roethke, an elder who advised the younger poet Carolyn Kizer, was himself advised by an elder. In a letter Louise Bogan gave him this instruction, important to all poets: "Look at things until you don't know whether you are they or they are you."

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For a model in looking, consider the English landscape painter John Constable, who is said to have stood at his easel concentrating on his subject for so long, mice would nest in his pockets.

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When deriving a poem from actual experience, remember that no poem cares about what actually happened so much as about the meaning of what happened. To get at that meaning, you will need to depart from the actual experience at least once, more likely several times.

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Excessive attention to a poem's form will doom it; limited attention will doom it more quickly.

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Break the lines of your free-verse poem to stress anticipation.

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An ancient Japanese poems says:
My barn having burned
to the ground

I could see the moon.

A pure use of the image limits the need for descriptive words. As a general rule, the more adjectives and adverbs you put into your poem, the less poem you have, since descriptive words tend to explain, rather than to reveal. The impulse to use them in excess is often defensive, compensating for a weakness in the image.

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In the most successful drafts toward a poem the ending will arrive whole and nearly perfect. To complete the poem, write it upside-down, using your conclusion to determine what you need and don't need in the part that comes before. Be ready to change anything in the process--including the ending.

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There are two alternatives for revising a passage that does not satisfy. The more challenging is to replace the passage; the easier and often better alternative is to remove it.

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When you discover you have written a dead metaphor--a man is cradling his head in his arms, or a road snakes into the darkness--try trading the metaphor for an exact, literal description.

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Most advice for developing poets today is given in the writing workshop, yet the majority of poets we remember did not learn how to make poems in a classroom and probably would have found the idea strange. Your first obligation as a poet, now as always, is to be alone with your poem and know as much as you can about it before presenting it to others for their judgments. No good poem was ever written by a committee.