On Writing
Kevin
Spenst
Let
the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Wallace Stevens
Paul Valery writes about the creation of a poem beginning with the gift
of a first line - une ligne donnee
given by god, nature or the particular placement of a baguette - a line through
which you pull the rest of the poem. It's a beautiful notion but how do you get
to that ligne donnee, and really, how
do you pull the rabbit of a poem out of the slit of a single line?
There are ten essential slight-of-hand tricks to writing poetry and
nobody knows what they are. If our goal
is to write poems that really take people's heads off, then we need to dwell in
the mysterious realms of religion, art, theater, Resident Evil 6 (or something
equally intense to you.) No, but seriously.
Long after some spasmodic bursts of teen
angst poetry, I found my way back into the realms of the literary sublime through
the most circuitous of routes: acting lead to making my own short films which
lead to scripting plot ideas which lead to becoming serious about fiction which
lead to an MFA where I focused on poetry. My head is still spinning.
For me, writing starts with poetic attention that exists in an open alertness to the
world. On my bike ride home from work the other day, I tried to look at the
entire road in front of me - from the ongoing rush of the asphalt beneath my
front tire to the slow movement of the coming distance. There was no stuttering
middle ground dragging my gaze down and then up, but it was all one gestalt. It
felt different for a couple seconds. Who doesn't want to live with the
possibilities of the mundane being filled with the new? I love poetry for its
potential to open up spaces in my day-to-day life. (For the record, I don’t pay
poetic attention to anything while drinking and operating heavy machinery.)
In October of 2003 I started writing a story everyday. I’d been living
amidst a growing heap of half-fished journals and motivational writing quotes,
but none of my resolutions to take writing seriously solidified into a
consistent practice. A friend, the supremely talented Paul Pratte, offered to
help me design a website. The crux of the site was to be a short-short story
everyday. Making a promise with a mostly imaginary online audience was what got
me into the practice of writing.
Poetry itself feels like the apex of potential. Poetry is game for
invading any other discourse. Poetry raps: gratitude
is the only attitude. Poetry plunders in wonder. Poetry is high-tech primitivism.
Poetry runs the gamut of great ideals and taboo filth straight into the ground
beneath our feet and plants something hybrid. Poetry is confessional and
denialistic. (de-nihilistic?)As far as my poetics are concerned, poetry is language
at play with the core plasticity of the self.
When I read fiction or poetry, I don’t tend to see anything the first
time through. I have to put effort into witnessing a scene unfold. It makes
sense that I fell in love with poetry. The French Symbolists wrote with
musicality in mind and there’s a mellifluous strain that runs through a lot of
poetries. Certainly, we all have varying degrees of sensitivity towards
language. Nabokov saw words accompanied by colours and presumably there are
other synaesthetes who experience words with other sensory qualities. “’The Sublime
smells like an aardvark to me,” someone might have once said.
We
speak from a place of flesh and blood and our “voice” is physically determined,
but our culture and personality shape how we use it. A man growing up with four
brothers who’s significantly shorter than the rest might compensate by speaking
in the deep voice of a six-foot powerhouse. When I edit my poems, I listen for
the quirks of a voice that may be hiding something. I let the poem keep its
secrets as long as it’s willing to share something of greater interest.
Language is at home in our mouths and the page is a strange fiction we
all agree to take for fact.
Poetry is an ideal, a place where the senses and abstractions are
united. Nowhere is this interplay of modalities more dynamic than the work of
Ken Babstock. Amanda Earl does a meticulous job of scratching at the paint and
colours present in his first two books in “A Catalogue of Colour, Texture & Shiny Things in Ken Babstock's
Poetry-Part One.” She explores the tone created through colour choices, drawing
our attention to brush-stroked lines:
this year's open mouth looks like a red
room of your own
heart; tin icebox; bloody plush at his
chest (Waiting on a Transplant)
What does this year, this month, this week, this day, this hour, this
second look like to you?
Last piece of advice: set up win-win
situations for yourself. Write for yourself and for others. Think about your
ideal writing circumstances. Imagine your dream audience. Think about how you
want to feel when you write. Your warm coffee, the morning sun singling out the
tip of your nose. What might seem drudgery can take on the quiet beauty of
meditation. Through your editing and rewrites, listen carefully to determine
what you’ve written for yourself and what might be of interest to others.
Practice so that you can get to the place where you are simultaneously writing
for yourself and others. Even if your poem doesn’t win the $50, 000 Montreal
poetry prize, you’ll have grown from that time on your own.
To sum things up in the BASIC programming language.
10 PRINT “Live”;
20 PRINT “Read everything from chapbooks to
Chaucer”;
30 PRINT “Write”;
40 PRINT “Laugh at your mistakes”;
50 GOTO 10
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