The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (4 page)

Despite Roethke’s love of verbal play, he could generate little enthusiasm for what passes as experimentation and should more properly be called fucking around. Real experimentation is involved in every good poem because the poet searches for ways to unlock his imagination through trial and error. Quest for a self is fundamental to poetry. What passes for experimentation is often an elaborate method of avoiding one’s feelings at all costs. The process prohibits any chance the poet has to create surrogate feelings, a secondary kind of creativity but in most poems all the poet can settle for. The good poems say: “This is how I feel.” With luck that’s true, but usually it’s not. More often the poem is the way the poet says he feels when he can’t find out what his real feelings are. It makes little difference to the reader, since a good poem sounds meant enough to be believed.

“Each newcomer feels obliged to do something else, forgetting that if he himself is somebody he will necessarily do that something else,” said Valéry. And Roethke told students to “write like somebody else.” There are those usual people who try desperately to appear unusual and there are unusual people who try to appear usual. Most poets I’ve met are from the latter and much smaller group. William Stafford, at his best as good as we have, is a near-perfect example. It doesn’t surprise me at all when the arrogant wild man in class turns in predictable, unimaginative poems and the straight one is doing nutty and promising work. If you are really strange you are always in enemy territory, and your constant concern is survival.

Roethke would probably take issue with that. He had all sorts of odd notions about what makes a poet. Once he told me seriously that we, he and I, being physically large, presented a kind of presence to others, and the pressure we felt from this role dictated by our physical proportions was fundamental to creating poems. He didn’t put it that way but that’s what he was saying.

Other ideas deserved more serious consideration. Roethke was fond of quoting Rimbaud’s idea of the “systematic derangement of the senses,” but he always left off the “systematic.” When I was in grad school in ’49 and ’50, the smartest faculty member I knew at the time told me he believed that omission to be important. He felt that Roethke might actually cultivate madness because he believed it essential to writing. That may or may not be true. I suppose it could be argued that all madness is self-created. But what a great compliment to Roethke that people could believe it of him. How many great artists, including Yeats, could be credited with risking their very being for their work? Some poets do burn themselves for their work, like Dylan Thomas, but most prepare themselves for the long haul.

I vaguely recall a class in ’48 when Roethke defended madness as important to creativity. I disagree plenty. Madness is crippling anywhere but in art where it belongs and can always find a home. It is obvious that all art is screwy and it is equally obvious that most men who create it are not. They are often “silly like us.” Some of them—William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens—aren’t even particularly silly. What is remarkable is that men handicapped by periods of mental aberration can still fight through and create, while others are simply incapacitated, sometimes forever.

But then we know almost nothing about creativity, where it comes from, what causes it. People who profess to be astounded that Wallace Stevens could be a corporate executive and still write are really saying, “How could he be a poet when he’s not like me?” There are a lot of poets who aren’t like you, even if you’re a poet.

Most creative-writing teachers in Roethke’s day worth mentioning were formalists, and formality was an end in itself. Obligation to play “by the rules” remained paramount. As a teacher Roethke stood virtually alone at the time. For Roethke the rules were simply one way to help a poet get to the gold. Certain areas he wisely left alone. I think he instinctively knew that fool’s gold is what fools end up with, and a teacher can do nothing about that.

In one area Roethke lacked sophistication at moments. He was far too competitive for his own good, and while I’m far more competitive than I admit, I believe that it is only in periods when you can transcend your competitive instincts that you can write. A sound analogy could be made with hitting a baseball. If you concentrate on beating a particular pitcher, your chances of hitting him are not as good as they are if you can ignore him until he disappears and you can concentrate on the ball. And your chances of writing a poem are greatly reduced if you are trying to beat Robert Lowell or T. S. Eliot or anybody else. Roethke’s love of prizes, rave reviews, and applause would sometimes prevent him from emphasizing to the student the real reward of writing—that special private way you feel about your poems, the way you feel when you are finishing a poem you like.

Yet he knew it, and in rare moments it showed. Once he said to me, that nervous undergrad who wanted the love of the world to roar out every time he put a word down, “Don’t worry about publishing. That’s not important.” He might have added, only the act of writing is. It’s flattering to be told you are better than someone else, but victories like that do not endure. What endures are your feelings about your work. You wouldn’t trade your poems for anybody’s. To do that you would also have to trade your life for his, which means living a whole new complex of pain and joy. One of those per lifetime is enough.

THAT’S WHAT these are. Nuts and bolts. My nuts and bolts. For me they helped, or once helped, and some still do. I’m stating them as rules, but of course they are no more than suggestions—I find the axiomatic tone preferable to a lot of qualifiers. If these work for you, good.

Use number 2 pencils. Get a good pencil sharpener and sharpen about twenty pencils. When one is dull, grab another.

Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed.

Pen or pencil, write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction. When I said use number 2 pencils, I was really saying that when I use number 2 pencils I feel good putting words on paper.

Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white paper seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page? The lines tend to want words. Blank paper begs to be left alone. The best notebooks I’ve found are National 43–581.

Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.

When young it’s normal to fear losing a good line or phrase and never finding anything comparable again. Carry a small pocket-size notebook and jot down lines and phrases as they occur. This may or may not help you write good poems, but it can help reduce your anxiety.

