the sonnet class

Following up on last week, I felt very confined by the Sonnet.  And it apparently was clear in class.  At first, I was unusually proud of my piece, but in class it came off more as a collection of nice lines than something cut of whole cloth.  There was so much emotion bubbling between the lines and I felt like Paul was giving me permission to relax my adherence to the rules… or at least such emphasis on formal presentation.  So, I literally went immediately to the library and wrote the poem I wanted to write… which in many ways deals with finding my own life… but sounds quite a lot like finding my own voice. 

Maybe finding your own voice requires the same kind of self-confidence it takes to find your own life.  There are many smart writers who seem to have the same voice… or at least unoriginal voices.  There are many good people who seem to have similar lives.  In some cases these are beautiful lives of their own choosing… but in other cases these are lives witch just happened… perhaps like a derivative voice.  A friend once told me that life is, at its best, dull and good.  I struggle with this.  But perhaps you have just have to ask yourself what kind of life you want, and what you’re willing to risk.  Maybe all good lives eventually do become a bit dull.  If public service is the rent we pay for life (something I firmly believe) than maybe a bit of dullness is the price we pay for home.  Perhaps having the life you want, like finding your voice as a writer, has much to do with allowing yourself to be dissatisfied, taking a look within and saying, “Ah-huh!”  Well... in any case... as scattered as that is... I think that's what my sonnet is about.  

the villanelle class

Not to beat a dead horse, but now as I read more and think more, I see how voice can be more complex than I originally suggested.  As Paul pointed out, John Ashbury uses parallel registers.  In Daffy Duck in Hollywood, do we accuse him of using inconsistent strategies of dealing with his material merely because he references La Celestina and Speedy Gonzalez in the same poem?  A voice, like a personality, may be complex but not maladaptive.  Aren’t the most interesting people complex, eclectic?  This is relevant for the novelist as well, who unlike the poet in most cases, may have to conjure many compelling voices, not just the narrator’s or narrators’, but characters. 

It’s so easy, isn’t it, to want to write “like” someone else because they impress you.  But ultimately, I think that could only ever be as satisfying as being in a relationship with a person because they impress you… or think it’s expected.  There is a unique lens of experiences and personality with which I must view the world, and only through that lens can I see the stories, images, truths that I need to see.  The same is true for my characters.  If you have compassion for your characters, I think, you notice they arrive with heads full of vocabulary and hearts full of need.  And when you have the humility to set yourself aside, a siren goes off when you put foreign words in their mouths, or ill-fitting motives in their hearts. 

Now, to tie this back to the Villanelle.  If it’s hard enough to find your own voice, how do you squeeze this complex collection of vocabulary, attitude, style etc into rigid patterns of repetition and rhyme?  Well, I am only a student.  And if finding my own voice is the priority at this stage of my development,  I think I can nudge a few conventions just a bit to make room my voice.

the pastoral class

One issue Paul brought up today, and has several times before, is a poet’s voice.  And a poet discovers not just a voice but a shape – there’s a distinctive shape on the page that a poet’s work takes.  I can’t claim to know these shapes.  Although, it seems more obvious with Neruda or E.E. Cummigns, maybe Yeats, than others.

What is voice?  What’s the difference between voice and style?  Style, it seems to me, deals with a writer’s bag of tricks – devices, techniques, emphasis – maybe style has to do mostly with strategy.  I will convey this emotion using emotive language.  I will create tension by conjuring a relevant distraction - Levine’s use of repetition in Smoke for example.  He gives us new images of smoke and light, reminding us of the dual images, the tension – can you imagine in the air filled with smoke? - the light came from nowhere and went nowhere – objects turned one way then another to catch the light - the light overflowing with smoke – why is the air filled with smoke? - just like the sun, hidden in smoke.  Keats uses personification – the foster child of silence – unravished bride of quietness.  But are these examples of the poets’ voices?  Actually, yes… they are, aren’t they?  But only because they’ve made them so.   

My piano professor, who follows this blog, used to say that much virtuosity was unnecessary.  It doesn’t affect sound, it plays no role in interpretation.  It’s for show.  But some of a concert pianist’s “voice” may come out in his virtuosity – his adagios, forte, pianissimo etc. 

