Often, a poem
or some other work of art
is held up, admired and revered
as a testimony
to the beauty of the human spirit.
The poet’s praises are sung
just as he or she sang humanities.
But
just as often,
the poet offers a poem as a mirror, reflecting,
perhaps too clearly for the comfort of the reader,
the ugly aspects of that spirit;
Seeming constants
which never allow contentment,
for the poet, or any of us, to come too near;
Painful, seething blemishes
on the face of humanity
that refuse to heal.
And the poet hopes
that if the mirror is clear;
if the reader can find no flaws in its surface,
no way to excuse himself
from the human condition
of which the poem speaks,
then the words will help the healing begin
and the magic of growth may happen,
at least in that one life.
In this sense,
the poet is a passionate vandal
defacing the walls of corrupt institutions
so that all who pass
may see the truth revealed,
the base, the untrue, exposed
by words.
Words, like graffiti,
that many don’t want to see,
most won't try to comprehend,
and that
perhaps
only the other vandals
will completely understand.
Author notes
Okay, Mary, something stirred so I have a new free verser for you. lol I hope it suffices. I'll repost my feelings about free verse here, too. Thanks for having such a fun contest. I hope it was everything you were hoping it would be!
Mark
1. Write from your heart, whether free verse or rhyme. As Allan Ginsburg said, "Even iambic pentameter can be powerful if it is written from the gut."
2. Insert commas where you want the reader to pause briefly, spaces where you want him/her to pause a little longer.
3. Like any good piece of writing, make sure it has a beginning, middle and end.
4. Make sense. I'm not a big fan of beat or free verse poetry that doesn't really tell a story or have a discernable point. If I read the poem five times and still don't get it, the poet failed, not me.
5. I generally break my poems where the natural breaks in the sentences would be if it were written as a paragraph. This helps me divide it into individual thoughts and helps the reader pause in the right places.
6. Use natural language. I can't stand reversed sentences. i.e., "The sun through the forest I did see." Nobody talks like that so why do they feel it's okay to write that way? I find poems are more effective when they are natural and unforced.
7. Read a book by Natalie Goldman called "Writing Down the Bones." It is amazing.
8. Most importantly, don't worry about what the books say. How does the poem sound to you? There is an internal rhythm that only the heart can feel, and the voice. Does it flow or is it clunky? If it's clunky (assuming you don't want it to be), find the clunky parts and smooth them out. Learn everything you can about the technical aspects of poetry, but don't feel like you can't write anything worthwhile until you do. We become masters of anything in life by struggling with the subject. There's no way around but through. Bertolt Brecht wrote, "Passion without precision is chaos." But precision without passion is boring. Until you find the happy medium, write like your life depends on it.
That's about all I can think of right now. I don't claim to be a professor of poetry. Far from it. Then again, I don't know how poetry can really be taught, because so much of it comes from the "voice" of the human being, and there really are no hard rules, at least as far as free verse goes, about how to structure poems. The beatnik movement abandoned structure altogether in a "first thoughts only" kind of style that turned out to be very effective. Bukowski didn't give a hoot about anybody's opinion, and his poems are scattered all over the page in a way that appears to be totally random, yet he was one of the most commercially successful poets in America, one many called the Walt Whitman of the 20th century. But even Bukowski set certain words or phrases apart for emphasis. He also knew how to paint a picture and had a flare for concise dramatic development that ended with powerful points. This is my ultimate goal in all of my poems.
As Natalie Goldberg says, "Learn to write the way an animal cries out in pain. There you will find your truth, and your voice."
Written August 20th, 2004
In a list
A contest entry
- Contest: Teach Me Free Verse by M.A.King.
300 points, ended August 22, 2004, 7 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think
Comments
1 - 10 of 10
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Mark, anyone would be happy to have received such advice.
You did very well with this. I shall re-read it time to time.
Great job! -
excellent
This is a wonderful view of the world of poetry. Now I have to run and read more of your words.
John -
Thanks, Brian. All interesting points. I guess if a guy struggles to get published as much as Bukowski does, he cares about what others think, even if he tries to pretend he doesn't. Actually, Bukowski often depended on others to edit his work. I guess I was really thinking about how his poems are laid out on the page. I'm still sometimes at a loss as to what exactly "free verse" is.
I remember reading Bukowski's poems when I was just starting to write and trying to figure out why it was called poetry and not just prose just broken up into little pieces. It ended up being liberating, actually, because I thought, "Well, damn, I can do THAT!" (Of course, nothing is ever as easy as it looks, especially touching people with a poem.) He must have had some effect, because I write the same way now, breaking up the lines from thought to thought, or where the natural breaks in the sentence would be. Take this Bukowski poem, for example.
the mockingbird
the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn't understand.
yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman's legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.
I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.
summer was over.
