When the poet William Stafford was asked when he first realized that he wanted to be a poet, he responded:
My question is “When did other people give up the idea of being a poet?” You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
Other artists have asked similar questions, and made similar assertions. “Every child is an artist,” said Pablo Picasso “the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”
What both Stafford and Picasso observe is the fact that we all naturally possess the ability to be expressive, to give free rein to our imaginations, to invent, to bring into the world something new. As Stafford notes, as children we naturally enjoy making up things; we delight in imagining, in creating, in playing with colors, shapes, with words—so why then do many of us stop playing, or stop being, as Picasso says, “an artist”?
Answering this question is useful for practicing poets. If we can understand the barriers to writing poetry, then we can avoid writer’s block and stagnant periods by finding ways to avoid the barriers or bring them down. One obstacle to being creative, whether through painting or writing poetry, is our tendency to be critical and judgmental of ourselves and our art—especially while in the process of writing. If we are in the middle of writing a poem and begin to doubt ourselves or tell ourselves that what we are writing is silly or just not good, then we are standing in the way of our creative act of play and our growth as a writer. We are, in a sense, becoming our own obstacle. Think about what it means to play.
When we play we are spontaneous. When we play we do not aim to harm ourselves—physically or with harsh criticism that stops us from playing. And when we play, we pay attention to words and sounds.
When we criticize our own writing while in a state of creating—of playing—we might say, “This line/image/word isn’t working. This isn’t good enough to be a poem.” In order to write poetry, we must be willing to indulge the creative state, to forgive ourselves as we write, to enjoy and appreciate what we have in front of us—especially in the early stages of a drafting a poem.
In poetry, there is always the opportunity to revise. The great poet Walt Whitman revised his book Leaves of Grass throughout his entire life, even after it was published. A poem has its own life. The creative process can be expressed in endless ways. For as many people alive on this planet, there are as many, if not more, ways of expressing creative impulses. The authors of this text hope that in your journey through this course, this book will act as a guide to nurturing your own natural creativity.
Essential Tools
In this book, the authors share with you what they have seen work for themselves, for other poets, and for our students. The chapters will provide you with approaches to writing and reading poetry, suggestions for discussions and prompts for poems, explanations of key terms associated with poetry, some poetry history, and many poems to explore. To excel, you will need the following tools:
Something on which to write
Something with which to write
A folder
Forgiveness
In her essay “The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life,” from her collection of essays This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett lists forgiveness as being one of the essential skills necessary in order to write successfully:
Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let’s face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds), I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.
Patchett is right that when a writer puts pen to paper–or fingers to a keyboard–the writer experiences the feeling of failure almost “Every. Single. Time.” Students sometimes ask, “Once you have a master’s degree and extensive experience, does writing becomes easier?” It is true that the mechanics do become easier with practice. Consistent writing also helps the writer to organize and develop habits—some good, some bad—that can advance (or hinder) the process. And of course the more you read, the more aware you become of different ways to write. But there are some struggles that never go away. These struggles can be different for each person.
Not only is forgiveness a necessary part of the writing process in the sense that we cannot translate our minds exactly to a page, but also in the sense that good writing deals with sensitive, hard-to-describe, difficult-to-face subjects, and so forgiving oneself for past actions, thoughts, and desires—for feeling the way one actually does—might also be necessary to write well. This doesn’t just happen in personal poems that expose our memories and feelings directly; it can occur in more indirect ways, too. Such as when you are freewriting and an image forms itself in the process that calls up a difficult memory. Or when you experience an insight into how you truly feel about a parent or sibling or friend. Or when you realize how you may have hurt someone in your past or neglected someone you love. We all make mistakes. And mistakes make good subject matter for poems. So, start forgiving yourself and move onward.
Receptivity
The mindset of forgiveness that Patchett describes is similar to what William Stafford writes in his essay “A Way of Writing” when he recommends that a writer must “be willing to fail” in order to be successful. As with Patchett’s essay, Stafford’s advice is all about giving yourself over to the writing process. One cannot expect a poem or any piece of writing to be perfect, or as Patchett says, to translate the “brilliant detail” one imagines and feels onto a page. As Stafford explains, you have to listen to what occurs to you in your mind and let the ideas “string out.” The process relies upon trust—you must trust that what you are doing will go somewhere. Here is an excerpt from Stafford’s essay:
One implication is the importance of just plain receptivity. When I write, I like to have an interval before me when I am not likely to be interrupted. For me, this means usually the early morning, before others are awake. I get pen and paper, take a glance out of the window (often it is dark out there), and wait. It is like fishing. But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble–and this is where receptivity comes in. To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can’t keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression: it’s cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between! Or well, the possibilities are endless. If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I’m off. If I let the process go on, things will occur to me that were not at all in my mind when I started. These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected. And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen. . . .
So, receptive, careless of failure, I spin out things on the page. And a wonderful freedom comes. If something occurs to me, it is all right to accept it. It has one justification: it occurs to me. No one else can guide me. I must follow my own weak, wandering, diffident impulses.
I am not sure if being “careless of failure,” as Stafford says, is a rule to apply to all aspects of life, but in creative acts, it is necessary.
Silliness
The poet Richard Hugo has said that he wrote his book The Triggering Town in order to help the writer “with that silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity: writing poems.”
Why prescribe silliness? For possibility. For new ways of thinking and writing. For fun. If you’re worried that you may not have it in you, don’t. According to Hugo, the fact that you are even taking a course in poetry already means that this quality, this playfulness, is already inherent in you. After all, as Hugo so eloquently puts it in The Triggering Town, “You have to be silly to write poems at all.”
Adapted from Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations, 2018, by Michelle Bonczek Evory, used according to creative commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.