Welcome

Isn't it exciting to have in-person readings coming back? My Terrapin poets have been lining up readings right and left. Let's hope this continues. I much prefer in-person to Zoom.

For those of you looking ahead to submitting a manuscript for publication, please keep in mind that Terrapin's next open reading period will be August 1 thru August 31. In spite of rising costs, I'm hoping to keep the submission fee at $12.

The Strategic Poet continues to make its way into the world. If you don't yet have the book, April would be an ideal time to get it. People tell me that it's been provoking lots of good new poems. Please keep the book in mind for your writing groups and any poetry courses you will be teaching. And if you've read and enjoyed the book, an Amazon review would be very much appreciated. The more reviews a book receives, the more encouraged Amazon is to stock and promote a title.

In this newsletter you'll find a poem and prompt new to the newsletter. You'll also find a wonderful Craft Talk on descriptive details from Ellen Bass. This appears in The Strategic Poet, along with twelve additional craft talks. You'll also find a link to a wonderful heart-wrenching and timely article.

Happy Spring!

Diane
 

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News from Terrapin Books

Poem and Prompt

Thanks to David Graham for introducing me to this poem. It's by Jim Moore, from his collection Underground: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014).

Twenty Questions
 
Did I forget to look at the sky this morning
when I first woke up? Did I miss the willow tree?
The white gravel road that goes up from the cemetery,
but to where? And the abandoned house on the hill, did it get
even a moment? Did I notice the small clouds so slowly
moving away? And did I think of the right hand
of God? What if it is a slow cloud descending
on earth as rain? As snow? As shade? Don’t you think
I should move on to the mop? How it just sits there, too often
unused? And the stolen rose on its stem?
Why would I write a poem without one?
Wouldn’t it be wrong not to mention joy? Sadness,
its sleepy-eyed twin? If I’d caught the boat
to Mykonos that time when I was nineteen
would the moon have risen out of the sea
and shone on my life so clearly
I would have loved it
just as it was? Is the boat
still in the harbor, pointing
in the direction of the open sea? Am I
still nineteen? Going in or going out,
can I let the tide make of me
what it must? Did I already ask that?

*****

I love poems that begin with a question. This one not only begins with a question but goes on to consist entirely of questions. That’s a risk, but one that pays off nicely here. Moore gives his poem the title of an old TV show and then uses that to structure his poem. If you count, you’ll find that there are twenty questions in the poem.

The speaker begins with questions about what he might have neglected to notice this morning—the sky, the willow tree, the road, and so on. After listing five things he might have missed, the speaker turns his thoughts to God. And so the poem goes, with one question leading to another.

Notice how the poet varies the structure of his questions. He moves from complete sentences—or questions here—to some fragments, a long one in lines 3-4, then some short ones in line 8: As snow? As shade? It is these variations that keep the poem’s series of questions from becoming tiresome.

In line 8 the speaker addresses an auditor, “you,” asking for some input from that person. He shifts his gaze from serious objects and subjects to frivolous ones, such as the mop. Should he notice the mop?

The tone again changes as the speaker considers joy and sadness and thoughts of what his life might have been if he’d made different choices. These shifts in tone also keep the poem moving along in spite of its limitation to questions. By the time we get to the end of the poem, we have exactly twenty questions.

Notice the images in the poem: the willow tree, the white gravel road, the abandoned house, the stolen rose, the boat, the harbor, the open sea. And the instance of personification, i.e., Sadness as the “sleepy-eyed twin” of Joy.

*****

For your own poem, begin with the idea that your poem will include twenty questions. Then begin with a single grammatically correct question. Let that question touch off several other questions. Now shift to new subject matter. And keep going. Be spontaneous. Don’t overthink.

Be mindful of speaking to an auditor, to a someone. You might address this auditor as “you” or by name. Just having someone in mind will affect your voice, make it stronger.

As you move along, toss in some fragments. Vary line length and question length.

Be sure to include lots of images. Avoid overusing abstracts such as joy and sadness. Make such concepts real with concrete images.

As you revise after completing your first draft, consider if you might want to add more questions. Or subtract a few. Begin with twenty but don’t feel married to that number. Do what’s best for the poem. Consider, too, if you might want a few lines that aren’t questions at all.

From Detail to Discovery

          —Ellen Bass

E. L. Doctorow said, Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. That is our job description. But how do we go about this work of transferring feeling? How do we write poems that make the reader feel the rain? Fortunately, one of the main ways is very concrete. We create a physical and emotional impact through vivid detail, precise description, metaphor, and image. By observing, we see more. By describing what we see, we understand more, we feel more. We discover something we didn’t know before. And that process of seeing, understanding, feeling, and epiphany then takes place in the reader as well.

We don’t want to simply report; we want to enact an experience. And the most basic building block is detail. Detail, to be effective, must be both sensory and necessary. Details arouse, shape, and direct the reader’s experience. Every description reveals what we think, feel, see, and know. Any description says as much about the writer as it does about the thing being described. And in this way the distance between the writer and the reader collapses and intimacy is achieved.

If I could give just one suggestion to beginning and developing writers, it would be to slow down. If you don’t rush through what you see or what you want to convey, you have a better shot at delivering a real and vivid experience to the reader. You might find it helpful to think about it this way. Imagine that you walked into a room where the TV was on and a movie was playing. You haven’t seen the beginning; you don’t know what the film is about. But if you watched just for one full minute, think about how much you’d see and hear. To write all that you observed would take many pages. You’d have to describe the terrain, the landscape, the setting, the people, their expressions, gestures, how they moved or didn’t move, what they said and how they said it, how all this shifted when the camera zoomed in or panned out—and more.

You see immediately how much might possibly enter your poem just from one minute. And when we’re drawing from life, either our own or others, we have all of the senses, as well as feelings and thoughts. Of course, you can’t just include everything. No one is interested in a recital of unconstructed life. The writer, Janet Burroway, said, If you refuse to direct our judgment [through the selection and sharing of specific detail], you may be inviting our indifference.

Chekov defined talent as the ability to distinguish the essential from the inessential. So we are always going to be choosing which detail. In the early drafts of a poem, you may want to focus just on including detail and trying to make that detail as sharp as you can, erring on the side of too much detail, rather than too little. 

As you develop your craft, it will be necessary to make sure those details are both relevant and necessary. They have to earn the real estate they take up in the poem. The amount of space given to them—and if they’re allowed to stay at all—depends on whether and how significantly they function in the poem. If a particular detail doesn’t add to the poem, then even if it’s interesting in itself, it has to be asked to leave.

You may struggle with which details are essential, but by focusing on vivid, sensory detail, you’ll be moving in the right direction. Because it’s through details, description, images, and metaphors that we are led to understand something about the experience or the subject we’re writing about that we didn’t know before we began the poem.

And this discovery is at the heart of why we write at all. Because we want to discover something we didn’t already know. We want to be enlarged. We want to be transformed. A good poem changes both the writer and the reader.

The novelist, John Gardner, said, Details are proofs. They prove the existence of the world. This practice of closely observed, precisely rendered detail will absolutely make your poems stronger. And change your life.

Link to Article
from Oprah Daily
Married Poets Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris Prepare for News from Ukraine and to Find Out If Her Cancer Has Returned

Video

New Craft Book

  Named a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers

(click cover for Amazon)
What Readers Are Saying:

"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)

"Unlike workbooks or rote exercises, Lockward's method allows mid-level poets to painlessly learn and employ new techniques with an immediate result. I have had successful and fast results with her methods, creating strong poems using techniques that were not part of my repertoire, poems that burst forth, poems that I did not know were in me. What more could any poet ask?" (JK)

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 Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, Diane Seuss, Dean Young, and George Bilgere. 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.


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." Concepts become progressively more sophisticated, moving 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 craft essays, each followed by a model poem, analysis of the poem's craft, and a prompt. Ten bonus prompts also included. Ten Top Tips lists.

(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)

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