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Nouns, verbs, do not exist for what I feel.
—John Berryman
Welcome
Dear Friend,
I want to remind you that Terrapin Books is now open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts. We expect to accept 2-5 manuscripts. Maybe one of them will be yours? Read our Guidelines before submitting. Most of your questions will be answered in our FAQs.
I think the whole poetry world is thrilled that Ada Limon is our new US Poet Laureate! She will do a great job in this position. I'm especially thrilled as Ada has work in all four of my poetry craft books. I'm going to reprint below her wonderful craft talk on Anaphora. This newsletter's model poem is also by Ada. And finally, this newsletter's video is Ada talking about her new honor. Enjoy!
Diane
PS: The last time I looked Amazon had The Strategic Poet at a truly ridiculous discount. I wonder if they overstocked and are now trying to clear some shelf space. But if you've been thinking about getting the book, maybe even planning ahead for holiday gifts, this would be a great time to hit the Buy button.
Poem and Prompt
Reprinted from The Strategic Poet
Nashville After Hours
Late night in a honky-tonk, fried pickles
in a red plastic basket, and it was all Loretta
on the heel-bruised stage, sung by a big girl
we kind of both had a crush on. Nashville
got the best of us, in a bar shootin' Fireball
with the band that just roused the Ryman.
Good grief we were loaded, shotguns,
and the soft-hearted. It's like this:
sometimes the buried buzz comes back,
and soon the kid that cut the lunch line
ain't nothing; and the cruel tongues licking
your insides are gone; the bully girl who
kicked you out of the city is no one, no rotten
crumb left, just a dizzy river of nonsense
in the waxy light under the bright signs and
look here, I won't deny it: I was there,
standing in the bar's bathroom mirror,
saying my name like I was somebody.
—Ada Limón
Notice that the title provides both a place and a time—information the poet now does not have to include in the poem. Limón then begins with some local color and some sensory details. We hear honky-tonk music, taste fried pickles and the cinnamon-flavored Fireball, see the color red and the damaged stage of the Ryman auditorium (formerly the home of the Grand Ole Opry).
The poem turns at the end of line 8 with It’s like this: and then we get to the substance of the poem, the reason why the speaker loves this music—it allows her to shed bad memories. The colon is followed by a list of memories of experiences that leave us bruised.
Line 8 also signals an interesting shift in point of view from first-person plural We to second person you. That’s a risk, but it works; it brings us into the poem and makes us feel spoken to and understood. Another shift is signaled by look here. The speaker now uses first-person singular, and the poem becomes personal.
Notice the speaker’s down-to-earth diction. She uses the colloquial expressions look here and Good grief. She uses the bad grammar of ain’t and adds to that a double negative with nothing.
This poem appears simple but is loaded with craft. Let’s consider the various devices of sound. We have straight internal rhyme in light and bright, near rhyme in night and fried and in plastic basket. We have an abundance of alliteration: best, bar, band, buried buzz, back and lunch line, licking. We have assonance: buzz, cut, lunch, tongues and kicked and dizzy river. And consonance in crush and Nashville. Such a trove of sound devices makes this poem a pleasure to read aloud.
The predominance of 10-12 syllable lines, the monosyllabic words, and the stressed syllables give the poem a perceivable rhythm. Read it aloud and you’ll hear and feel the rhythm.
******
Let’s do a poem that relies on sensory details. First choose a place and a time—be specific, e.g., Cape Cod in October, New York City before sunrise, Paterson at dinnertime. Use your place and time as your title.
Brainstorm a list of sensory details that pertain to your subject. Cover a variety of senses—give us something to taste, something to hear, to smell, to feel, to see. Then begin your draft with those details. Get in some specifics; fried pickles is better than snacks, Fireball is better than whiskey.
About eight lines in, turn the poem with something like It’s like this or Here’s how it happens or This is what’s known or These are facts, for sure. At this point bring in a shift in point of view. This is the central challenge of this poem, so don’t skip it. Let this part of the poem be a list of some kind. Let the list build up intensity.
