February Poetry Discussion - poetry as nourishment

Working with the second section of A Poet's Craft

Photo by Elena Leya on Unsplash

(***For those who are new or want a refresher on how to navigate The Unschool, the emails vs the actual site, here is the primer!)

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Last month’s poetry post/thread focused on “Inspiration and Materials.” This next section is sub-titled “How to Read Like a Poet,” with the title “Poetry as Nourishment.” (pages 25-50 A Poet’s Craft)

Note, even if you are not reading the book (or keeping up!) don’t hesitate to share thoughts. It’s also nourishing to have a lively discussion!

Do share—again—what poetry you’ve been reading—maybe listing one or two observations/strengths of the work that stand out for you. If you don’t have much time to read deeply, then I suggest you try for breadth in you reading—that is, try for works of poets living and writing in different centuries and countries, with different foci in their work. It’s come to my attention recently—thanks to Substack new “audience insights” tab—that the Unschool is being read in 80 countries (really? Thank you!)

If you look at the stats about literary works translated from English, and to English, there’s a very quick vision of the inequality: while English-language works are translated at high numbers, other languages are not so quickly translated to English. For the largely unilingual upper two-thirds of North America, this is a sad fact. Over here, we just don’t have enough books that are birthed elsewhere, and translated. (And what does that do and say about the capacity to understand others elsewhere??) Of course, poetry is the most challenging to translate. So… I put this out there, for those of you who can share work in other languages and poets. Please do. If you can’t translate (it takes time!), consider sharing your paraphrased sense of content and slant, how the poem works for you, maybe how you find it nourishing… would be good!

Let a poem read YOU

Annie Finch writes at length about this: to read and re-read and read again. Read aloud, read until you are absorbing. She calls this, ‘letting the poem read you.’

“So that instead of knowing what it means, you will feel how it means.” (p. 27)

And she lists several steps to get to this place: “slow down; breathe deeply and clear your mind; give the poem space to echo in.”

My much abbreviated summation of her pages about this is inadequate. But perhaps enough to pique your curiosity. (Order the book from her online bookstore, if you are. Link below.) I’m going to suggest you start ‘letting a poem read you’ with a single poem—maybe one you already know, so you can go deeper with familiar words.

Spend a WEEK with it. Read a number of times through the day. You might even type it out (this is an amazing exercise to do. I often tell those working with picturebooks to do this, but poetry, too. To get a sense of crawling inside). Then print multiple copies and scribble notes and number them as you read. Jot observations. This is not about meaning. It’s about feeling the poetry. Or—to same end—do NOT write about at all, especially if you have a decidedly analytical bent. And simply read. Read in different places, differences times of the day, carry it with you. Read last stanza first, and work your way upwards. Read from the middle.

At the close of a week, the work will have shifted somehow within you.

A note on re-writing

This is a way to understand something of “re-writes.” Poetry tends to be the one area in which writers can actively resist re-writing. But so often, re-writing isn’t about improving a work’s “literary quality” or “making it better.”

Rather, it’s about feeling a poem to a greater depth, discovering what it wants to be, as opposed to what you want it to be. It can be a most humbling thing, this self- and poem-discovering, or unlayering.

My sister-in-law is a visual artist. She recently posted a pic (below) of her studio, and someone commented on one of her paintings—the one on the easel. And her response was to say “something’s still missing with that one.” It’s awaiting, it’s in process. I couldn’t see anything “missing,” but she knows it… And we know it in our work, too.

Creating can mean waiting. In my experience, if you stick with the creating, the writing, th re-reading, the pondering, it does come. Usually when you’re least expecting. And sometimes “least expecting” is when you’re sitting still with it right in front of you.

The studio of my sister-in-law, Yvonne Acheson, Parksville, British Columbia

Finch shares Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry”—do look it up! It’s good for a wry chuckle. And she talks about the nature of a notebook, poems as touchstones, and memorization—taking a poem to heart. (So many reasons to read this book. This is my second time through now, and getting even more from it.)

Glosa - poetic form

You might want to do this with the poem you chose to live with for a week.

In the form known as glosa, you are extracting four lines—a quatrain—to work with from another poet’s work. (Acknowledge the poet/the work, and share the four lines off the top before your own.)

You then create four 10-line stanzas, using one of the four lines in each as the closing line. In the most traditional of these poems, the sixth and ninth lines rhyme with the tenth, the “borrowed” line.

A site to check out for examples and further explanation is here. It too is working with A Poet’s Craft.

If you want to post and share your poem, do so in this comment area, or email to me to share in the poetry workshop group.

The act of taking a poem we’ve read, a poem that has grown to be absorbed and experienced by us, and then write in response, is nourishing. It’s a traditional learning mode, to study others’ works, and to use as stepping-off points for our own. Don’t go in fear of others’ works; embrace them. They can be how we move forward.

Final bit:

Finch’s three chapter-end sections of “Questions for Meditation or Discussion,” “Quotes,” and “Poetry Practices” are, as always, troves of treasure.

One quote, with learning-from-others and “nourishment” in mind:

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead — W.H. Auden

To order A Poet’s Craft.