Comments on: Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry

By: Christopher Woodman

Christopher Woodman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:17:34 +0000

As a relatively new poet, I too need such advice, and find this whole article and discussion very moving.

Perhaps because I was a bit older than most of your beginners, at my beginning I was actually too liberal with number 6, and ended up with poems without flab, yes, but also without frisson. Also without what I really meant to say, or at least about what I knew and would have liked to say had I found the path, bridge, gate, door, opening in the hedge or conduit under the road that led to it.

I’m still a beginner but now I’ve added another dare to Basil Bunting’s do-list:

6a. A week, month, year after every word you cut add any other word you dare.

Christopher

By: chez danisse

chez danisse — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:09:40 +0000

This is a wonderful post! You are so right about silence. Thank you.

By: Jason Crane

Jason Crane — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:05:45 +0000

Very kindly written and very useful. Thank you.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:24:37 +0000

That is all wonderful advice, especially practicing gratitude, beautiful. The most important skill for any writer as you have hinted, is listening, then your work can extend beyond your own voice.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:04:30 +0000

When a young fresh fellow, I found Kenneth Koch’s instructional poem, “The Art of Poetry,” to be very moving. Still do. You can hear him give some advice to young writers by clicking here. And how ’bout this, obliquely:
A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead
by Kenneth Koch
Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said
You are not wearing overcoat. He said,
You should do as I say not do as I do.
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was
Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me
In his New York apartment sitting on chair
Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering.
Look at this photograph said of his mother and father.
Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn’t figure it out.
Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture.
Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said.
Why don’t you ask him?
Why don’t you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not.
Your parents don’t look happy but it is just a photograph.
Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs.
Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening
I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true.
Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying
But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.
-
We should not neglect Basil Bunting’s Advice to Young Poets (another wag will surely supply Ezra Pound’s), namely:
I SUGGEST
1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound.
2. Vary rhythm enough to stir the emotion you want but not so as to lose impetus.
3. Use spoken words and syntax.
4. Fear adjective; they bleed nouns. Hate the passive.
5. Jettison ornament gaily but keep shape
Put your poem away till you forget it, then:
6. Cut out every word you dare.
7. Do it again a week later, and again.
Never explain – your reader is as smart as you.