Shift the point of view a second time towards the end of the poem. If you follow the model, you’ll begin with first-person plural, shift to second person, shift to first-person singular. It might work, it might not work; you’re not married to it.
As you move to subsequent drafts, work in a few colloquialisms, e.g., for Pete’s sake, holy cow, gosh darn. How about a bit of bad grammar?
Pay attention to devices of sound. Work with monosyllables, get in some internal rhymes, some near rhymes, alliteration, assonance, and consonance. Pay attention to your language; let it make music.
Craft Talk
reprinted from The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop
Sing It One More Time Like That: Anaphora
—Ada Limon
I grew up watching soap operas after school. I’d watch them when my older brother would let me and when no one else was home. I knew it was bad acting. I knew that it was designed to be emotionally manipulative. But I was 12 and I wanted to be manipulated. I knew what was coming and it was satisfying.
My favorite part of soap operas was that overdramatic moment when a character would slowly say the same line twice. I will be back, Jack from Days of our Lives would say, and then repeat, I will be back. When it happened, I liked to say it along with him, make a fist and laugh.
Even though I have written songs, and I love writing lyrics, my favorite part of most songs is the chorus, the part of the song that repeats. When I’m driving on some road I’ve never been on before and listening to a song I’ve never heard, I can still sing along, because that chorus is coming around again.
To speak plainly: I like repetition. I like repetition. The baseline. The steady drumbeat. The part that makes your knees bend and say, Here we go again. In truth, I rarely see it in contemporary poetry, but when I do, I nuzzle into the lap of it like a loyal dog. It’s a powerful tool and perhaps, like rhyme, it’s fallen somewhat out of favor because of earlier misuse. In poetry, and as a rhetorical device, it’s called anaphora. I like that because it sounds like euphoria. I imagine I have anaphoria and I am feeling anaphoric.
The examples of anaphora that I find the most thrilling are the simple ones. Take, for example, these lines from Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Waiting for Icarus”:
He said he would be back and we’d drink wine together
He said everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said he was going to invent full-time
The poem invokes the song-like quality of a Greek chorus by using the very simple anaphora: He said. The tiny uncomplicated anchor at the beginning of each line allows the poem a fullness, a superb cadence, and a sense that we are witnessing a new myth in the making. (And, of course, we are: the myth of Icarus told by the woman waiting on the shore.)
In the contemporary poem, “Letter from My Heart to My Brain,” by Rachel McKibbens, we see the anaphora acting as a chant, an incantation, a wicked, yet self-soothing song:
It’s okay to lock yourself in the medicine cabinet,
to drink all the wine, to do what it takes to stay
without staying. It’s okay to hate God today
to change his name to yours, to want to ruin all that ruined you.
It’s okay to feel like only a photograph of yourself
Again, it’s the simple anaphora that I find the most powerful. Here, the It’s okay provides the rocking rhythm of someone speaking kindly, or trying to speak kindly to herself. The repetition offers a weight, a significance, that lets the poem reach outward while still celebrating its marvelous and idiosyncratic voice.
The anaphora can also serve as a way to root the poem in an emotion or to emphasize a state of being, as in Jennifer L. Knox’s poem, “We Are Afraid”:
We are afraid
of Mississippi. We are afraid
the frogs will disappear.
Here, the repetition builds into such a whirlwind of force that the audience or reader could quite possibly end up in a cold sweat by the end thinking, I am really afraid, she’s right.
In my experience, there are two keys for using anaphora successfully: the strength of language and description within the successive clauses and the overall build of the poem. It’s easy to let the anaphora take over the whole poem, but it won’t work. You can try it, but it won’t work. Again, anaphora functions as a drumbeat, a baseline, but it won’t work unless the rest of the poem both sings and dances.
Even the writers of soap operas know that they can only have a character repeating a line occasionally, and songs can’t just be made up of choruses, but when used correctly, repetition can elevate and enhance a poem in unexpected ways. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure of repeating yourself. Sometimes it helps you get heard.