My advice about "not worrying about what the poetry books say" is given more as encouragement to write no matter what, because too many people never do anything because they think they don't know enough about a subject they're interested in. For instance, a friend of mine was making a movie and looking for a crew. He called a friend who was studying editing in film school. He asked her to be an editor on his film. She said, "I can't. I'm in school." She was stuck in the book and afraid to try the real thing. That's really what I was getting at. I agree that we should learn all we can about writing but, as with everything, there's no better way to learn than to jump in. That's the only way to develop what you so perfectly call "a finely tuned ear and internalized technique."
Thanks for the interesting debate. I consider you to be a very well-rounded poet. If I didn't like your poetry, I would think you were trapped by the formalities. But you're a great poet and a scholar, too. So do NOT become a stock broker. haha
Thanks for the food for thought.
Mark
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Bukowski says in one of his poems that if you have to work at your poetry, don't- become a stockbroker, 'cause there is too much bad poetry in the world already. As modest mouse point out in their song "bukowski": "who would want to be such an a*hole?"
I love Bukowski, and I acknowledge the existence of genius. The absolute best poets will always be men and women who just know incredible things to say and incredible ways to say them. But. Our disagreement is more emphasis than essence. As for the Simon quote I would agree absolutely if we changed "edit" to "censor". The best writer's will always take chances and be honest; this is something I'm working on. But Neal Simon did edit, he even changed endings.
As for Chas, I don't want to suggest that he sat taking opinion polls to shape his poems. He didn't, nor should we. But if he didn't care what others thought, do you really think he would have published so much? He cared, and took his writing very seriously; he was simply uncompromising about what he had to say and the way he wanted to say it. He definitely wanted to create an impression on the reader. He was also more than willing to criticize the work of others (I forget who, but someone wrote a poem about Bukowski reading his first book of poems, and Bukowski ridicules him for ending the poem with "stars", which he thought hackneyed. Guy says he never wrote about stars again. Apparently Chas felt others should censor.)
If someone has absolute need to speak in a particular voice, they should ignore us both... and they will no matter what we say. I believe they will learn techniques and improve, though. Bukowski was definitely wild, but the guy in the poems is also a bit of a personna, which he points out in his later verse and letters.
I'm a huge Brecht fan as well, and your statement about precision and passion strike me as dead-on. Passion requires inspiration and guts, precision requires a finely tuned ear and internalized technique (not book larnin neccesarilly, but an ablity to manipulate rhythm).
Sorry to suck up so much space, when people should be reading and commenting on a very nice poem.
Brian
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much needed reality . . passion and truth. . perception can change a reality . .but the more we describe it . . the greater the understanding for all
i also have problems with free verse . . thanks for the advice above
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This is good.
David -
this is a wonderful description of the poet. i love the comparison here and the detailed image you create of one driven to write. an excellent poem that i enjoyed fully. and the advice is just amazing. the last line of your advice sums it up so well in the quote from the book that you recommend. which intend to read. thank you so much for such helpful advice and a wonderful poem.
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Thanks Brian,
Interesting points. As I said, I don't claim to know everything about poetry. I wouldn't know a villanelle from a cinquain if my life depended on it. lol All I know is what works for me, and I guess that's half the battle in discovering one's own style. But I will meditate on your point about "stressed and unstressed sounds", an area I haven't really explored much, to be honest.
Do you really think Bukowski cared very much about what others thought about him? I just saw "Born Into This", a documentary about him, and he just seemed like a wildman to me with no internal editor, which is another quality I consider important to a writer, come to think of it. As Neil Simon wrote, "Once you start editing yourself, you're a candidate for mediocrity." A bad writer will think, "I can't write that! What will people think of me?" A good writer tells the whole truth and in so doing, reveals his humanity and touches others who recognize themselves in his words. You're right, though - Bukowski definitely had a unique style. He was kind of a bum writing about a bummy lifestyle, but among the outcasts like himself was where he found life and truth. And man, did he have a way with words. I've always thought that reading his work is like rummaging through a junkyard and finding jewels now and then. lol
Thanks for getting the wheels spinnin'!
Mark
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Excellent sentiment to the poem, and passionate vandal is a good motif to carry it. I also think the advice is generally excellent. I disagree on a few points of emphasis (rhythm is from stressed and unstressed sounds, which can be discerned and manipulated; Bukowski cared very much what others thought, and I don't find him random at all, if it were random we wouldn't be able to tell it was him). But that's primarilly emphasis, and the key of both your comments and the poem, is that the poet should take care with what they do and try to do it well. On that point we share whole-hearted agreement.
Brian -
Wise Mark! Your poem is great, it says so much about the soul of a poet. The understanding of words can be so simple and yet very complex, it all depends how the readers take and assimilate them.
Your comment gives an enlightening view of all what free verse is about.
Well done my friend!
Free hugs,
Mari
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