Let's throw some words at the fridge and see what sticks...
The “Assignment”
As VP and Program Chair of Poets Northwest, in Houston, Texas, it’s my job to come up with interesting activities for the group once a month. Last month, we enjoyed a reading and workshop presented by Courtney O’Banion Smith, who won the Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Contest with her book, In Fidelity.
This month, I tossed the group what I hope was a fun little challenge, meant to get the creative juices flowing:
The topic for this month's program is "Refrigerator Magnet Poetry." Please go to Random Word Generator - WordCounter.net (https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator) and generate 25 random words. Write a poem on any topic, and any form, using as many of the randomly-generated words from this list as possible. (Bring the list with you to the meeting.)
As discussed in our August meeting, prepare a brief (and unapologetic!) introduction for your poem. Consider including: Of your 25 random words, how many did you manage to work into your poem? Did you find inspiration in the randomness? Was it especially challenging? Were there any surprises? What form did you choose? Was it fun to write?
You should know, by now, that I would never issue a challenge I wasn’t game to try, myself. In fact, a friendly challenge is a great way for me to pull myself out of a writing slump. These were my random words: lumber, library, impose, coherent, languid, furtive, learn, descriptive, harmony, abstracted, pencil, contract, change, match, bear, kiss, measly, level, sulky, occur, aboard, rewind, curb, obedient, wrench.
The Result
Did I have a moment, looking through the list, where I wondered, “What the hell have I done?” Yes. Yes, I did. I’ll admit that I was tempted, like the gamer I used to be, to “re-roll” until I got a list I liked. A list that made more sense on its surface. Instead, I pulled on my big-girl panties and I used all 25 words, in 25 lines of iambic pentameter just to add to the fun. It may have helped that I’ve been limbering up with the New York Times game, Connections.
I’m not sure if I found inspiration in the words, themselves, but as I cobbled them together, they suggested images. The images began to take shape, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I think I found inspiration in the challenge of making them fit together in a coherent whole.
Coherent! That was one of my 25 words! I only had 22 lines, to start. There was nothing in the challenge about line count. But the idea of 25x25 got stuck in my mind, and this seemed “too close but not quite” for my tastes. So, this morning, I began to edit.
Monday Morning Married Life
Sleep lumbers, languid, like a bear. I wake, But barely there, at 4:00 AM. Cast off Warm downy blankets of repose. Impose Harsh winter's chill: descriptive, like a kiss Of ice to slap the hungry belly-growl, To wrench the hoar-frost breath from sulky lungs.
The starving hunter roars his ravenous rage And wakes, at last - a yawn, a furtive scratch - To ask if I want coffee, strong and black. I nod assent; coherent speech must wait. This is the contract, secret to our match: Love's language is a library of grunts, Half-smiles, nods, and gentle touch. We've learned To read each other's thoughts as they occur Ignoring measly, petty quarrels there. To climb aboard the week in harmony Obedient to the rhythm of the rails that run Our parallel and level days, routine.
Abstracted from our hibernating den My teddy-bear requests I pencil in A moment's time to change, rewind – to dine Togetherin the evening’s hush – and I In eagerness to curb this waste of life Pursuing other people’s goals say, “Yes,” And raise a glass to married Monday mornings.
This turned out better than I thought it would. I shouldn’t be surprised. About a dozen years ago, I found Writing Prompts - Creative Copy Challenge (wordpress.com). There, the challenge involved only 10 words and participants were encouraged to post, as comments, anything from a sentence to a story to a poem. It was a good way to jump-start the brain; occasionally, I got the bones of a good story from it. Even before that, I had a college instructor who would provide a list of “fifty dollar words,” the kind of vocabulary-builder words that no one uses in everyday conversation, and the assignment was to try to use five of them together in “one grammatically correct, non-run-on sentence, demonstrating understanding of the meaning of each word.”
If you think “run-on sentence” means “way too long,” go brush up on the definition. My challenge to you all is to see who can leave the longest grammatically correct, properly punctuated, non-run-on sentence in the comments. And don’t use weak words like “very.” Don’t pad it with excessive conjunctions. Aim for interesting - see if you can hold the reader’s interest. The record-holder for my challenge managed to write, if I recall correctly, a sentence having 157 words.
