On National Poetry Day, last Friday night, I attended a reading by 6 NZ poets in the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland city. This was a popular event - around 60 people attended - and in the black foyer the poets reading under a spotlight rose to the occasion.
As a regular event organised by Siobhan Harvey, this was MC'd by Penny Summervale and Rosetta Allen. The theme of this reading was autobiography in poetry, which prompted comments from the poets and the choice of poems.
Readings began with John Pule, who read several poems in a shy but entertaining fashion, including a moving one for his father - "the rising saliva of misfortune."
Sue Fitchett was next, and quoted Milosz, saying "we do not witness our poetry, our poetry witnesses us." She was a confident performer, using concrete gestures as though laying her words down on the paper as she spoke. She commented on her poems as bones in a lot of white space, so that the reader is prompted to see what is not there, not remembered or non-existant. As she read her sequences, each poem growing smaller, each surviving word became potent.
Iain Sharp was entertaining, possibly the audience's favourite of the evening, with his dry self-poking humour and expressive voice. He began with "The Iain Sharp Poem", commenting that a review by Lauris Edmond saying that his favourite subject was himself is true. Further poems were also entertainingly read, included this line "it's all crap anyway, he cackles, & scratches his protuberant gut."
Siobhan Harvey read next. She said that a newspaper had called her a Confessional poet, and that she would embrace that mantle & move on. She read several recent poems about her son, which had many striking lines, such as "his brain is fluent with storm / his tongue is slick with blue-bladed invective." Siobhan finished with her self-described motif poem, "Waiata tangi for Cris & Cru."
Riemke Ensing was a witty performer, clearly prepared for the evening, and gave a personal, open performance of several memorial poems, including for Charles Brasch ("certainly there's more to life than words & pounds of fudge to keep you satisfied") and her brother ("this almost impossible promise of spring"). Riemke commented that she had almost given up writing, but as a reader of her work, I hope that she will find that even though "conditions of writing could not have been more dangerous", this is when the truest and most alive work can happen.
The final reader was Harry Ricketts. Harry commented that the idea of autobiography in poetry began with the Romantics, quoting a critic that "Wordsworth liked to confess to virtue, Byron liked to confess to vice". His casual, energetic, even fidgety reading of several poems springing from a book in a secondhand bookstore, two paintings, and experiences with his son, showed that autobiography could be, as he mentioned, a spring to the creation of a poem, and not necessarily the content.
At the end of the evening, the results for the 2012 Emerging Poets Poetry Competition (Auckland University Press & Divine Muses IX) were announced, with first prize going to Elizabeth Welsh, and second prize to Alana Bruce. The judge's report by Anna Hodge can be read here.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Review : The Pathos of Space
NZ poets Jan Kemp and Siobhan Harvey have recently completed a project to improve the selection of NZ poets on the UK poetry archive, and this was celebrated with a launch in Auckland. I reviewed the launch and readings for POTROAST.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2012
The AWRF 2012 kicked off on Thursday and ran until Sunday the 13th. I was lucky enough to be able to attend some great sessions on poetry-related subjects and saw some great performances of spoken word and some great poems read by skilled New Zealand and international poets.
Reviews of the events I attended can be read on the University of Auckland's student perspectives page, along with others by my fellow Masters of Creative Writing students.
Reviews of the events I attended can be read on the University of Auckland's student perspectives page, along with others by my fellow Masters of Creative Writing students.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
A voidable heart - the danger of poetry
Much has been written about whether poetry is flourishing or decaying in our consumerist technology-addicted culture. Trends in poetry are generally agreed to be towards the opaque, the intellectual, the poetry-as-game. Humour and references to other texts are frequent. While formalism has made a small come-back, free verse and the excuse it provides to the lazy not to examine line structure and length still predominate. This is a contrived excuse, of course. Good poetry is good poetry and there is plenty of good poetry in free verse being written. And the increase of poetry with Pasifika roots and other cultures than English can only be a good thing.
