How does a poem begin?
For me, a poem begins with a phrase, image, or idea that won’t leave me alone. If I think of something and it’s still there in a few hours, I write it down and try to use it. Often when I am driving I get inspired by landscapes, so many poems begin there; sometimes poems begin when I am thinking about something I’ve read or encountered, and I want to explore it.
Many other times, poems begin in phrases or stories from other people. I’m fascinated by language in any form, so when I hear a phrase I think is interesting (even if it’s ordinary to the person) or particularly distinctive or rich, I often write it down so I can use it. One example that comes to mind recently is a conversation I had with my best friend where he said “faith is for the gaps”; that phrase is eloquent and interesting and provocative, so I included it a few weeks later in my poem “Transfer.” Another example comes from a conversation I had with a close girlfriend; we were chatting about various things that women tend to talk about, and after our conversation I turned that into “Girl Talk” where I tried to mimic our speech patterns and subject matter the best I could. I’ve also woven in stories or anecdotes from other people into poems; these become details or subjects or even entire poems, sometimes. For instance, the poem “Pieta Reimagined” (from Little Human Things) has as a central conceit a story my mother told me about her friend dying in high school, along with a part of a conversation we had a couple years later about how she wants to be buried. Without those stories, the poem just wouldn’t work.
And of course I would be lying if I didn’t credit other poets/poems I have read that I want to imitate. Kaveh Akhbar’s “River of Milk” was such an incredible poem that stuck with me; particularly, the image of crushing fireflies in his teeth haunted me for weeks. It turned into my poem “The Timekeeper” in which the subject is shaving time beads down to gain more or less time; the final image in that poem includes the speaker watching a time bead being crushed in between her lover’s teeth. A nod to Akhbar, there.
But whatever it is, poems begin for me in language, whether it’s a single word I want to use (recently, “erosion”; “duvet,” “date palm”), a story/ anecdote, or an image I want to explore in some way. The feeling has to be right and the muse has be ready, but poems always begin with words.
Showing posts with label Sarah A. Etlinger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah A. Etlinger. Show all posts
Friday, 18 October 2019
Friday, 11 October 2019
Sarah A. Etlinger : part four
How important is music to your poetry?
What’s interesting about this question is that I started writing poetry again around the same time I began studying piano again, so the two seem to be twinned in my mind; this has come out in my work, as well. My poetry coach/mentor is also a pianist, and she has noted several times that my poems are naturally musical and lyrical. And poetry and music are innately related/mutually beneficial: music has beats and sounds and tones and timbres and rhythms, as does poetry, especially when read aloud. So while music is beyond language, language has a music and finding it is important.
I also think that when one studies as much poetry as I have, one begins to absorb its cadences (a musical term as well) that seep into language. So while I have had no formal writing training save for one creative writing course in college, all the reading I’ve done has helped infuse the tradition of lyric poetry into my own work.
Another way I think music and poetry work together in my work is through my increasing attention to sounds and the senses. Poetry, often, can be visual—especially as we tend to encounter it on the page and screen. Yes, we can read it aloud and can hear it, but most of the time, I’d guess, we read it. Given that, I think it’s important to not only listen to poetry, but also for poets to pay attention to different senses than the visual. Lately, I have been trying to incorporate sounds into my lines, both in terms of the words themselves (e.g. assonance, alliteration, etc.) and in terms of sounds I’m portraying.
Finally, there may be a genetic component: I don’t have a musical family at all, except for my great-grandmother on my mother’s side (her grandmother Louise) who, I’m told, played piano by ear. She could hear a song or a jingle and play it, despite having no formal training. I’ve been told I have a good ear for music (by my piano teacher) and for lyrics/words/sounds (by my coach), so I’d like to think that comes from her.
What’s interesting about this question is that I started writing poetry again around the same time I began studying piano again, so the two seem to be twinned in my mind; this has come out in my work, as well. My poetry coach/mentor is also a pianist, and she has noted several times that my poems are naturally musical and lyrical. And poetry and music are innately related/mutually beneficial: music has beats and sounds and tones and timbres and rhythms, as does poetry, especially when read aloud. So while music is beyond language, language has a music and finding it is important.
I also think that when one studies as much poetry as I have, one begins to absorb its cadences (a musical term as well) that seep into language. So while I have had no formal writing training save for one creative writing course in college, all the reading I’ve done has helped infuse the tradition of lyric poetry into my own work.
Another way I think music and poetry work together in my work is through my increasing attention to sounds and the senses. Poetry, often, can be visual—especially as we tend to encounter it on the page and screen. Yes, we can read it aloud and can hear it, but most of the time, I’d guess, we read it. Given that, I think it’s important to not only listen to poetry, but also for poets to pay attention to different senses than the visual. Lately, I have been trying to incorporate sounds into my lines, both in terms of the words themselves (e.g. assonance, alliteration, etc.) and in terms of sounds I’m portraying.
Finally, there may be a genetic component: I don’t have a musical family at all, except for my great-grandmother on my mother’s side (her grandmother Louise) who, I’m told, played piano by ear. She could hear a song or a jingle and play it, despite having no formal training. I’ve been told I have a good ear for music (by my piano teacher) and for lyrics/words/sounds (by my coach), so I’d like to think that comes from her.
Friday, 4 October 2019
Sarah A. Etlinger : part three
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
When I was in high school and college, I loved T.S. Eliot (and I still do; poetry often begins and ends in Eliot for me). I admired his intellectualism, his blending of references and allusions, his lovely lines, etc. He still has the power to move me unlike almost any other. Before I encountered “The Waste Land” and “Four Quartets”, I didn’t know one could be so moved by experience and faith and, in many cases, the mind. And then came e.e. cummings whose beautiful abstractions continue to haunt me. But since then I’ve turned to other poets for various other reasons; W.S. Merwin is a recent influence—his sheer beauty and ability to say something so simply but reach toward the divine is incredible. I also love how he crafts his lines; he eschews punctuation and lets the line/ line breaks do a lot of the work. And he’s a virtuoso of rhythm. Language, in Merwin’s hands, is born anew.
