Author: plainswriter

I'm a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. I'm also a freelance editor at nlhwritingservices.com.

On the Pleasures & Demands of Poetic Form

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I’ve been busy revising poems as a part of a summer research grant from my university. That time so far has been satisfying and productive. Last week, for some reason, I found myself using certain forms in three of the five poems I revised. Two sestinas and a pantoum.

With one of those poems, I observed a pattern of repetition in initial draft–a way of turning over the subject of the poem–and I thought, maybe this could be a sestina. And then I thought, that’s too much work. Over an hour later, however, I had succeeding in creating a sestina. (More on that form in a moment.)

My impulse and attraction to so-called “fixed” forms might be a holdover from my Creative Writing: Poetry course this spring. Students wrote in a variety of poetic forms, including some that use repeating lines: villanelles, pantoums, triolets. There is usually much initial resistance to these particular forms (as was the case this semester), but students eventually came to appreciate (and even enjoy) working in these forms.

A pantoum uses four-line stanzas (quatrains), with the requirement that lines two and four of each stanza become one and three of the following stanza. The poem can be any number of quatrains (but a minimum of 3), and the poem’s first and third lines return as the second and fourth lines of the final stanza, usually inverted. Some pantoums rhyme abab, and some don’t use a rhyme scheme. Poets, as can be expected, vary in their strictness of repetition.

I’ve written a handful of pantoums, but it had been a long time since I had attempted a sestina, a 39-line poem that uses six repeating end words. These six words recur in different orders in sestets (six-line stanzas) throughout the poem, and the poem concludes with a tercet (three-line stanza) that includes two of the end words per line. Part of the fun of the form is figuring meaningful ways to use each end word seven times.

(Side note: I’ve learned that if you start tweeting about how you’re writing in certain poetic forms that someone might challenge you to a duel. A friend saw my tweet and promptly challenged me to a sestina duel, picking three of the six end words, allowing me to pick the other three.)

Writing in a “fixed” form that uses repetition is one of my favorite poetic approaches. The form provides a structure, an architecture. a set of boundaries. After all,  writing–whether poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, a blog post–involves a search for form in conjunction with a search for subject.

Just as any writer, I have subjects and images to which I regularly return, and writing in a form that requires repetition often helps me shape my ideas, my words. I find these forms (and other patterns and forms–sonnet, meter, syllabics) often enable me to explore my ideas more effectively. In these forms’ demands, I (paradoxically) find poetic freedom.

Now to finish up the draft of a new sestina. How am I going to use the word __________ repeatedly to end lines?

What I’m Working On–5.9.16

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Grades are done for spring semester, and graduation has passed. I start teaching two summer classes in seven weeks, and once those commence there will be time for little else. In this interim I’ll be preparing for those classes, as well as my fall courses.

But from now until the end of June I’ll be focusing on two major writing projects:

1) Writing an essay for an anthology.

1917 marks the 100-year anniversary of the death of Oswald Chambers, and through a contact in a Facebook group, I learned of an upcoming anthology of essayists writing about a specific passage from his classic work, My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers’s book was foundational to my spiritual growth, and my copy has sentences underlined in almost every entry. I queried the editor and received a spot in the forthcoming book.

The next challenge was finding a passage upon which to write my essay. Over several evenings, I reread the book, starring many passages that might serve as an effective springboard for extended reflection. Finally, I found the passage that fit perfectly with some of the topics I’ve been exploring in my posts over at altarwork.com.

Although the length of the essay (1,500 words) is manageable, I’ve never done something quite like this before. There’s a nervous excitement about this project. We’ll see what happens.

2) Revising and organizing a poetry manuscript.

Just as in 2014, I received a summer research grant from my university to work on a book-length project. Unlike last time when my focus was a short-story collection, this summer’s project involves a manuscript of forty-plus poems, tentatively titled, Your 21st-Century Prayer Life.

I wrote the majority of these poems during Lent 2014 when I decided to draft a poem a day, narrowing my subject matter to prayer and the church. Those poems, along with less than a dozen others, constitute

Each day I’ll be working on a poem or two and also attempting a sequencing of the poems. I have some initial ideas about how the collection might be organized, but I have no dominate ideas. As a result, I’ll be passing on the poems to a writer friend for his suggestions on organizing and further revising them.

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Beyond these two major projects, I’ll be blogging in this space each Monday, and blogging over at Altarwork.com each Friday. I relish in the challenge of writing something each week, feeling as though I’m some kind of newspaper columnist. The weekly writings help me stay grounded and well-practiced.

I’m grateful for this time of year that affords me the space to pursue these projects. Toward the end of May, I will be gone for six days, spending part of the time with a writing friend and her family and attending a writing retreat where I hope to work on these two projects even more diligently.

It’s going to be a good summer.

Bookmarked on the Nightstand–5.2.16

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Watching the Spring Festival: Poems, by Frank Bidart

Okay, so I know Bidart is an important name in contemporary poetry, and I first read his work last summer on my journey through the Norton Anothology of Contemporary Poetry.

I’ve been halfway through this book for several weeks now. (Disclosure: there are only twenty-something poems.) It has been difficult to get some traction. I feel as though I’m missing something because I read a poem, reread it, and then scratch my head. Perhaps I’m not the best audience. I’m not sure.

I plan to finish the book, perhaps starting over (again). We’ll see what happens.

One of Ours, by Willa Cather

This marks my sixth novel by Cather, and it’s of special interest to me for two other reasons: 1) It’s set during World War I & 2) It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923.

As for the former reason, I have a keen interest in World War I, specifically literature set during and writing during that pivotal time. I also teach a literature class in which the first unit is literature from that era. And as for the latter reason, I am slowly making my way through the list of Pulitzer-Prize winners of fiction.

I’m trying to read all of Cather’s novels (and then the short fiction and poetry), and when I finish this compelling novel, I’ll be at the halfway point with her novels.

 

Leapings: Revelations and Epiphanies, by Brian Doyle

This is a great collection of essays and creative nonfiction pieces by a contemporary author, editor of Portland Magazine. (Yea, Portland!) He writes about faith, about family, about storytelling, doing so with a precision and a humor that is keeping me engaged. Of special note is his longer essay about writing itself.

I heard him give an amazing reading at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College back in 2012. Moreover, he’s going to be the keynote at the writers’ festival I direct, so I’ll have the opportunity to meet him in February. I can’t wait.

Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut

As I’ve noted multiple times before in this pace, I’m a short-story afficiando. I’ve also wanted to read more of Vonnegut’s work. His story “Harrison Bergeron” was one of the first stories I taught as a first-year TA, and I’ve taught it multiple times since then.

That story is in this collection, but so are a host of other good stories. (I’m about halfway through.) They have that characteristic dark humor he’s know for. There’s much absurdity and creativity (in terms of plot, character, and setting), and I’m continually impressed by how in each world, regardless of the length, he manages to create believability and depth.