Long sprawling post. Picture of horse. Questions at the end.

The horse stands for something, I'm sure,
 if we could just figure out what it is...

The other day a non-English major friend was working on a poem analysis for an English class. He was trying to wrestle the poem to the ground and make it surrender some kind of deep one-to-one correspondence--the horses stand for nature, the grass is Death, the wind is...our souls?... Finally I said, "You're probly working too hard. Maybe you should try just absorbing it."

"Typical English major ," he said. Then he read it again, more relaxed. "Huh," he said. A friend from the class called, and he answered his cell phone. "Elena says we're working too hard," he said.

(Yup. That's what I thought.)


Recently I've been reading books of poetry, but also poets talking about poetry. I've found that experts reflecting on their own craft can be immensely helpful for me (in small doses), mostly because it gives an articulate, insider view of some of the same things I'm trying to deal with.

"Poems don't just happen. They are luckily or stealthily related to a readiness within ourselves. When we read or hear them, we react. We aren't just supposed to react--any poem that asks for a dutiful response is masquerading as a poem, not being one. A good rule is--don't respond unless you have to. But when you find you do have a response--trust it. It has a meaning."

from Writing the Australian Crawl by William Stafford

I appreciate Stafford's ideas first from a reader's perspective. Poetry can be daunting, not always because it gives us deep feeling, but because we expect to get deep feeling out of everything (or there's something wrong). Sometimes it's helpful for me to approach a poem knowing I may not like it, any more than I'm going to like every food that I eat. But I won't know what food I like--or what food is good for me--until I try it.

From a writing perspective, Stafford also seems to explore how things feel as he writes, and to respond when he feels the need for a response. And maybe that response is poetry. Tom Andrews says something similar:

"James Thurber was once interviewed by a reporter who had read Thurber in a French translation; after reading Thurber in English, the reporter said he preferred the French translation. 'That's always been my problem,' Thurber replied. 'I lose something in the original.' While writing a poem, I hope to be confronted with a moment when, as William Stafford put it, 'the material talks back,' often frustrating my original intent or design for the poem. At that moment I have a decision to make. I can insist on my original intent or I can try to listen to and follow the poem's emerging direction. Invariably I find that if I insist on my original design, then 'I lose something in the original.' Increasingly I'm interested in letting my poems...engage directly this tension between my own desire to speak and the languag's tendency to displace the speaker. The more I write, the more I discover the truth of something Michel Focault wrote: "Language always seems to be inhabited by the other, the elsewhere the distant."

--Tom Andrews

from What Will Suffice: Contemporary American Poets on the Art of Poetry eds. Buckley and Merrill

I find Andrews' statement true for me; if I'm being honest about what I'm writing, it often goes a direction I did not intend, and the language itself directs it. One of my goals for this capstone are being willing to go where the language seems to be leading.

Something else I'm thinking about: reading books on "craft" don't work unless I'm practicing at the same time! I can read all I want about electrical wiring or deep sea diving or babysitting or writing, but unless I'm going to be practicing it while I'm reading more and more, it will be flat knowledge on a flat page. The practice feeds the knowledge I can glean from the "mentoring" of books and those who've gone before me.

Other writers I'm reading: Aaron Belz, who will, incidentally, be at the Festival of Faith and Writing (some of his quirky poems here and here).

Questions I'm curious about, for you all:

• What has your experience with writing poems or prose been in terms of who is directing the piece you are writing? Do you think you're able to let go of writing enough to explore?
• How do you find yourself responding to poems, or expecting to respond? How do you want other readers to respond to your writings? Is it even good to consider readers' responses at the creation stage?
• Do you have any writers you've stumbled across that you'd like to recommend?