The Practice of Poetry

Carolyn Kizer’s book of essays, Proses: On Poems & Poets is thoughtful, witty and easy to read. The essays are often brief, a page or two in length, and easy to dip into for a few stolen moments of literary grist and gossip. I mean gossip in the best possible sense: we get glimpses of her sitting at a table with Gary Snyder, John Hollander, and Stanley Kunitz. We watch along with her and Kunitz as the other two carry on a passionate discussion of word origins like “a particularly inspired badminton match between two champions” (135).

But there is deeply probing discussion in this collection too. For instance, her essay, “Western Space,” is one of my favorite in the collection. Here’s a tidbit:

“Solitude. In big cities one is lonely. In the desert, the woods, in the small American town, the poet is solitary–and most of the time glad of it. Enormous spaces separate one poet from another. We write letters, mail poems; we befriend one another as best we can. Eastern visitors remark about our loyalties to one another, the pleasure we take in one another’s success, the way we share unfinished work and ask for advice. ‘It isn’t like that in New York!’ they say. And the introspection encouraged by solitude is often more lyrical than sour, more sturdy than self-pitying” (97).

This comment reminds me of how I recently visited my old stomping grounds in the Spokane, Washington area. I could still connect to the pockets of quiet on the Little Spokane river; I could still feel the luxurious space and solitude with a poignant longing. Many of us, I think, would (and do) trade the dynamicism of culture and community for solitude and space. In such a place, poets find their community despite the impediment of distance.

Her essay attempts to describe the pervasive feeling of environmental destruction we as a culture must contend with. “We all live with the vision of an Eden despoiled. In a very literal sense we live with images of rack and ruin” (100). Such an observation sums up a lot about what I see at the heart of the nature writing of the West coast. Undeniably, we must contend with loss, destruction, and havoc, in which we all play some part. These feelings of sadness, mourning and guilt are part of the water table that soaks through our collective awareness.

She finishes the essay with an evocation of Hamlet: “In the midst of mourning, we still have lots of space in which to move around, alone in the field, with our ghosts” (100). In Western space, we are still able to feel the echoes of our ancestor’s sense of expansiveness; but, the land is populated with traffic and congestion, and also with noisesome haunts. I’ve grown up with these ghosts; they’ve followed me from town to town, meadow to mountain peak. They make my heart ache, but like a clairvoyant who sees ghosts and feels compelled to voice their messages, I too feel compelled to tell the stories that have been neglected or submerged. And I appreciate reading Kizer’s interpretation of this impulse.

I’m happy to sit down with Kizer’s essays, and dip into the thoughts of one of our nation’s best literary thinkers and provocateurs today.

Proses: On Poems & Poets by Carolyn Kizer. Published by Copper Canyon Press, 1993.

Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami talks about the last twenty-plus years as a writer and marathoner in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. His memoir discusses his parallel efforts with writing and long distance training, and how they affect one another. The book touches on an interesting question: what life-long habits can help a writer stay balanced, focused and ultimately, prepared for the hard work of writing?

Murkami discusses how writing is difficult mentally and physically (for instance the long periods of being sedantary) and claims that running has helped him train and be an endurance athlete as well as an endurance writer. As interesting as the idea is–the book is a bit boring.

At first, this frustrated me: I was looking for grand insights, or more dramatic examples of how such rigorous physical output increased his creativity in unexpected ways. I was looking for the brainstorms that he had while on mile eighteen. But this didn’t happen. In fact, he admits he doesn’t think about much at all when he runs. He mentions that he runs to counterbalance his love of Dunkin Donuts and his tendancy to gain weight. Ultimately, that is the kernal of wisdom buried in the book: those habits we practice every day–whether it is running like Murakami, or taking daily walks like Mary Oliver, or eating kale and brown rice so we don’t become overwhelmed with physical ailments, those habits are essential, so essential they are often too idosyncratic to be generally applicable to others. I could describe the importance of my daily cup of coffee and bowl of bran twigs to my general digestion, which keeps me focused on the poem on my desk and not on my finicky, sluggish stomach, but, you’d probably tune out pretty quick. In fact, I think you already did.

Murakami’s memoir is fun if you are a marathoner. I enjoyed hearing that in Japan, they give the runners pickled plums instead of GU. I wished for more descriptive moments like this. He is most vivid when he describes the number of roadkill he tallied while he ran through Greece. But, the most helpful thing for the writer-audience is to hear his implicit argument: we have to think carefully about what components keep our brain clear and our body relaxed enough to keep the creative reserves replenished and deep.

For the last week and a half, I’ve been wandering around with Frida Kahlo’s work in mind. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is currently exhibiting her collection, along with a significant collection of photographs and documents about her life. Kahlo’s paintings are intriguing when viewed individually; when viewed en masse however, her work is as unsettling as an avalanche.

