nothing to say

Don't remember where I found this


The journeys on which Ashbery sends us do not run from A to B. Any linearity of thought is lost in the woods. Rather, insights accrue at the margins, sudden revelations are not what we first thought, emotions are located but cannot be tracked. The question is how - not what - do his poems mean. Composition and content amount to the same thing. As the poet Charles Simic has observed: "Whatever an Ashbery poem eventually turns out to be about is not an idea he started with but something he stumbled upon as he shuffled phrases and images like a pack of cards. It's precisely because he has nothing to say initially that he is able to say something new

3 things I consider when writing a poem

1. The limitation / constraint / formal requirement.

• the poem will be about X
• the poem will have so many lines
• the poem will mention the word 'queen'
• the poem will have pre-determined images
• etc

(any or none of these might be in play)

2. The sounds and the rhythm

3. The spontaneous alchemy that takes place during the writing of the poem. Language leads to other language. This only happens once you get started.

1, 2 and 3 overlap

Sometimes 1 keeps 3 in check. Sometimes 3 liberates 1. Sometimes 2 prevails. Sometimes 2 feeds 3.

rhyme

One view of rhyme in English is from John Milton's preface to Paradise Lost:

"The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom.. "

A more tempered view is taken by W. H. Auden in The Dyer's Hand:

"Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme

duty

Daan thinks I should write sonnets and sestinas and stuff.

Should I?

Dunno

Poetry Lesson 2

Don't write directly about your feelings. Don't petition your readers on behalf of your emotions. Write about external things; if you are committed, feelings will emerge on their own.

Now, someone once said, write about what you know. Problem is, what does that mean? What is it to know something? Bit of a philosophical can of worms that.

I don't know what I know but that doesn't stop me writing.

So what am I writing about?

What's out there.

Constraints

Constraints force creativity

Poetry Lesson 1

Recite the following lines before going to bed:

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys

Recite them during the daylight hours also.