Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Changing Tastes in Poetry Part 2

I promised to write a bit explaining how modern poetry works. Since poetry is one of my links (along the right side here), I checked to see some of what I have previously written about poetry. You know, I don't want to repeat myself too much.

I found that I had outlined some of the principles of modern poetry in an earlier post,
Tie a Poem to a Chair. (The title of that post comes from the first line of the wonderful poem by Billy Collins entitled Introduction to Poetry.)

Since I made the point that older poetry uses external elements to hold a poem together, to give it cohesion (rhythm, meter and rhyme), you will anticipate that something must hold modern poetry together. The cohesion for modern poetry moves to the interior of the poem.
Instead of the ends of line ALWAYS rhyming, a modern poem uses internal repetion at times. Simply repeating a word, or even using alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds) or assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) can help hold a poem together.

Modern poetry tends to be very spare in expression. Where a poem such as "The Raven" can go on (and on), a modern poet seems to pluck just one or two words to say exactly what the poet wants. Or a single image stands in for a host of meaning.

Let's take a poem by the poet
Barbara Crooker . Her poems have been featured several times on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac (which I have mention before). You can find more of her poems on the link provided to her name. And, I found at least one other blogger who analyzed a poem of hers called Ordinary Life.

Let's read the poem first.

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton,
'We are All Writing God's Poem'

by Barbara Crooker

Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've driven into spring, as the woods revive
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.

"Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem'" by Barbara Crooker, from Line Dance. © Word Press, 2008.


I would venture to say that for some of you, reading this poem for the first time, it will seem to be a series of disconnected thoughts. But, in fact, the poem links idea after idea after idea by repetition of a word or a thought, each time in a new context.

When this poem was featured on The Writer's Almanac, I loved it so much that I sent it off to a friend of mine who also listens to the Almanac. After a couple of weeks, she sent back to me this analysis below which shows how the poem ties everything together by internal repetition.



So, let's look at it again, with the help of colored text that I will italicize to help make it evident.

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton,
'We are All Writing God's Poem'

by Barbara Crooker

Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've DRIVEN into spring, as the woods REVIVE
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like
things
are always ending
—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of PHLOX curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
LAVENDER, THISTLE, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.

------------------------------

See how the poem holds together with all the links?

Beyond all these internal links are wonderful lines.

--"The sky's the soft blue of a work shirt"

--"their gaudy scarves flung over bark's bare limbs"

--"a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,/and aren't we just"

--"the moon spills its milk"

Those images are just delicious.

I am struck with how many times she uses clothing as description. And I am struck by the ordinariness made wonderfully special--opening a window, making coffee, steam rising.

My favorite portion is the image of the tractor trailer called Glory Bound that inspires the poet to say "and aren't we just."

I tell my students that the poet takes the ordinary events in life and transforms them into something extraordinary. The poet is inspired by everyday circumstances that those of us who are not poets would simply shrug off. The poet, however, mulls these events and ponders the meaning of it all.

6 comments:

Tossing Pebbles in the Stream said...

A lovely lesson. It refreshed ideas I had learned once.

Modern poetry even more so than traditional poetry needs to be read out loud to gain the dimension of "interpretation". I once heard Allen Ginsberg deliver a reading of "Howl" in the Arlington Street Church in Boston to a overflow congregation. It was so much more powerful than just reading it quietly at home.

Jayne said...

I like this one better, simply because it has imagery I can relate to. I still tend to like poems which give a glimpse into the person. My friend, Songbird, who writes at Reflectionary on Blogger writes such poems, like this recent one which left me breathless...

Some Things Never Will

Late to church
she drives into the parking lot
to see the car speeding away,
light blue, a Taurus--
she notes the license plate number.

She often notices things like that,
the color of a car,
the pattern of letters and numbers.

She wants it all to make sense.
But some things don't.
Some things never will.

Why did the young woman who gave her up,
too young to raise a baby alone,
end up raising another child alone
as the not-much-older widow
of a man who killed himself?

Why did she go through adolescence
feeling guilty about sex
without ever having it?
Why did she wait,
thinking virtue would be a shield?

She wants it all to make sense.
But some things don't.
Some things never will.

When you knit a plain scarf,
Things are simple.
You count the stitches;
You follow the pattern,
Go back and forth
Across the rows,
Knitting, maybe purling, too,
Until you reach the end.

It's methodical.

But add the element of lace--
Yarn over, slip slip knit,
Pass slipped stitch over--
And you may reach the valley
Of the shadow, the place
Where you cannot tink back.

In the hospital, on a gurney,
Prepared for the procedure,
She could not turn back.
As badly as she felt,
As sad as the situation was,
She could not unknit the stitches.

Sometimes things are such a mess.

She looked at the ceiling,
Found a pattern in the squares,
Checked the clock on the wall.

Her doctor, a familiar face,
Looked serious, he always did.
Respectful, she thought, of me
And of the situation.

The anesthesiologist smiled,
Kindly, reassuringly, told her
"Picture yourself on a warm beach.
The sun is shining. Now count…"

Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…

She hears people shouting, screaming.
She scrambles for her cell phone.
Nine-one-one. Gives the license number.

She wants it all to make sense.
But some things don't.
Some things never will.

NCmountainwoman said...

I do like the poem. I have long been a fan Anne Sexton's poetry and wonder about the title. Am I correct in assuming that Anne Sexton once wrote the line "We are All Writing God's Poem," or is Barbara Crooker referring to something else?

KGMom said...

Here's the answer to the question about the reference to Anne Sexton in the poem's title.
Apparently Anne Sexton said that "we are all writing one communal poem. It is not mine or yours, but God's poem.
Here's the article which includes this quote, as it appeared in the NY Times article

Anvilcloud said...

This is great stuff KG. I like poetry when I read it, but I don't read it if that makes any sense. I never get around to it.

NCmountainwoman said...

Thanks for the link, Donna. I shouldn't have been so lazy and should have researched it for myself. I liked the article very much.