The Practice of Poetry

In a written statement for The American Poetry Review’s 1999 roundtable discussion titled “How Poetry Helps People to Live Their Lives” (published in this month’s issue of APR) Yusef Komunyakaa says, “…I am taken back to Phillis Wheatley as she muses about the sacredness of the human imagination, how she seems to link it to freedom, and this supports the reason poetry is important: It reconnects us to the act of dreaming ourselves into existence. Poetry is an action…” (32). Komunyakaa’s conceptualization of our existence as an act of dream-creation is an interesting one; it declares that one must dream to liberate themselves and moreover, making the dream into poetry is an active process of self-realization.

Komunyakaa’s philosophy that the imagination is a liberating force echoes the Zen philosophy that our thought patterns are the cause of our suffering as well as the potential source of our liberation. Poets and meditators often observe the same precepts: everything depends on how we engage our mind; when we think about what we think, we can gain great insights, and we can be free of our enslaving fears or trapped fantasies that exist within.

As an example of poet/meditator parallels, take Western Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield. Although his advice is projected towards the meditating student, it translates well for the writer too. Consider his following story:
“A professor of mathematics and topography who had come to meditation was worried because his work involved hours of thought. He asked how he could practice meditation while thinking through these complex math problems.…I responded with a simple solution: ‘First, check your motivation. Approach the math in a positive and creative way. Then, when thinking about math, just think about math. If you get competitive and worry about publishing your solution before another colleague, that’s not math. If you find yourself dreaming about winning the Nobel Prize or the Field medal, that’s not math. Find a skillful motivation. Then do the math and enjoy the creativity of the mind” (The Wise Heart 148).
Kornfield is giving advice on meditating, but he is simultaneously giving great advice on focusing the nervous creative mind that might be stalled with self-doubt, fear of failure, or any other kind of paralyzing writer’s block. His advice is simple: those extra worries aren’t the task at hand—so let them go, focus on the true work (math, poetry, whatever) and enjoy the challenge.

This act of letting go and focusing is when Kornfield believes the mind opens up and becomes more liberated. Isn’t this similar to what Komunyakaa says? When we write, when we truly pay attention to the subtle machinations of our imagination, we make solid the otherwise drifting shadows, we make real the things that are waiting for acknowledgement.

“Coming back to Jeffers after a long absence is like getting kicked in the gut,” Carolyn Kizer states in her essay called “A Note on Robinson Jeffers” (93). In the essay, she analyzes a handful of passages of Jeffers’ work which are harsh, violent, and inhumanistic but girded by “rolling orotund phrases” and “luminous alliteration” (95, 92).

To illustrate the great difference between the dark bent of the poems and the musicality, she tells how her mother used to read her Jeffers when she was very young; they were lulled hypnotically by the rhythm and rhyme, enough so that the harsh content slipped past both her and her mother with unbothersome ease. She concludes her note by admitting “It is hard not to wish that Jeffers had not hated mankind so fiercely, to the point where it deforms parts of his most distinguished work. But we have the rest, the dozens of beautiful shorter poems…” (95). “Deforms” is an intriguing word choice; she is saying Jeffers purposely mutilated the inherent symmetry and grain of poetry. As she follows up with “we have the rest…” it accepts the inhumanism in some of his work because there is much work that is easier to handle.

I wonder though, if her reaction is simply part of the grimace reaction from getting kicked in the gut. It’s true: Jeffers’ reviling voice can make me grind my teeth with complete dis-ease. But it seems important that now, as we must change our perspectives on what we value and consider ethical living in order to sustain life, we should be taking extra care with our assumptions. Jeffers’ sucker-punches are upsetting, but our desire for the little lovelies that he wrote might simply reveal our implicit acceptance of the common philosophy that literature “is reaching for the human element” as Chris Abani said in a recent, brilliant lecture at the Port Townsend Writers Conference. This is an anthropocentric notion that elides the forceful de-centering Jeffers so ardently (and harshly) sought. Maybe he was a man out of time, better suited for the more angry—and scared—listeners today, the ones worried about the quality of life for their children, the ones not having children out of fear for what sea changes may soon make unbearable living conditions. It’s true, Jeffers makes for uncomfortable reading, but to disregard the ugliest parts of his rhetoric in preference of the lyric moments seems to be similar to turning off the volume of the television when George W. is talking, and just contemplating how nice his hair looks.

Richard Hugo’s slim handbook on writing, The Triggering Town is always worth revisiting. The Triggering Town was first published in 1982, but his suggestions for the poetic craft are still very relevant.

One thing that makes the book so engaging is that Hugo writes with the voice of a buddy. The tone is conversational, contradictory and funny; it offers moments of clarity and encouragement. He argues for finding a writing style that is open to the obsessions and quirky tendencies of each particular writer. He also encourages writers to listen to the emotional truth of what they are trying to say without getting distracted by literal truths. This prodding towards inner revelation encompasses much of Hugo’s advice and writing philosophy. He explains that he intends his writing advice “…will lead you to yourself and the way you feel” (16). But he doesn’t say this in a touchy-feely way–his aim is authenticity, not therapy.

Hugo advises: “You hear me make extreme statements like ‘don’t communicate’ and ‘there is no reader.’ While those statements are meant as said, I presume when I make them that you can communicate and can write clear English sentences. I caution against communication because once language exists only to convey information, it is dying” (11). Dying language versus living language: for Hugo, the difference is language that sings and echoes pleasurably long after it is uttered. Twenty-six years later, this handbook still sings just right–perhaps to a Johnny Cash tune, something irreverant, like “A Boy Named Sue.”