The poet’s job is to “write tight” and we do it better than most, when we do it at all. Our job is to make each word carry the heavy freight of meaning and emotion, sometimes stacked like containers on a cargo ship.
I hope this newsletter inspires you to pick up a notebook and a pen, or open Word, and write something. Remember: It doesn’t have to be “good.” But it will be - to someone. I once entered a “bad poetry contest” that was only open to people whose deliberately awful poems were accepted for publication by poetry.com, only to lose because my poem wasn’t bad enough. I tried hard, too!
My own theory has been that people don’t hate poetry at all – they hate bad poetry. Pompous, pretentious, precious poetry. Unfathomably deep metaphors. Tongue-twisting, time-traveling language and syntax. Contrivance. But they lack the self-confidence, or feel it would be too rude or too harsh to say, “I have no idea what this means, and it’s such a chore to read it that I no longer care to contemplate it.” The fault may lie with the poet, not the reader.
Is There Such a Thing as “Bad Poetry”?
Oscar Wilde claimed that “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” In “The best bad poetry out there,” Dan Chiasson writes of a 1930s anthology of bad poetry called, The Stuffed Owl, that “Excess of love often leads, in poetry as in life, to worse results than neglect. Most of the worst bad poems here are so fragrantly and moistly loved that our supercilious amusement at them seems savage.”
But I would suggest to the reader that there are many poets and many poems – far too many to be read by one person in one lifetime. If you’ve attempted to make heads or tails of several poems by one poet, find another. All poets can be a little hit-or-miss. And readers’ tastes vary. There’s nothing wrong with that, or with you, Dear Reader. I may write one poem that truly touches another soul, and the next will, quite frankly, suck. I am glad of PCs and pixels; if I were still feeding dead trees to a wastebasket every time I wrote something bad or barely adequate, I would feel an unrelenting guilt. God forbid I should turn you off poetry altogether.
Does Poetry Leave You Feeling “Stupid”?
There’s something between “deep” and “doggerel” and I aspire to find my happy place on that spectrum. A poet might make more money writing “greeting card verse,” and might have more admirers writing overly “deep” navel-gazing verse full of symbolism nobody really understands – in the same way that the naked Emporer had “admirers” who were too terrified of him to tell him the truth.
Honestly, I don’t understand every word of “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, either. But if you listen to him read it, himself, a few times, if you think about it, and read what’s been written about it so that you understand the references in context, it becomes clearer. A young adult in 2023 does not share some of the specific experiences that Eliot talks about. A little more effort is required of us, today, than might have been required by the reader who lived through World War I. That effort pays off, I think. Keep in mind that poetry is meant to be read aloud and heard, because it is naturally metrical, lyrical – it was never meant to be solely for the eyes and brain.
Now, find yourself a favorite poem and try reading it aloud. Get someone else to read it aloud. See if you can find a recording of the author reading it out loud. It may be impolite of me to say this, but I think Fiona Shaw performed Eliot’s poem better than he did!
“The words on the page are asleep or dead until a human voice breathes life into them. Even the poems that I didn’t understand, or care for - as a pupil at school - sounded better read out loud. Their rhythms, rhymes, the sound of the words is often hypnotic and mesmerising - and that’s how it should be. Poetry is the magic of everyday words.” - Paul Cookson
Not all of us enjoy “performing” poetry. Or speaking in public. Whether we are competent - or even quite good at it - it’s just not our “thing.” If you enjoy performing at open mics and poetry slams, this newsletter may not be useful to you, but I hope you’ll add your tips and techniques to the comments, as I’m bound to miss a few.
Even if it’s not a joy, most of us can muster the wherewithal to read, recite, or perform our poems. And most of us can get better at it.
I asked poets, “What are some of your pet peeves when listening to poetry spoken aloud?” The first answer I got made me laugh out loud:
“People who suddenly acquire a mid-Atlantic accent when they read their poem aloud.”
