What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
What I find most difficult about writing poetry is resisting the temptation to be meaningful. That’s not to say I avoid meaning (whatever that means) in a poem, only that I try not to arrive at meaning through intention. I suspect there are instances that prove that statement false; e.g., a limerick about the third World Trade Center building to collapse on September 11, 2001 wouldn’t have gotten very far along without some awareness that I’m methodically imparting what, for simplistic convenience, can be called a political view (though I’d prefer something like “empirical curiosity”). But, generally, I prefer if a poem develops or asserts its own meaning without my conscious intervention. Also, the words are very hard.
Friday, 5 July 2019
Thursday, 4 July 2019
Mary J. Oliver : part two
How do you know when a poem is finished?
I seldom return to a poem without seeing a way of improving it. Usually the improvement is not an improvement, and so the process continues eternally. I have a few poems that do seem perfect and therefore 'finished' but they are very rare beasts. And what is the formula? Indefinable I'm afraid and of course different in every case. Something to do with: the fewest words, the plainest words saying the exact right thing, the music, the shape, the strength, and there being a point in writing it.
I seldom return to a poem without seeing a way of improving it. Usually the improvement is not an improvement, and so the process continues eternally. I have a few poems that do seem perfect and therefore 'finished' but they are very rare beasts. And what is the formula? Indefinable I'm afraid and of course different in every case. Something to do with: the fewest words, the plainest words saying the exact right thing, the music, the shape, the strength, and there being a point in writing it.
Wednesday, 3 July 2019
Nicole Raziya Fong : part two
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
The most difficult part about writing poetry, for me, is the physical and mental cost of the sustained effort of writing. Most of the writing I do occurs in a short period of time, in between long pauses where I might be able to make a few quality edits (at best), or essentially undo all the work I’d done previously. So, when I’m writing, everything I do channels into the work. I write until I’m exhausted, always pushing myself to do more as I can never predict when the work will end and I’ll enter that state of being unable to write. It is a place of excitement and happiness, but it’s always followed by a pretty severe collapse.
The most difficult part about writing poetry, for me, is the physical and mental cost of the sustained effort of writing. Most of the writing I do occurs in a short period of time, in between long pauses where I might be able to make a few quality edits (at best), or essentially undo all the work I’d done previously. So, when I’m writing, everything I do channels into the work. I write until I’m exhausted, always pushing myself to do more as I can never predict when the work will end and I’ll enter that state of being unable to write. It is a place of excitement and happiness, but it’s always followed by a pretty severe collapse.
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
Charles Jensen : part two
Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
I think poetry has few limits, and my goal is to keep pushing my understanding of it as far as it will go. Poetry is as broad as prose and contains as many multitudes. I’ve gotten much more interested in how poetry and prose can speak to each other, work together, blur and blend, and hybridize each other. The longer I write, the more faith I put into the story being told and less into the mode in which it is told. I believe each story should be revealed not only in content, but through its form.
I think poetry has few limits, and my goal is to keep pushing my understanding of it as far as it will go. Poetry is as broad as prose and contains as many multitudes. I’ve gotten much more interested in how poetry and prose can speak to each other, work together, blur and blend, and hybridize each other. The longer I write, the more faith I put into the story being told and less into the mode in which it is told. I believe each story should be revealed not only in content, but through its form.
Chris Warren : part two
How did you first engage with poetry?
I’ve been writing poetry since I was least 4 years old and in my teenage years became quickly obsessed with the work of Jim Morrison, oddly, and Sylvia Plath, as I suspect many people do at that age. In my late teens and early twenties I was writing a lot more and began writing poetry to perform, becoming resident poet for an open mic night in London and reading whenever possible locally. I have had brief love affairs with several poets over the years but, as heretical as this sounds, have never been a committed reader of other people’s work, preferring instead to simply focus on the crafting of my own. Saying that, I do still love a bit of Frank O’Hara and will reach for Alexander Vvendensky’s Rug / Hydrangea without fail whenever I need lifting out of myself to somewhere better.
I’ve been writing poetry since I was least 4 years old and in my teenage years became quickly obsessed with the work of Jim Morrison, oddly, and Sylvia Plath, as I suspect many people do at that age. In my late teens and early twenties I was writing a lot more and began writing poetry to perform, becoming resident poet for an open mic night in London and reading whenever possible locally. I have had brief love affairs with several poets over the years but, as heretical as this sounds, have never been a committed reader of other people’s work, preferring instead to simply focus on the crafting of my own. Saying that, I do still love a bit of Frank O’Hara and will reach for Alexander Vvendensky’s Rug / Hydrangea without fail whenever I need lifting out of myself to somewhere better.
Monday, 1 July 2019
G. E. Schwartz : part eleven
How important is music to your poetry?
Listening to it, being moved by it, gives balance to poetry forging by example, its effectiveness in tone, mood and clarity.
Listening to it, being moved by it, gives balance to poetry forging by example, its effectiveness in tone, mood and clarity.
Joshua Weiner : part four
When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
I return to the Scottish border ballads, especially "Edward" and "Sir Patrick Spens"; poets from the English Renaissance--Wyatt, Gascoigne, Ralegh, Spenser, Fulke Greville, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Campion, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Henry King, Marvell. I turn to the Romantics--Blake's Songs, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Coleridge, Keats, Clare; also Dickinson & Whitman. I find renewal in the poems of Hardy and Hopkins; Frost, Stevens, Williams, D.H. Lawrence, Pound, Moore. And Mina Loy. And then later, Sterling Brown, Auden, Roethke, and especially Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell; also Gwendolyn Brooks, and Larkin. I find it in Ammons, and Creeley, also Kenneth Koch, and Ginsberg. Ted Hughes and Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder and Derek Walcott. Thomas McGrath and Robert Duncan. Seamus Heaney and Roberts Pinsky & Hass. Anne Winters and David Ferry. I save the first for last, Thom Gunn; Thom Gunn, most. This is my DNA, my rhythm book, my source and sorcery; these are the constellations of my night sky.
I return to the Scottish border ballads, especially "Edward" and "Sir Patrick Spens"; poets from the English Renaissance--Wyatt, Gascoigne, Ralegh, Spenser, Fulke Greville, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Campion, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Henry King, Marvell. I turn to the Romantics--Blake's Songs, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Coleridge, Keats, Clare; also Dickinson & Whitman. I find renewal in the poems of Hardy and Hopkins; Frost, Stevens, Williams, D.H. Lawrence, Pound, Moore. And Mina Loy. And then later, Sterling Brown, Auden, Roethke, and especially Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell; also Gwendolyn Brooks, and Larkin. I find it in Ammons, and Creeley, also Kenneth Koch, and Ginsberg. Ted Hughes and Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder and Derek Walcott. Thomas McGrath and Robert Duncan. Seamus Heaney and Roberts Pinsky & Hass. Anne Winters and David Ferry. I save the first for last, Thom Gunn; Thom Gunn, most. This is my DNA, my rhythm book, my source and sorcery; these are the constellations of my night sky.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)