I’m curious about the impact of confinement on Kahlo’s work. She was frequently bedridden as a result of an accident and several follow-up back surgeries. In my mind, Kahlo’s confinement (and extreme concentrations of undiluted emotion in her work) is similar to the storm cloud energy of Emily Dickinson’s self-imposed confinement and work.

Alfred Habegger’s Dickinson biography, “My Wars are Laid Away in Books” cites a letter regarding one of Dickinson’s visitors who gives a raw response to Emily’s presence. Higginson reports after the visit, “I never was with any one who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her.” Habegger quotes Higginson further, when “Decades later, in a final attempt to sum up his impression, he availed himself of a newer psychological vocabulary: ‘The impression undoubtedly made on me was that on an excess of tension, and of something abnormal’” (524). Neither Habegger or Higginson acknowledge that part of her tension could have been a result of a mix-up over what day Higginson was to visit; Dickinson had prepared herself to host his visit, but he showed up a day later than expected. In one who accepted guests so rarely–and only under controlled conditions–this social call mix-up could have thrown Emily enough to create an “excess of tension.” But that is tangential; this excess of tension, which Higginson recalls vividly enough that decades later he is still trying to articulate it, is like the palpable, zinging energy one feels standing in a room with Khalo’s paintings. For that matter, it is the electric fence energy that hums underneath all of Plath’s Ariel–again, a woman who distilled the poems into a collection in one brief, intense period when she was living alone with her children in England. We could blame it on something else of course–attribute it to instability or insanity–however, it could be that these women happened to channel creative lightning, and used their confinement to allow it out, unmediated and unapologetically.

Habegger inserts a fairly muscular critique at the end of this Higginson account, and suggests that we should feel (sorry) for Sue (Emily’s beloved sister-in-law) for living next door to Emily’s energy for so many years. Yet, that seems like misplaced sympathy; her creative power wasn’t a nuclear power plant. A river, dammed, may look placid but the salmon can’t run. A river, undammed, is a rough artisan that sculpts with the precision of a scythe. Kahlo, Dickinson and Plath were not, perhaps, the most light-hearted nymphs in all social situations, but social success is often a matter of masking, tricks, evasion and untruths. It is a generalization to group such different women together; however, the ways they harnessed the contained energy of their restrictions–isolation, confinement, physical limitations–is stunning but more importantly perhaps, it speaks to the ways one can gather and direct artistic energy.

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Most writing advice can be condensed down to three points:
1. There is a powerfully important difference between a quail egg and an egg.
2. Things ask to be poems if you listen carefully.
3. Measures of confidence, stubbornness, doubtfulness and playfulness are essential through out the writing process.

There are yellow snapdragons growing in front of the car in my driveway, and the car has been unused long enough that the blossoms are taller than the bumper. The elements of our day are poems with or without our attention–we just have to notice, and write them down.

Natalie Goldberg has a new handbook on memoir writing called “Old Friend from Far Away.” If you need encouragement or direction, it might work for you. The activities are brief directives to prod writers into exploring. For instance, she says, “Tell me what you thought was ugly. Be detailed. Go. Ten minutes” (23). She has the clipped and energetic feel of a coach hollering at you from the edge of the track.

Some people write better with structure or constraint. Others just need space to breathe and watch.

Just tell me one thing: what kind of egg is in your hand? And where else have I seen that particular shade of quail egg blue?

And then sometimes, a book changes your relationship to paper. Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is one such book. It is a post-9/11 novel that grapples with the aftermath from the perspective of a nine-year-old boy. The narrative is keen and true, but I am most interested in what Foer chooses to do with the page to tell his story. The book is interspersed with photographs, graphics, handwriting, and white space. The illustrations and images depict what the characters in the book look at, photgraph, or imagine. Some of the pages echo pages from the character’s own journals; the affect is a deeper intimacy with the characters: we see what they see, much as if the novel has loose snapshots or postcards tucked in-between the pages.

This is not a wholly new approach of course–writers often play with white space, or use graphics to enhance the story-telling. But ultimately, Foer makes the reader comfortable with the multidimensional feel of the story-photograph medium by consistent use of images of believable, everyday things–doorknobs, cats, Stephen Hawking–that makes the ending significantly more impactful. I won’t write a spoiler; you’ll have to find out for yourself if you haven’t already read it.

Foer re-shaped the novel to fit a topic that refused traditional models. The result is stellar. I find the techniques employed in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” inspiring for not only the way novels can be reconsidered as form/text relationships but also the way poems can be reconsidered. Poetic form is an endless frontier. But, many of us are stuck in the suburbs, re-creating track-home poems.