Make your first line interesting and immediate. Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things. When the poem starts, things should already have happened. (Note: White unlined paper gives you the feeling nothing has happened.) If Yeats had begun “Leda and the Swan” with Zeus spotting Leda and getting an erection, Yeats would have been writing a report.

When rewriting, write the entire poem again. If something has gone wrong deep in the poem, you may have taken a wrong turn earlier. The next time through the poem you may spot the wrong path you took. If you take another, when you reach the source of your dissatisfaction it may no longer be there. To change what’s there is difficult because it is boring. To find the right other is exciting.

If you want to change what’s there, use the same words and play with the syntax:

By playing with the syntax we’ve dropped a weak verb and left the sentence open with a chance for a stronger one. But maybe you can’t find a stronger verb, or you still want to end the sentence:

You may object that the meaning has changed, that you are no longer saying what you want to say. Never
want
to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you
have
to say it, you will.

Sometimes the wrong word isn’t the one you think it is but another close by. If annoyed with something in the poem, look to either side of it and see if that isn’t where the trouble is. You can seldom be certain of the source of your annoyance, only that you are annoyed. Sometimes you may feel dissatisfied without justification. The poem may be as good as it will get. Often a word is not right but very close: dog—hog, gill—gull, hen—hun.

When you feel a poem is finished, print it. The time needed to print a word is a hair longer than the time needed to write it. In that extra moment, you may make some lovely changes. Had Auden printed his poems he might not have needed the happy accident of the typist inadvertently typing “ports” for “poets,” a mistake that helped a poem considerably.

Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.

Put a typed copy on the wall and read it now and then. Often you know something is wrong but out of fear or laziness you try to ignore it, to delude yourself that the poem is done. If the poem is on the wall where you and possibly others can see it, you may feel pressure to work on it some more.

Use “love” only as a transitive verb for at least fifteen years.

End more than half your lines and more than two-thirds your sentences on words of one syllable.

Don’t use the same subject in two consecutive sentences.

Don’t overuse the verb “to be.” (I do this myself.) It may force what would have been the active verb into the participle and weaken it.

If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer.

If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time.

Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum: one.

No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly.

Make sure each sentence is at least four words longer or shorter than the one before it.

Use any noun that is yours, even if it has only local use. “Salal” is the name of a bush that grows wild in the Pacific Northwest. It is often not found in dictionaries, but I’ve known that word long as I can remember. I had to check with the University of Washington Botany Department on the spelling when I first used it in a poem. It is a word, and it is
my
word. That’s arrogant, isn’t it? But necessary. Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.

Beware certain words that seem necessitated by grammar to make things clear but dilute the drama of the statement. These are words of temporality, causality, and opposition, and often indicate a momentary lack of faith in the imagination.

Temporality:
meanwhile, while, as
(at the same time as),
during, and
(implying “and at the same time”)

Here, the words “and” and “while” point up a relation that can be provided by the mind. “While” simply means that two things happen at the same time. Without “while” they happen at the same time. What was funny about “Meanwhile, back at the ranch” was the superimposition of the words on the screen over a shot of the ranch. We are told what was being demonstrated. It would be boring if not maddening to live in a world where all things were labeled. Where “house” would be stamped on a house.

I’m not saying eliminate these words from your vocabulary. I’m saying don’t use them out of grammarphobia to make connections clear. Note in the above example the relative values of the two statements were eliminated by removing the “as.” With the “as” the temporal relation of the two statements was stated, and the mind gave or wanted to give more value to one than the other. Now they are equal. Style and substance may represent a class system. The imagination is a democracy.

Causality:
so
(as a result),
because, thus, causing

Don’t put signposts to relationships.

Opposition:
yet, but

Often the opposition is far more dramatic if you don’t call attention to it. Sometimes, the opposition isn’t opposition.

The poem need not end on a dramatic note, but often the dramatic can be at the end with good effect.

Beware using “so” and “such” for emphasis. They’re often phony words, uttered. “He is so handsome.” “That was such a good dinner.” If “so” is used, it is better to have a consequence.

This leads us to more complicated problems, so let’s shift into a higher gear. More happened in the revision than I expected. By obeying one silly “rule,” I found myself forced to cut the fat from the statement that followed. That is the advantage of making up rules. If they are working, they should lead you to better writing. If they don’t, you’ve made up the wrong rules. Almost all young poets are using more syllables than necessary, more words than needed. In the above example, by using four additional words to avoid the phony sound of “so,” a word used for emphasis that begs our reaction in some way that I find annoyingly undignified, I found four unnecessary words in the next line—“and,” “just,” “lifts,” “and”—and took them out to make the statement fit this line. Here, I’ll rewrite a first stanza to make it adhere logically, then offer the stanza as written by the student, then suggest other versions.

Here, the swallows remain to account for the Indians and the boys, as if Indians and boys had no right in the poem without some relationship with the swallows. Here, the stanza as submitted:

Much better. Once something is established it is left, not used to make sure the next thing belongs.
^*
A few problems left. Too many “the”s. Now if we take out the first one we risk sibilance by having the
s
of “Ignatius” run into the
s
of “swallows.” Maybe a comma will do.

In the next two lines the words “long ago” seem somewhat flat because they follow what is dramatically important. Let’s try

The next two lines seem too leisurely for the pace of the poem to me. A possibility: