writing poetry – Page 10 – don't confuse the narrator

poems & pomegranates

It’s been a while since I talked on the blog about the narrator/writer dichotomy, but it’s still a subject that interests me.

Recently, I started writing a column for The Woman Writer (the magazine of the SWWJ – the Society of Women Writers and Journalists). In the article “I”: an invitation to poetry, published in the April issue, I talked about how first-person, present-tense poetry can encourage the reader to empathise and participate rather than simply observe.

Although it’s not a long article, it brings together a number of my thoughts on the subject, so I’ll include it in its entirety here:
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verses and versions

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been re-visiting some old poems and re-drafting, revising and re-writing.

Some of the changes are substantial – whole stanzas, refurbished, renovated, knocked in together or removed completely. With changes like this it’s usually clear whether the result is an improvement.

Other changes, though, are less clear cut. I feel like Oscar Wilde when he said he’d been hard at work all day on a poem: “This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.”

I know that every little detail of a poem is important, but sometimes I feel that recognising the exact best version is like trying to find the prettiest flower in a patch like the one in the picture.

grey’ku

This morning, I waited in the half-light for a bus that finally arrived 40 minutes late: there was no one about, and the only noise was the rain, an occasional car and a few birds. It gave me plenty of time to think, though it was too wet to get a notebook out to try and capture any of the ideas.

(I suppose I could record memos on my phone, but how you’re supposed to skim through an audio file later, I don’t know.)

Mind you, I actually believe that writing a thought down too soon can ‘fix’ it before it is ready, and I may carry a phrase or image round in my head for days or weeks, occasionally even years, before I finally anchor it to the page.
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fragments

The photo shows what was going on on my verandah once the sun warmed up this morning and brought the wasps out to feed on a small corpse which I assume was left there by the cats.

The villagers here in Spain would call it a langosta, I think. Even with my limited knowledge of the animal world, I do know it’s not a lobster, but I’m not sure if it was actually a locust, a cricket, a grasshopper or a katydid. Whatever it was, though:
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critical thinking I

The idea of critique and criticism** has cropped up on a number of occasions recently, including at the poetry group I attend. There, it seems clear that some of the less experienced writers feel they shouldn’t be commenting on, let alone criticising, the writing of the more experienced group members.