He’s heard me read and swears he didn’t notice me doing this, but I tend to acquire an awkwardly British accent, which gets weirder as I self-consciously attempt to stop talking that way. Another poet suggested that perhaps that’s because poets were more likely than the average viewer to watch BBC dramas. That’s a kind theory, anyway. I have noticed others affecting accents and speech patterns that are not their normal way of speaking, and I wonder if they’re even aware that they’re doing it? Here’s a fun bit of trivia that came out of this discussion - did you know that there has emerged an Antarctic accent?
My pet peeves? I have two:
“Rambling preambles and self-conscious disclaimers.”
Avoid making excuses, disclaimers, or apologies. When reading your own poems, don’t say, “I wrote this in 15 minutes last night but kept getting interrupted by my colicky baby,” or “This isn’t very good, but, well, you’ll see…” If an introductory note is needed for context, prepare one as if for someone else to read. Keep it short and sweet - let the poem stand on its own legs. Prefacing a poem with an apology for how good it’s not is like arguing with a compliment even before you get one. Don’t do it.
“Stumbling over unfamiliar words.”
Sometimes we read others’ poems and stumble over unfamiliar words; sometimes, we write poetry containing familiar words we’ve only read in books - they’re not unfamiliar, but we’ve never heard them spoken aloud and don’t know how to pronounce them. Sometimes, we know how to pronounce them, but our tongues trip over them, anyway. That may be an indicator that we ought to rewrite the poem, if it’s one of our own. I once wrote a speech for Toastmasters that contained the word, “encephalography.” I know the word and its pronunciation, but my mouth just won’t cooperate. Before giving the speech at a contest, I changed it to “brain scan.” The technical term was not the point of the speech, and there was no point in drawing so much attention to it.
Another mentioned:
“Speaking too quietly.”
Yes! This is not the time for “inside voices.” Imagine that you are speaking to a person at the back of the room. Stand up tall to make room for your lungs. Use your diaphragm when you breath, speak, or sing - see Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises & Benefits (clevelandclinic.org) to support your voice.
For many listeners, their pet peeve is:
“Speaking too fast.”
Ugh. I’m often accused of speaking too fast! And it’s hard to slow down, because I feel like I’m exaggerating every word and syllable, and it feels to me like I’m being condescending. It feels unnatural. Speaking slowly takes practice, but it is important if you want listeners to understand what you’re saying.
And finally:
“Speaking in a monotone.”
Speaking in a monotone robs the poem of its energy and loses the audience’s interest quickly. Practice reading the poem silently, several times. Then practice reading it aloud. Try standing in front of a mirror, watching yourself as you read, or reading it to a friend across the room. Record yourself, then play back the audio or video to listen and watch for any rough spots. You might imagine that you are acting out the poem, or saying it as lines in a play.
In all cases, practice makes…better.
Tips for Reading Poetry Aloud
Suggested by Billy Collins: Read the title of the poem and the author’s name. Read any introductory notes given by the poet (but see #2, below). Repeat the title. Read the poem, then repeat the title again.
Avoid affectations, such as taking on an accent you don’t use in everyday speech.
Avoid “rambling preambles,” excuses, disclaimers, or apologies. Let the poem stand on its own legs. Never argue with a compliment and certainly never argue with one before you get it.
Look up unfamiliar words and practice their proper pronunciation. Consider a rewrite if it’s still causing your tongue to trip and poem is your own.
Speak with enough volume everyone in the room can hear you clearly. You don’t have to shout, but make sure people at the back of the room understand every word. Practice diaphragmatic breathing and “project” your voice.
Speak s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly. Talking too fast is a sign of nervousness. Never let ’em see you sweat!
Use vocal variety and energy in reading the poem to hold the audience’s interest and attention.
Memorize the poem if you can, so that you can make eye contact with your audience.
Practice and don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on your delivery.
Just for Fun: “The Exquisite Corpse” Game
Oh, that sounds ghoulish, doesn’t it? The name comes from one of the lines that resulted when a group of Surrealists played the game in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s: "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau." ("The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.")
I tried this out with family, recently, and the only other person who had heard of the game was my 9 year old grandson, who had played it in Art class in 3rd Grade.