What puzzles me though is an attitude I have come across time and again in online forums, interviews, readings, generally the panoply of literary culture. Where writers treat poetry - their main creative endeavour - as a source of comfort, a tamed pet that usually behaves itself, and if it wees on the carpet is given a telling-off. A safe environment where the good poetry of today is read and applauded, but not attacked, and where purpose and meaning of the poetic effort is never discussed.
Maybe this attitude is assumed for the purposes of communal events, to boost the writer's self-esteem, or to play along with the etiquette of being confident about the worth of your own work or the work being displayed.
But the problem of this attitude is that it avoids the possibility of deep emotional connections, which are never safe, and always change the people involved. Connections to the works you read, and to works you are writing. How can your poems possibly attain greatness if you are fundamentally untouched? Would you recognise it and be affected by it if you see it? Greatness, which is not about how well the poem is written, but the purpose of the poem itself.
The classic essay by Donald Hall "Poetry and Ambition", talks about the difference between good and great poetry and the worthy aim (if difficult and unsure) of writing great poetry. He is right to say the poem, not the poet, will be what remains, one of "the stars in the sky". And it is entirely reasonably and even probable to think that all our efforts are for nothing, and that we haven't succeeded.
But we still need to question, rigorously and continually, the purpose of our poetic efforts, and of each poem we write. What does it contribute? This is a hard question to answer, striking as it does at the root of our self-esteem as writers. And difficult as these things are to discuss publicly, we need to discuss them for writers like myself, still an apprentice, to understand that greatness, rather than publication or fellowship, is the ultimate aim. That technical skill is only an intermediate step.
As a writer, this is the first danger of poetry. It throws into question the focus I have put on my life and ensures I can never stop questioning it.
The second danger of poetry is as a reader. If I don't feel that what I am reading is somehow dangerous to me, challenging me in some way fundamental to how I live, it can only be a comfort in the way pulp fiction is a comfort, or junk food. It can't be art.
Of course in this relationship the reader must play their part, or even the greatest poems will go unnoticed. To read poetry attentively and openly means taking your time, rereading, registering the twitches of your sensitive nose-hairs to the fluctuations of allusion, metaphor, rhythm, structure. Thinking about what you have read, and thinking whole-heartedly, that is with your mind and your heart open.
This is demanding stuff, and no wonder people select the things they put their energy into. But it is still essential for the great works to live. Will we look back at the poetry of the 21st century and be able to pick out the great poems from the wealth of published material? Critics and poets and academics perform this function by praising, reading, referencing, and teaching, and by these means some work survives in our culture, and some doesn't.
So be a reader that demands greatness as well as skill. Be a writer that demands these things from yourself. Strive for what you can never achieve, and you may achieve something worth reading.
What puzzles me though is an attitude I have come across time and again in online forums, interviews, readings, generally the panoply of literary culture. Where writers treat poetry - their main creative endeavour - as a source of comfort, a tamed pet that usually behaves itself, and if it wees on the carpet is given a telling-off. A safe environment where the good poetry of today is read and applauded, but not attacked, and where purpose and meaning of the poetic effort is never discussed.
Maybe this attitude is assumed for the purposes of communal events, to boost the writer's self-esteem, or to play along with the etiquette of being confident about the worth of your own work or the work being displayed.
But the problem of this attitude is that it avoids the possibility of deep emotional connections, which are never safe, and always change the people involved. Connections to the works you read, and to works you are writing. How can your poems possibly attain greatness if you are fundamentally untouched? Would you recognise it and be affected by it if you see it? Greatness, which is not about how well the poem is written, but the purpose of the poem itself.
The classic essay by Donald Hall "Poetry and Ambition", talks about the difference between good and great poetry and the worthy aim (if difficult and unsure) of writing great poetry. He is right to say the poem, not the poet, will be what remains, one of "the stars in the sky". And it is entirely reasonably and even probable to think that all our efforts are for nothing, and that we haven't succeeded.
But we still need to question, rigorously and continually, the purpose of our poetic efforts, and of each poem we write. What does it contribute? This is a hard question to answer, striking as it does at the root of our self-esteem as writers. And difficult as these things are to discuss publicly, we need to discuss them for writers like myself, still an apprentice, to understand that greatness, rather than publication or fellowship, is the ultimate aim. That technical skill is only an intermediate step.
As a writer, this is the first danger of poetry. It throws into question the focus I have put on my life and ensures I can never stop questioning it.
The second danger of poetry is as a reader. If I don't feel that what I am reading is somehow dangerous to me, challenging me in some way fundamental to how I live, it can only be a comfort in the way pulp fiction is a comfort, or junk food. It can't be art.
Of course in this relationship the reader must play their part, or even the greatest poems will go unnoticed. To read poetry attentively and openly means taking your time, rereading, registering the twitches of your sensitive nose-hairs to the fluctuations of allusion, metaphor, rhythm, structure. Thinking about what you have read, and thinking whole-heartedly, that is with your mind and your heart open.
This is demanding stuff, and no wonder people select the things they put their energy into. But it is still essential for the great works to live. Will we look back at the poetry of the 21st century and be able to pick out the great poems from the wealth of published material? Critics and poets and academics perform this function by praising, reading, referencing, and teaching, and by these means some work survives in our culture, and some doesn't.
So be a reader that demands greatness as well as skill. Be a writer that demands these things from yourself. Strive for what you can never achieve, and you may achieve something worth reading.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
The marriage of sound and sense
Unlike temper and policy, sound and sense usually make for good bedfellows.
The following describes briefly my own understanding of the concepts and choices around sound and how they affect sense.
Other writers would describe it differently, and probably better. Nevertheless everyone needs to understand these things in their own way, and incorporate them into their poetic practice deep enough to be (in part) almost without thinking. While I have separated these ideas out individually, in reality they work together so closely it's not clear where one finishes and the other starts. I find these are things best taken into account at the revising stage of writing, and over time if you continue thinking about them, hopefully good choices happen earlier and earlier in the drafts of your poems.
Sound can be examined at the following levels:
Individual words
Apart from the meaning, the sound of consonants and vowels contributes to the experience of the poem; and when the poet manipulates patterns of words to form sequences of sound like alliteration and assonance, this contribution increases. Alliteration and assonance can support or undercut the poetic form or genre, and contribute feelings of closure or relationship in unrhymed poems. Some simple examples are using letters like s, th, ck, sh, to indicate a physical sensation of sliding, stickiness, snake-like movement; or round vowels like o, ou, ow, to indicate a balanced openness. Where you may want to temporarily break free of a chosen form, these devices can preserve the general feeling of unity of the broken section with the rest of the poem, such as Milton's use of the following words in a description of Hell, where he breaks the blank verse meter he is using:
(Paradise Lost, 2.621)
I find the best way to begin being aware of the feelings associated with consonants and vowels is to find the words you already use and examine the effect they have. An example is the phrase I used above: a balanced openness.
The balance is expressed in the sound by the two 'a''s either side of the 'l'; in addition the heavier stress on the first syllable is "balanced" by the longer although lighter second syllable. The past tense use of the word by adding the letter 'd' means the word does not end with a trailing off sound of 'nce' but the complete ending of 'd'.
Openness obviously starts with the wide mouth of the 'o' which rounds down into the 'pen' and stretches out with the 'ness' to make it more than describing the quality once or of one finite object. The repeating of the 'e' vowel sound helps bring to the second and third syllables a continuation that also contributes to the effect aligning with the meaning of the word.
Combining these two words as a phrase, therefore, combines these two experiences of sound to create a specific effect that may or may not fit into the poem you are creating.
Whether this applies to languages other than English I do not know, but generally I have found that the sound of individual words (nouns and adjectives especially) often can be felt to contribute to our experience of their sense.
Individual lines
This is where meter comes in explicitly. Above I started to talk about combinations of sounds within and between words. Looking at a line of poetry, the alliteration and assonance within words and between words is one layer of sound; the other is the manipulation of meter (and by association, line length). A poem being in free verse does not mean there is no meter or the metrical effect does not matter. It simply means the poet has no explicit grid of meter to write on top of that is universally recognised; the poet may have - often does have - their own habitual regular or irregular meter(s).