Groovy Links
Kory Wells Interviews Theresa Burns about her debut book, Design
Karen Paul Holmes Interviews Hayden Saunier about her book, Cartography, in the Terrapin Redux series
Mary Ruefle on Bringing Joy to Your Writing Practice (Literary Hub)
Help Wanted
I need some new reviewers for Terrapin Books. If you sign up, I will periodically email you a list of available titles. Then if you want to review a particular title, you let me know and I send you the pdf. Once the review has been placed with a journal, I will send you a hard copy of the book or another Terrapin title of your choice. I will provide you with a list of journals, online and print, that publish reviews of poetry books. Reviewing poetry books is a great service to the poetry community. It's also a great service to you as reviewing is an excellent way of honing your own skills!
If interested, please contact me at dslockward@gmail.com
Video
New Craft Book
Named a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers
 Reader Comments:
"An essential book for anyone interested in the craft and art of poetry." (jdk)
"It's a book for every lover and teacher of poetry. I highly recommend it." (GD)
"A book that will never make it to the bookshelf because I'll refer to it so often. This book should be at the top of every poet's wishlist." (NB)
"The latest, and best, of editor Diane Lockward's series of excellent craft books. Carefully organized, clear, and chock full of wonderful example poems, craft essays, & prompts. Any poet can find something inspirational here." (DG)
Click Cover for Amazon
The book is organized into thirteen sections, each devoted to a poetry strategy:
I. Descriptive Details
II. Diction
III. Imagery
IV. Sound Devices
V. Repetition
VI. Figurative Language: Simile
VII. Figurative Language: Metaphor
VIII. Figurative Language: Personification
IX. Figurative Language: Hyperbole
X. Figurative Language: Apostrophe
XI. Syntax
XII. Sonnet
XIII. Odd Forms
114 fabulous poets contributed to this book, poets such as Traci Brimhall, Lauren Camp, David Graham, Camille Dungy, Annie Finch, Matthew Olzmann, Frank X. Walker, and BJ Ward . The book includes Craft Talks, Model Poems, Commentaries, and Prompts. It is suitable for use by poets working independently, by poets in writing groups, and by teachers in the classroom.
Book Reviews of The Strategic Poet
Compulsive Reader, by Claire Hamner Matturro
Mom Egg Review, by Lara Lillibridge
Heavy Feather Review, by Deborah Bacharach
Splash Magazine, by Michele Caprario
Previous Craft Books
Named a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers
 Organized into ten sections, each devoted to a poetic concept. Begins with "Discovering New Material," "Finding the Best Words," "Making Music," "Working with Sentences and Line Breaks," "Crafting Surprise," and "Achieving Tone." The concepts become progressively more sophisticated, moving on to "Dealing with Feelings," "Transforming Your Poems," and "Rethinking and Revising." The final section, "Publishing Your Book," covers manuscript organization, book promotion, and presentation of a good public reading. Includes thirty brief craft essays, each followed by a model poem, analysis of the poem's craft, and a prompt based on the poem. Ten recyclable bonus prompts also included. Ten Top Tips lists each with poetry wisdom from an accomplished poet.
(click cover for Amazon)
Named a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers
 All ten sections include three craft tips, each provided by an experienced, accomplished poet. Each of these thirty craft tips is followed by a Model poem and a Prompt based on the poem. Each model poem is used as a mentor, again expressing the underlying philosophy of the first book that the best teacher of poetry is a good poem. Each section includes a Poet on the Poem Q&A about the craft elements in one of the featured poet's poems. Each section concludes with a Bonus Prompt, each of which provides a stimulus on those days when you just can't get your engine started.
(click cover for Amazon)
Named a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers
 A poetry tutorial to inform and inspire poets. Includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 of our nation’s finest poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate. An additional 45 accomplished poets contributed sample poems inspired by the prompts in this book. Ideal for use in the classroom, this book has been adopted by colleges and universities across the country. It is equally ideal for individual use at home or for group use in workshops. Guaranteed to break through any writer's block.This revised edition contains a full Table of Contents and an Index.
(click cover for Amazon)
Spread the Word
 
 
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