richardgoodson

Long poems! Yikes!

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posted Sunday, 29 June 2008

Long poems!  Yikes!  Their uncontainedness is exhilarating, and scary.

The poem '1969' still requires an enormous amount of energy, time and concentration.  A different kind of writing mentality, too...  I've barely begun.  I already have about ten sheets of scribbled-on versions of the first section.  It's difficult to keep tabs on the progress of it because I'm jumping backwards and forwards, around this particular section, editing and adding.  So it's growing and hopefully getting better, but not in an ordered or logical way.  It's difficult to figure out what path I've taken because the scribbled-on sheets are no longer in any chronological order.  At least I can keep different sections - and drafts thereof - separate from each other.  That's one way, at least, I can keep control.

The other problem, one which happens when I'm writing short poems too, but which is especially pressing now, is the way I get fixated on one or two lines and forget or neglect the narrative of the whole, the wider perspective.  I need a bifocal lens because I need to constantly shift focus. 

The close-up...  The panoramic...  The close-up...  The panoramic...

I'm also reading what I've written obsessively, repeatedly.  This is good.  It's good to test the sound of it, the movement of it, out loud or under the breath.  And it shows how deep I've plunged.  But re-reading's also a stultifying trap, potentially.  Like getting locked into compulsive behaviour, or like staring at my own reflection.  I have to pull myself away from the poem every now and then to regain objectivity and to be able to think up fresh stuff.  Those bifocal specs again...

I'm listening to a live recording of John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' at the moment.  Something about '60's jazz, where bebop seques into something looser - maybe its flighty, inchoate, fluctual quality - makes it conducive to my writing.  And this piece seems resonant with '1969'.  I'm looking for the same kind of sustained intensity I suppose, and yet, similarly, I want it to move quickly and lightly.  Does that make sense?  Generally I'm trying to write the lines to fit the 1-9-6-9 syllabic structure, making the line-ends coincide with a natural caesura or with the end of a clause or sentence or where I want to accentuate the last word for dramatic effect.  (Though the opening one-syllable line is tricky.  The word I put there often seems arbitrary.)  This is so that, generally, there's a feeling of smoothness and containment.  The repeated rhyme at the end of each stanza corroborates this.  However I'm also doing all this because I have one eye on messing with the pattern later on in the poem, or in parts of the poem where I need to reflect, formally, a more disturbed mood.  But that comes later...

I'm attempting to edit out indefinite and definite articles, personal and possesive pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions where possible.  I want the poem to be reminiscent of directions on a script, or of a director's notes.  The storyteller - the 'me' - is, after all, overtly imagining the scene in filmic terms.  So it seems appropriate.  I also want to get an intensity into the lines so I want every word to have a damned good reason for being there.  I'm reminded here of how Betsy Warland took her pencil to one of my sonnets and drew lines through a handful of 'the's' and 'and's' as I watched in horror!  "But now the lines won't be iambic pentameters!" I protested.  Her attitude was very much that each word had to pay its way and that if I really wanted iambic pentameters I'd have to get back up to the ten syllables with words that really mattered.  I think that's also what I'm doing here.  I mustn't go too far though.  One thing about all those 'and's' and 'she's' and 'the's' - they help flow.  And movement is important.  I don't want to write something choppy and halting.

I'm also feeling the need to drop down a notch into a more vernacular and idiomatic register.  I've just replaced 'row' with the more ironically understated and authentic-sounding 'to-do', for example.  And I've replaced 'recalls' with the more colloquial 'it all comes back'.  So

she recalls / the row about the miniskirt

has become

it all comes / back:  the to-do about miniskirts

Such seemingly insignificant lexical choices do make the poem feel strangely more intimate and living.  It's gut-language.  Root-language.  Not the kind I teach to my foreign students, and not the kind I write emails in, or even blogs in... 

It's a relief when I find it, like a familiar smell, but how odd that I have to dig for it...    

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comments (1)


1. Liam left...
Monday, 14 July 2008 12:33 pm

Hi Richard

I read this entry with interest, perhaps because you raise some issues which I've been mulling over myself ( maybe I have an axe to grind, I'm not sure ). Now that the summer break has begun too I've got a little time to post.

I would be curious to know if Betsy Warland writes rhyming and metered verse herself. I come to this point as it chimes with a few discussions my own work has raised on the MA course. One person in our group in particular was keen on the kind of minimalist verse which her ammendments appear to lean towards. It can be useful too and I've given it a go myself. A line like "he walked the road of dreams" ( using a cliche there to make it as uncomplicated as possible ) can become "walk dreams' road" and it gives it a whole different emphasis. The dropping of these articles, prepositions and pronouns can make something more direct, or even more evocative, but equally it can have an adverse affect; it might lose rhythm. I do sometimes wonder however if we are disuaded as poets from little Jack Horner moments whilst the critics delight in doing exactly the same themselves, and if this is not detrimental to the poet's cause. It might be that people who suggest the type of 'improvements' you highlight in your entry are not the same people who would write using rhymed metered form.

I remember when I first tried to write in metered form there were a lot of lines which added words like 'did' or 'do', such as 'he did walk' rather than 'he walked' to get the extra syllable where it was necessary. I think that is the kind of thing which is superfluous and needs to be edited out. The comments made about some of your work might be relevant ( I have not seen the specifice pieces she referred to ) but I get the impression that she was trying to further her own agenda.

When I have received comments on my own work, the most constructive criticism has come from a member of my group who can use rhyme and meter but chooses not to. One of the other members of the group who uses rhyme was often quite insightful too. The other people in the group ( including the tutors ) also offered useful comments but equally at times I think made comments which belied there own lack of fondness for the forms I used. Perhaps at times if you have written something that meets the technical criteria of the form you are using, it says what you want it to say and it does it with a certain amount of style there isn't much to add but people feel a need to say something or feel that they muse 'add' something. If they do not use rhythm in this way, they may have problems in attempting this.

Looking at your recent work and your relfections on it, you are obviously doing something which involves a strong technical element in terms of form, and your reasons for doing this reflect the subject matter ( I'm stating the obvious here as I'm telling you what you already know ). I guess what I want to say is it sounds as if you are getting bogged down with what other people might say, and with potential criticisms which may not even be valid. You suggested that you might be becoming 'fixated.' Is this because of the techinical demands or because of the responses you expect to get from it? If you those responses don't tally with where you're heading, as much as looking to meet those demands, you could consider the idea that 'they' ( whoever 'they' are ) are not your target audience.

Liam

When I first started writing sonn