Maybe style, then, is a bit like an attitude.  We can adopt attitudes to suit situations… but it is in a collection of attitudes we find personality.  So, you and I may share an attitude about Jazz but have very different personalities.  Similarly, poets may share strategies/styles and have very different “voices”.  For example don’t Janet Lewis and Yeats both employ a similar strategy of evoking place (and emotions tethered to it) via sounds, particularly sounds associated with water?  But this is more like shared attitudes, because considering the big picture, they’re very different poets – they have different voices. 

So, to conclude - maybe a practical way to distinguish between voice and style is just to ask yourself, as John Gardner does, is it working in service of the poem.  If a poem is of a whole, beats with one heart, and rings true, than it has an authentic voice.  I, the writer, am saying something the way it has to be said.  Therefore, I am not saying something because I have found an interesting way to say it.  I am not playing Rachmaninoff’s C# minor prelude with my hands drifting or flying above the keys.  I am not inserting a clever, adjective laden metaphor.  Or, to paraphrase Aristoltle, I am not adding parts on to a person as I carve a statute (a third arm).  The statue, like the poem, need only have the parts of the idea.  Everything tacked on is empty style, not part of an authentic, unified artistic voice.  

the ode class

I think, at it’s best, an ode should just reveal, expose a barely hidden treasure, a true but maybe obscured or over-looked beauty.   That is what Keats does with Autumn.  Exposing for us the “mellow fruitlessness”… Autumn as mystic Swelling the gourd, plumping the hazel shells.  Summer, this torrent of life too much for the Earth to contain, as sunshine brims over the “clammy cells” of the flowers and plants.  

But sometimes what the ode is revealing is within us, exposing to us a potential to see beauty.  The ode is a teacher.  Hart Crane teaches us how to look at the Brooklyn Bridge and all that surrounds it.  The ode says to us… see how aspirational those sails are, grip those images of freedom now, before “elevators drop us from our day…”  See that “silver-paced” city as the Oz that it is, it’s very being announcing “implicitly thy freedom staying thee!”  What a special thing.  But don’t stop there, as you move toward Manhattan.  Look up!  Look up to the “immaculate sigh of stars” over the sleepless bridge, over the sleepless river “vaulting to the sea.”  How much richer our lives can be, if we allow ourselves to be mesmerized.  

The sestina class

Paul’s pointing out that we can enjamb our sentences was an eye-opener.  The sestina’s form is stingy with freedom, so enjambing (allowing my sentences to end mid-line) became essential in the re-write.  I think this re-write is a more narrowly tailored fit for what I wanted to say originally.

Todays class hit on some tenets of writing which easily translate to prose – avoiding cliché, being careful not to over energize a line or a sentence.  T.S. Elliot’s quote about dislocating wording into meanings, making them new, permeates my thinking on writing now.  And it seems to permeate the writing of writers I love, writers who often avoid using words in their standard context.  The novelists who move me tend to be as poetic as poets (Ondaatje, McCann, Chabon, Letham).  Along that line, Paul suggested we read Two Lorries by Heaney, and I’d suggest Heaney has as much of a grasp of narrative and tense as a great writer of prose.  So, to wrap up a ramble -  while I’m primarily interested in becoming a novelist, I really don’t know how I could do so without also being a poet. 

I think for poetry to matter, however, it can’t merely be a pursuit of dislocating words into new meaning, but new truths.  Language which appears clever for it’s own sake feels like little more than a stunt.  Language that reveals, exposes some knew feature, however small, of existence, of our many worlds and relationships, this poetry. 

  

let's call her Karen

Your eye-roll - uniquely American,

in Liverpool Street Station,

not that we invented impatience,

just maybe lent it conviction.

The startling newness of you.

I half expect shop tags from your clothes.

Your face taut, freckled, coppery.

Hair the color of a city lit street after rain.

I invent you from accessories

Teasim mug, a sundial;

Blackberry at quarter to nine;

Prada watch eyeing

my peeling soles and borrowed tie.

I breathe in the sway of you,

nameless, travel-stained dream of you,

your cinnamon chai

and Ralf Lauren Blue.

You dip and pull your roller-bag,

stow stray hairs behind your ear,

a dreamy salute to all in the station

who’ve briefly woven you in his or her future,

cowards, villains,

architects of silence

and unfolding distances.