WRITING POETRY SUCCESSFULLY: 99 PROPOSITIONS - PART ONE #1-25

On Saturday, September 23, 2006, I delivered this essay on writing poetry and being a poet to Wisconsin Regional Writers Association at their fall meeting in Janesville, Wisconsin. Those in attendance asked how they could get copies, so I said I would post the full text here at The Middlewesterner. Here they are, then, the 99 propositions, in four parts, with all their contradictions.

1. Listen to the poem.
What is it trying to say? Let the material itself tell you what it wants to be. You like sonnets? Too bad – not everything wants to a sonnet. Not everything wants to be a haiku.

2. Don't despair.
Being a poet is not a career move you can justify rationally, and the world will not cater to you because you've chosen the life of a poet: indeed, people may tend to step away from you. But don't despair. There is a quiet joy to be found in a life given to poetry.

3. Marry a nurse.
For 35 years, when they asked me what it takes to succeed, I have been telling young poets to marry a nurse. Nursing is a profession that is actually in demand and one gets paid for services rendered, so if you marry a nurse at least one of you will be employable.

4. Walk 20 miles a week.
Being a poet is hard work and you have to be in shape. 20 miles a week is about the kind of training program a poet needs. That would be 1000 miles a year, assuming you take two weeks off for vacation.

5. The poem is always about the moon, not the finger pointing at the moon.
The good poem should not call attention to itself. The poet's tool-marks should not be visible. How you achieve what you achieve should seem as natural and effortless as breathing. The poem should be as smooth and comfortable as a river-stone, the way it fits your hand.

6. Do not think you are a poet because you write poetry.
You are not a poet because you write poems, but because of the way you engage the world. You see the world in terms of like or as, in terms of patterns and associations, rhythms and recurrences. You see where and how things are alike. Or, if you're not a poet, you don't. Being a poet is about the way we confront the world, the way we apprehend things, the way we come to understanding. It is about how we see. Do you find the secrets in the little things, and do they stand for larger things? Does the metaphorical flower open for you and reveal its larger meaning? I believe that if you are answering yes, you're a poet whether or not you ever write poems.

7. Do not measure success in terms of money.
Never. Not ever. Of course, I know it is the American way to use money as the yardstick, but that doesn't mean money is a gauge of true worth.

8. Do not measure success in terms of fame.
Fame is fickle. We each get our sound byte and then the spotlight moves on. Chasing the spotlight will wear you out and make you forget that your business is poetry.

9. Being successful as a poet is about the poem: it is not about publication; it is not about prizes; it is not about gaining attention.
Sometimes these things come to the poet, but they have nothing to do with the poem.

10. Measure success only in terms of how true the poem is to its intention; how close it is to what it should be.
Your job is to make the poem as true to the material as it is humanly possible to do. Do that, and get out of the poem's way.

11. If you can't write poetry without using meter and rhyme, you can't write poetry using them: poetry is not to be found in particular tools.

12. The poetry is not about you, it's about the world.
We don't need navel-gazers. Give us instead – as William Blake put it - "the world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour...."

13. Of course, you may write poetry for your own edification, if you wish, but please – SPARE US.
Poetry is not something done simply to gratify the poet's ego; it has within it the possibility of saving the world and the people of the world. Treat your work with that kind of seriousness.

14. You will find the material of poetry right here, right at the tips of your fingers.
If you cannot make poetry of what we have here, you cannot make poetry. We are brought up to believe the stuff of literature is someplace else, not here, not in the middlewest. That's hogwash.

15. Have no expectations.
Having expectations always limits what you will find when you put pen to paper. That's because, with expectations, we tend to see what we're looking for. And that's no way to find something new.

16. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the speaker of your poems, the "I," bears any special resemblance to who you are in everyday life.
The imagination scrapes us pretty thoroughly away from our work. We disappear into something greater and more cosmic than our selves. At least this is the case if the poem turns out to be any damn good.

17. Write in an American idiom.
The best poetry has the stink of our living about it, the muck of our places, the lilt of our accents, the turn of our phrases. Don't pretend otherwise. Admire the great dead poets, but don't try to sound like them.

18. Find a master.
If you haven't already done this, you want to locate for yourself a poet from whom you can best learn the art of poetry. You never have to actually meet the poet; you learn from the poetry. Who is your master?

19. Find a master, learn everything you can from the master, and then, as the Zen teachers say, "kill the master."
That is, you have to go beyond the master's limitations; you have to find your own voice; you have to start fashioning a poetry of your own. You become your own master. But it does take years.

20. Hanging around with mediocre poets will make you mediocre.
Hanging around with first-rate poets won't make you first-rate, but at least they won't ruin you, and you might learn something from them.

21. If you want to write, and write well, don't drink.
Drinking wastes a lot of time we could give to poetry or other worthwhile endeavors. Imagination is enough. You don't need drugs or alcohol.

22. Oh, maybe a little red wine to loosen your tongue.
But certainly not enough to tongue-tie you.

23. If it's not broke, break it.
If there isn't a surprise in the poem, if it doesn't take me someplace I haven't been, if I am not changed by it in some way, maybe it's not a poem.

24. Being satisfied is the first step towards death.
If you're not getting better, you're getting worse. Never stop revising. This is art. You are trying to make something beautiful. Good enough is not enough. Of course, once it is accepted by a magazine, you can leave it alone for a bit. But look at it again before you put it in a book. And again before you put it in your collected poems.

25. Listen to the poem: what does it want to be?
You are the chrysalis in which the caterpillar is transformed into the butterfly. You are the midwife birthing the child. You are a radio picking up the news we need. Listen to the poem.

Continued in Part Two....

Comments

[marja-leena]

Wow, this is a wonderful list, so true. I can replace poem with painting etc and it would be true. Looking forward to the rest of the list. Good reminders even for the experienced here.

[Rachel]

The poem is always about the moon, not the finger pointing at the moon.

Holy wow. Yes. I'm often guilty of this mistake; it's a good reminder.

[MB]

These are solid reminders. I'm looking forward to the rest — which I know will mean no rest for me! And that's just fine by me. Tom, thanks for this.