I am nine days past finishing another month of writing a poem everyday, and I must say, I am a little sad. The daily prompts from National (and Global) Poetry Writing Month were so varied and gave me the impetus to write on topics I would never have thought to write on my own. For the first time, I posted a few of my poems on their site and on the Facebook page. What I discovered was a community of writers with my same passion, whose poetry I read and commented on. Some of them “liked” my submissions as well.
During April, I studied the poetry of famous poets both historical and current. One of my best poems was inspired by Emily Dickensen. It turns out that she referenced nature and animals often. Nature is one of my greatest sources of content and inspiration. Now that my garden is in place, I was able to look out my back window and find greenery where last year it was barren. It brought a smile to my face and more power to my plume.
I also started a poetry website entitled “Crystal Dewdrops” ; you can find my Dickensen-inspired poem “Jessamine” and others there: https://sarahardy.substack.com/
When it came to the modern poets, I noticed a trend. Many of today’s poets ignore meter and rhyme and write in a sort of stream of consciousness mode. An example of this is Bernadette Meyer’s The Lobelias of Fear. I’m still deciding whether or not I like this trend. But I admit there is a certain freedom in not being locked into a rhyme and verse scheme.
These past few years of writing, I’m still trying to find my “voice.” What I’ve learned about my style is that I am a poet at heart and trying to translate that into my prose. The leader of a previous writing group described my short story writing as “poetic” — the greatest compliment she could have given me.
I discovered some great poetic writing advice on a series of podcast episodes a couple of years ago. The podcast is Writing Excuses and the guest host, Amal El-Mohtar. Her writing, some of it translated from Arabic, is rich in detail and sensual description. On the podcast, she gave the listeners (as the show regularly does) some “homework.” One of those assignments was to take a sentence and distill and expand it. That is, to turn the sentence into a short poem and then expand that poem into a story while keeping the poetic feel.
Distill and expand. I love the sound of those words.
The poet’s job, I feel, is to distill an idea, feeling or experience into a few short words, perhaps into a sonnet, or an even shorter form such as a haiku. A storyteller, on the other hand, wants to take that idea and expand it into a story, either a short story or an entire novel. This is where my challenge lies: I have some ideas, but building a world and interesting characters around the idea is both exciting and daunting. I admire authors who can pull it off.
I’m always looking for themes when I read a book. I ask myself:
What is the author’s message?
Why did s/he think this idea was important enough to write an entire book about it?
My goal is to have one of my readers ask these questions about something I wrote, and even better, be able to answer. In a way, this happened last week with my fiction critique group. Instead of submitting a chapter of one of my novels for critique (as we regularly do,) I chose to submit two of my poems. One of my fellow writers correctly identified the message I was trying to get across. What a wonderful feeling!
A feeling I hope to repeat. Again and again.