We wrote a collaborative poem following the traditional adjective-noun-verb-adjective-noun format on a theme of “water.” No structure or theme is required, but I thought it might lead to a somewhat more coherent result that a group of mixed ages (9 to 60) and interests would enjoy. And here it is:
We also created two drawings: an alien creature and a train. Interestingly, the first person’s alien head had no eyes, nose, or mouth, but the second person (without peeking at the first section!) gave the alien eye-stalks in the armpit beneath a tentacled arm.
Give it a try!
And please, if you have any pet peeves or suggestions for reading poetry aloud, let me know in the comments.
Selma Martin's debut book of poetry, In the Shadow of Rainbows, is the work of a talented and empathetic poet. The importance Martin places on her readers is evident in the dedication, in the poet's statement of purpose, and in the poems, themselves - simple words and vivid images that appeal to our humanity through images that evoke an emotional response.
Some of the poems that most resonated with me include "The Lore," a peaceful meditation on being present and observant in a still moment, and in reading "I Almost Died," I was transported to the breathtaking, otherworldly snorkle-scape of a tropical coral reef. It's an image I know first-hand, and one Selma Martin paints convincingly in just a few brief lines.
"The River" and "Calamitous Portend" will haunt any parent who has ever endured fear coupled with the crisis of faith in their own ability to protect the precious life entrusted to their care.
There are over 60 poems in this volume - savor them. Read and reread. Feel them.
Selma Martin is a retired English teacher who lives with her husband in Japan. She has been a freelance writer of nonfiction, short stories, and poetry since 2017, and I have read along and watched her grow in skill and confidence. Learn more, and read more, at her website: Selma – Finding the extra in the ordinary (selmamartin.com)
Kathryn A LeRoy is a fellow writer and photographer whose cover photograph captures the misty shadows of rainbows - rainbows that cast colors and light into the shadows. Her website is Kathryn A. LeRoy (kathrynleroy.com)
Today, I want to talk about sonnets. Whatever you prefer to read or to write, I think there’s value in learning to write poetry using fixed forms. It’s like hanging your hat and coat on a rack, rather than tossing them artfully across the sofa like a decorative throw. It’s a discipline that requires you to think imaginatively within strict constraints.
I used to say that writing a grammatically correct, properly punctuated Tweet in exactly 280 characters was an excellent exercise in writing tight, chopping off every unnecessary character. Writing formal verse is similar, in that respect; every word must pack a punch and land it.
The rules of the form are deceptively simple. Two major sonnet forms are the Shakespearean, or English, sonnet and the Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet. These are the basis for all variations:
Shakespearean / English sonnet:
14 lines (divided into three quatrains - 4 lines each, and a couplet - 2 lines).
Typically, there is a volta - a turn or shift in thinking or emphasis in the third quatrain. You may want to think about starting with the word, “But…” or “Yet…” or “And yet…” though you needn’t signal the turn of thought so obviously.
Petrarchan / Italian sonnet:
14 lines (divided into an octave - 8 lines, and a sestet - 6 lines)
Typically, there is a volta - a turn or shift in thinking or emphasis at the start of the sestet. You may want to think about starting with the word, “But…” or “Yet…” or “And yet…” though you needn’t signal the turn of thought so obviously.
The Miltonic and Spenserian sonnets involve minor variations of these two, and the four together are generally regarded as the major sonnet forms; however, there are many varieties of “sonnet,” and you can peruse 179 of them at Every Sonnet – Just another Poets Collective site. Can you invent one that doesn’t already exist? Can you write one that is achingly beautiful but conforms perfectly to the prescribed rhyme and meter?
Remember: Practice never makes perfect. But practice makes good. Perfectionism never means attaining perfection; it just means you’ll die (and drive others nuts) trying.
Question: If reading formal verse, is there a form you prefer?
Critique and Feedback FTW!
In a previous post, I asked which term readers preferred for “constructive criticism”: criticism, critique, feedback, or analysis. Critique and feedback tied for the win. It was a very small sample size, though, so before giving any, I suggest asking the recipient which term they’re most comfortable with.
I don’t want any of you having to enter the witness protection program like R____:
