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Poetry Parenting
Helping your babies grow up
A blog series by Stephanie
Welcome back to Poetry Parenting. Let's go.
Wait, before we jump in, how is it going for all of you who are trying these tips out? Do you feel like the plateau is slowly elevating?
Today's tip is something I recently discovered a long time ago. As in I recently realized something that had been true for a large portion of my poetry non-career.
Tip #4: Trust your verbal instincts.
Because no one can REALLY teach you to speak.
Part of what makes poetry good is the language. Okay, not just part, most. Like 80% with a percent error of however ambivalent you're feeling today. The magic of language manifests itself in poetry, in that a certain sentence can speak to vividly to a huge audience and invoke something different but equally strong in every reader.
Just typing that gave me chills. That's the reason we write.
It's the reason I write, at least.
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And one of the hardest things to do when it comes to language is make choices-- pick which words you can use to capture perfectly a fleeting but never-fading moment.
Something we can all learn to do better is trust ourselves to have the right words before we even know we need them. You absorb an incredible amount of information throughout the day-- newscasts on the radio, sprinklings of conversation in hallways, billboards on your way home, standout song lyrics. They stick someplace in the back of our brain where we can't consciously pull from but somehow know how to write from.
If you want to express something visceral, or even something less than that, let yourself use the first words that come to mind. They may be surprisingly fitting.
I tend to try to include symbolism in my poems, and it's hard for me to resist starting from the symbol and then creating the poem, building around some heavily-analyzed object. But when I just let myself write, symbolism happens without me meaning for it to.
"Moral tectonic plates" popped up in a Christianity vs. suicide poem. The more I looked at it, the better it became.
Here are some examples of more good, adult poems. Notice the words, how they're precise and somehow perfect.
An Unconventional Union: http://www.amethystarsenic.com/issues/2-2/kevin-heaton.php
Carrying a baby: http://www.amethystarsenic.com/issues/2-2/shannan-mann.php
Anyway. Moral of the rambling blog post-- you know more than you think. Trust yourself. And always, always trust your words.
Enjoy lowliness and remember to muse!
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