Words are powerful. If I didn’t believe that, I don’t think I could be a writer. Powerful writing triggers an emotional response by speaking to our five senses- sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. Our reaction to potent writing is immediate and not always easy to explain. This is because it’s our innermost self, our heart and our spirit, not our mind, that is touched first. We read a story and find ourselves smiling and nodding our head in recognition, relieved that someone else feels as we do. Or, we read and are startled by an author’s differing viewpoint. Words can do this; offer comfort, insight, pleasure and pain. They help us make sense of our experiences.
As writers, we strive to capture the intensity of moments so that our words will elicit an emotional response. Sometimes this happens easily. But what about the times when our writing seems flat and lifeless on the page? Where can we go for inspiration? For me, this is the answer: to poetry.
Emily Dickinson, one of my favourite poets, wrote: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry.”
Poetry is writing stripped bare. Each line is crafted for maximum impact. A poet does not have the luxury of length. Her story must be told in a few carefully chosen words. As prose writers, we can turn to poetry to find inspiration for drafting powerful sentences that get right to the heart of things. And we can discover ways to describe the inexplicable; those experiences and emotions that seem too big for mere words. Below, are 18 words, crafted into a poem by Jane Hirschfield:
Sonoma Fire
Large moon the deep orange of embers
Also the scent.
The grief of others- beautiful, at a distance.
Read it again, out loud this time. What do you feel when you read this poem? Awe at the beauty? Sadness for the loss? What images do you see? A clear night sky lit up by a full moon that reflects that intense but deadly orange of fire? Do you smell wood burning or maybe something else? Do you hear someone’s cries? Can you imagine the taste of the smoke on your tongue? In 3 lines, Hirschfield has described a hauntingly beautiful but deadly scene.
Here’s another example – a poem by Billy Collins that tackles the subject of winter, in 8 lines:
Winter
A little heat in the iron radiator,
the dog breathing at the foot of the bed,
and the windows shut tight,
encrusted with hexagons of frost.
I can barely hear the geese
complaining in the vast sky,
flying over the living and the dead,
schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.
Collins has fashioned a few choice images that appeal to your senses. Hearing- the sound of the dog breathing gently in and out and the faint honking of those complaining geese. Sight- those vast snow-covered fields that go on and on and the frosted window panes that have an icy beauty. Touch- the feel of that small bit of heat that is warming the cold skin of the narrator.
Have I convinced you to give poetry a try? I imagine that some of you are not regular poetry readers. Most people aren’t. In terms of literary genres, poetry sits at the bottom of the ladder. Why is that? I think for many of us, our first introduction to poetry was in school. We may remember slogging through some interminably long poem that seemed incomprehensible and irrelevant. Time now to put those negative experiences behind you and start fresh. Reading poetry is about pleasure. It is like music. It needs to be heard, to be read out loud and to be enjoyed. Poet Molly Peacock says: “Even though a poem is made with words, it is only one-third a verbal art. It is equally an auditory and a visual art which we take into our bodies as well as our minds.”
Sonoma Fire and Winter are just two examples; there are thousands of poems waiting to be read, to be enjoyed, that paint vivid pictures and recount moments in time in a few carefully chosen words. Poetry is about the details. Poet Catherine Sasanov says: “The attention given to the smallest details of language and sound is what makes for evocative writing, especially poetry.” Evocative writing; that’s what we are striving for. Emotion,vivid images, intensity, an appeal to the senses, all of these are important and are on colourful display in poetry.
Poetry and prose are natural partners. Poetry shows us the way into a subject or experience, no matter how painful, how beautiful, how ordinary. Reading poetry regularly will help you dig deep for the words that will make your prose writing powerful. It will inspire you. And inspiration is the magic that pushes us to create. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called inspiration, “the sweet fire.”
Are you ready to stoke those “sweet fires?” Here is your task for this week:
- Read a poem a day. Read it out loud. Where can you find poetry? Every library branch has a poetry section. Choose a collection at random. There also lots of online sources: www.poetryfoundation.org or www.poets.org are two good ones.
- As you read the poem, focus on how it makes you feel. Hear the music of the lines as you read them out loud. Don’t get hung up on the “meaning” of the poem. Write down the lines or specific words that stand out for you.
- Try this simple poetry writing exercise that was part of a presentation at Sister Writes by poet Hoa Nguyen. She suggests using it as a way to “turn off the logic mind and get to the wild places!”
- Take a blank sheet of paper. Write your first and last name vertically down the left side of the margin
- Without planning or overthinking, start your poem with the 1st letter of your first name and let that line flow into the 2nd letter of your name and so on, down to the last letter. See the example below ( I’ve shown only the first 3 letters of my name…you should use your first and last names)
C an it be possible to
I nspire my oldest, my
N atural self to dare to yearn
- Do the exercise 3 times, on different days. The 3 poems will be different.
- There is a visual aspect to this kind of poetry (it’s called Acrostic). Each line is turning into the next, the words flowing in an “ess” pattern
Til next time, keep writing.