Examples of plain-language poems

[serene]

So here are some of my very favorite poems of all time. These are just links, but after that, I'll share a couple of the poems I've written and liked. If you have any to share, please do! And lastly, I'll give you a prompt to write to, if you're interested in that kind of thing.



Mary Oliver, "The Journey"

Marge Piercy, "The Friend"

Ron Koertge, "The Streetsweeper"

Steve Kowit, "The Grammar Lesson"

Kim Addonizio, "Mermaid Song"

Sharon Olds, "Still Life in Landscape"

Raymond Carver, "Grief" (more context in another of his poems, "What the Doctor Said")





Firefly

When we were little, mom would ask us

Five things you didn't know about water





Here's a prompt from Steve Kowit's In the Palm of Your Hand. [EDIT: This is a poetry manual for beginners, so ignore the rhyming advice if you're an expert at it.] See how it goes; I'd love to see what you come up with:

A Process for Recovering Memories (page 16)

Sit down with your notebook and jot down a few words or phrases for each memory that comes to you as you answer the following questions so that you will have an abbreviated record of the incidents you recall. Something as brief as "crazy man in green hat" would do nicely. If some of these memories bring with them strong emotions, so much the better. The stronger the emotions the "hotter" the material! If a question fails to call forth an answer, that's okay too: just skip it and move to the next question. The incidents that you come up with do not have to be memories from your childhood.

[Note from Serene: I'm reproducing the first seven here, and only part of the instructions that follow -- just enough for you to do the exercise. I really recommend you get the book for the full experience.]

1. Recall a pleasant time in the past.
2. Recall a building in which you once lived.
3. Recall a secret you once had.
4. Recall a magical person from your childhood.
5. Recall an incident that filled you with dread.
6. Recall something dangerous you did when you were young.
7. Recall something sinful or bad you did as a child.

Choose one of those incidents, one that calls up strong emotions and which might have had consequences for your emotional life, but also one that has a story that would be interesting to tell. Now close your eyes and go back to the beginning of that particular incident. Replay the "film" of it through to its end. Don't analyze or interpret but just watch it pass through your mind. Curiously, this will often take no more than two or three minutes no matter how charged or complex the experience is.

Then jot down as many specific details as you can recall: not simply a decorated classroom wall, but a poster of Cain and Abel; not simply a train coming to a halt but "the terrible long screech of the train's braking"... You will probably find new details emerging, things that hadn't emerged in your first run-through. Write those down too...

When you have done that, ask yourself what impact the incident has on your life. Why do you remember this?...

Out of all the details and facts you have written down, choose the ones that will permit you to write a poem of no more than thirty-five lines, telling your story as effectively as you can. Tell it in a manner that makes the reader continually want to know what happens next. Make sure the incident is held to one scene--one physical location. Sometimes this means you will have to choose one particular incident of many...

Remember to show us rather than tell us: use vivid, expressive details to give the reader the picture you want us to see before our eyes. Concentrate on describing the action in such a way that the reader will understand the feelings of the characters without having to be told them.

If thirty-five lines doesn't seem like enough space in which to tell your story, so much the better: the more concise you are forced to be, the more likelihood that you will select your details carefully and maintain the narrative and emotional intensity that you want.

Do not use end-rhyme (rhyming words at the ends of lines) in this poem. Far from making a poem more musical, in inexperienced hands end-rhyme forces the author to write awkwardly, keeping a poem from becoming musical and graceful. Instead of rhyme, let the compression, precision, and clarity of your phrasing, the accuracy of your descriptions, the drama of your narrative, and the intensity of the emotion shape this into a powerful poem.

And lastly, I recommend you read this essay by Steve Kowit, The Mystique of the Difficult Poem, if I haven't already sold you on how great it is to read a great poem that is instantly comprehensible, but in no way facile.

Hope your week is going spectacularly.

Comments

[lnhammer]

That exercise looks really useful, especially the concentration the length limit imposes, but it kinda torques me (possibly disproportionately) that he assumes that it would be done only by someone inexperienced with rhyme.

---L.

[serene]

Oh, that's my fault for not explaining that this is a poetry manual for beginners. Mea culpa.

[lnhammer]

Gotcha.

---L.

[serene]

Thanks for alerting me to it; I've edited the entry to make that clearer.

[lnhammer]

Oh, and one to share (again): "The chestnut casts his flambeaux"

---L.

[primeideal]

I enjoyed "Grammar Lesson." "Five things" was my favorite of yours.

[ashestosnow]

That exercise looks like it would be incredibly useful on a number of levels. If I come up with anything based on the prompts, I'll post it here.

Thank you for sharing. :)

The Future (to prompt #4 of your exercise, "Recall a magical person from your childhood.")

[ashestosnow]

Neither free verse nor plain language are what I'd call strengths of mine, but despite that-- or perhaps, because of it!-- this was an enlightening exercise.

I might attempt more later.


"This is what the future looks like,"
he said, sweeping his hand to take it all in,
then clenching it, as if he could ball the future
within his glove, as if he could hold it.
It was too big for me to hold.
The enormity-- that double-edged word
meaning both vast and awful--
of the vista around me was beyond
the imagination of a child.

The future looked like metal,
the slick sleek gleam of a new-built city
factory made and measured;
but it smelled like old gunked-up,
junked-up machines, and the dust
his boots stirred up on the clanging catwalk.
I was less than impressed--

But then I turned, and saw.
Through glass, cold muffling glass
that dulled emotions and the chance for contact
(though nothing, even now, can dull the shine of her eyes)
she stared, blue gaze luminous, huge
as if it flooded up
with all the light and vastness
my corpse-shell body
could not contain.

My eyes that same, unnatural blue,
and yet they could not swallow her strange oceans
or the outpouring, equal to the inpouring,
the questions that hurtled round that mind's racetrack;
she asked, without asking, more questions
than anyone,
a mirror of the questions I would never ask,
am still finding courage to ask myself
thirty years from then.

So much for the future.

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this. It helped me realise that my own poems don't need to be fancy, or perfect, or full of elaborate symbolism.