Rilke’s simplicity is increasingly becoming an influence, too, and I’m intrigued by the ways that he blends spirituality with simple diction. His poems are often short, too and this is something I want to work on.
But I also love and admire Gwendolyn Brooks, Eavan Boland, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. They render women’s experiences in everyday vernacular (though Millay and Brooks often turn to sonnets/rhyme/forms) that is so powerful and important. There’s something about the way these women blend memory and the everyday, the mundane and the ethereal, that invites me to visit their work again and again. And lately I have turned to Jorie Graham for the way she manages to walk the precarious line between abstract and concrete, and yet somehow remains so accessible.
When I was in high school and college, I loved T.S. Eliot (and I still do; poetry often begins and ends in Eliot for me). I admired his intellectualism, his blending of references and allusions, his lovely lines, etc. He still has the power to move me unlike almost any other. Before I encountered “The Waste Land” and “Four Quartets”, I didn’t know one could be so moved by experience and faith and, in many cases, the mind. And then came e.e. cummings whose beautiful abstractions continue to haunt me. But since then I’ve turned to other poets for various other reasons; W.S. Merwin is a recent influence—his sheer beauty and ability to say something so simply but reach toward the divine is incredible. I also love how he crafts his lines; he eschews punctuation and lets the line/ line breaks do a lot of the work. And he’s a virtuoso of rhythm. Language, in Merwin’s hands, is born anew.
Rilke’s simplicity is increasingly becoming an influence, too, and I’m intrigued by the ways that he blends spirituality with simple diction. His poems are often short, too and this is something I want to work on.
But I also love and admire Gwendolyn Brooks, Eavan Boland, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. They render women’s experiences in everyday vernacular (though Millay and Brooks often turn to sonnets/rhyme/forms) that is so powerful and important. There’s something about the way these women blend memory and the everyday, the mundane and the ethereal, that invites me to visit their work again and again. And lately I have turned to Jorie Graham for the way she manages to walk the precarious line between abstract and concrete, and yet somehow remains so accessible.
Friday, 27 September 2019
Sarah A. Etlinger : part two
How do you know when a poem is finished?
I know when a poem is finished when my coach/mentor says it is! To be less flippant, though, it’s finished when I stop thinking about it. Though many of my poems get revised months and even years later, and there is always potential for revision, I find that if I’ve stopped thinking about the poem, it’s done.
I think it also depends what we mean by “done”. As I often tell my students, there’s always room for improvement or clarity. This was especially true when I was editing my last book: I revisited each poem—all of which were “done” many senses of the word!—and worked on fine-tuning language, finessing line breaks, etc. Some poems did wind up almost exactly the same, and others did have some re-working where lines were re-worked or stanzas moved, taken out, etc. However, I’m not sure this counts as “finishing” because the idea(s) of the poems were not adjusted. If we consider “done” as “no changes, ever” then my poems are done when I have no more control over them. If we consider “done” as something else; as the idea is clear and it’s just a matter of execution, then I think it might be a different story.
I know when a poem is finished when my coach/mentor says it is! To be less flippant, though, it’s finished when I stop thinking about it. Though many of my poems get revised months and even years later, and there is always potential for revision, I find that if I’ve stopped thinking about the poem, it’s done.
I think it also depends what we mean by “done”. As I often tell my students, there’s always room for improvement or clarity. This was especially true when I was editing my last book: I revisited each poem—all of which were “done” many senses of the word!—and worked on fine-tuning language, finessing line breaks, etc. Some poems did wind up almost exactly the same, and others did have some re-working where lines were re-worked or stanzas moved, taken out, etc. However, I’m not sure this counts as “finishing” because the idea(s) of the poems were not adjusted. If we consider “done” as “no changes, ever” then my poems are done when I have no more control over them. If we consider “done” as something else; as the idea is clear and it’s just a matter of execution, then I think it might be a different story.
Friday, 20 September 2019
Sarah A. Etlinger : part one
A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of two books: Never One for Promises (Kelsay Books, 2018) and Little Human Things, forthcoming from Clare Songbirds. Other poems can be found in a variety of literary magazines, including The Amethyst Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Mookychick, The Penwood Review, The Magnolia Review, Brine (where she was September 2018’s featured Poet of the Month) and many others.
Interests include cooking, traveling, and learning to play the piano.
What are you working on?
Right now, I am working on poems that I plan to turn into a 3rd book, potentially titled Something Like Light. The poems in this group explore the relationship among language, meaning, and experience. As the title suggests, light, too, has a strong presence: light bends, changes, fades, illuminates, and obscures—all part of human experience. In keeping with the rest of my work, hese poems also weave in history, mythology, and religion; this time, however, I’m particularly interested in how the natural world seems to anchor us at the same time it takes us to different planes and places--- as does light and spirituality.
Additionally, I’m toying with either a long poem or small chapbook about the prairie and its landscapes, with a working title of “Sea of Grass.” Though I live in Milwaukee, WI, I’m from New England, and so I’m fascinated by the flatness and beauty of the Midwest--not just the fields and the farms and the lakes—but the prairies, too. So, this is an ongoing project still taking shape, but I’m excited about the form it may take as I continue to work on it.
Finally, I am always working on revising individual poems, submitting to journals/contests, and trying to market my work. Stay tuned for upcoming interviews, readings, and individual poems!
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