The sound of individual lines by meter can be harder to assess because it is a subtler effect and can be drowned out by alliteration and assonance. I find it useful to think of the background meter as the drumbeat underneath the clash of cymbals (alliteration and assonance), and the flowing melody (actual words chosen).
I'll only discuss this briefly, because there is so much written on the use of meter to contribute to the effects of poetry (see Shaw's Blank Verse text as an example that focuses on one poetic form).
In non-free verse, the meter is an externally imposed idea that the actual poem must treat with but not completely live up to, so that its fluctuations become expressive and not monotonous or robotic.
Continuing with the blank verse examples (as this is my favourite form), substitution of any of the five "feet" of the iambic pentameter line alters the expected meter and helps express what may be happening in the poem, or sometimes in the relationship between the reader and the poem.
Keats with his exquisite sense of metrical manipulation provides any number of useful examples of different forms. One of my favourites of his, Ode to a Nightingale, includes these lines when talking of his morbid invitation to death:
The two strongest metrical effects here, in my opinion, are the substitution of the first iamb foot of the first line with a trochee, emphasising the 'Still' over the 'wouldst', as the strong answer to his preceding question, and in the second and third iamb feet of the second line, trochees again, this time expressing the sense of rising with the word 'high' and the falling of from here through the 'requiem' emphasising falling down to (literally) earth with the word 'sod'. In terms of word choice, the sybillance of 'still', 'wouldst', 'sing' and 'sod' both approach the melodious idea of the nightingale's song, and form links between these words that are so important in the meaning Keats is making. The rhyme of 'thy' immediately preceding 'high' increases the effect of the trochee substitution.
With free verse, the reader must go with the poet's meter and be thrown up and down and sideways as the poet chooses (rather like the expressiveness of classical music compared to the regular beat of pop music).
The long and flexible lines of Whitman in his deservedly adored Song of Myself shows how this can be well done.
Again examination of Whitman's meter has been done in more detail elsewhere, so I will just note that his changes of metrical emphasis can match his meaning, such as in the last line of the first section of this poem:
I interpret the sound effects as follows. The stresses on the words 'without' and 'with' are arranged in the line so that the stressed 'out' of without appears stronger after the unstressed 'ure' and 'with' preceding it; and later in the line, 'with' appears a little stronger by preceding the (again relatively) unstressed 'o'. The repetitive use of the 'g' in particular, in the words 'original' and 'energy' help combine and heighten the focus on this phrase.
Stanzas and overall poem:
The sound effects of groups of lines and the poem as a whole rely on the work done we have just discussed - individual word choice, and relationships between words in terms of stress and alliteration/assonance.
Looked at in view of a number of lines, the progression of the reader's expectations of meter, and their experience of the variations or effects of sound becomes cumulative, and this can be used in terms of progression, and unity.
Progression of meaning of the poem can be matched and expressed also in the progression of sound effects. For example, moving from a regular, lightly-stressed, buoyant stanza full of o's, l's, n's, r's, etc, to a more irregular, highly-stressed stanza using u's, z's, hard g's, ck's etc, starts to create a story, and the thoughtful poet will have done this deliberately, perhaps to reflect a change in feeling in the meaning of the poem, an event or a change of speaker, or perhaps how much we should rely on the sincerity of the words.
At this stage examples can become time-consuming to explain, and probably unnecessary anyway. I would suggest taking a look at some sonnets of Shakespeare for a manageable hunk of words.
You may be asking "where are the contemporary examples?". Go look at your favourite contemporary poems and figure out how their sound affects their sense. One of the tests of good poetry, in my opinion, is whether the sound actually contributes to the sense, or seems random, with opportunities for emphasis lost.
The following describes briefly my own understanding of the concepts and choices around sound and how they affect sense.
Other writers would describe it differently, and probably better. Nevertheless everyone needs to understand these things in their own way, and incorporate them into their poetic practice deep enough to be (in part) almost without thinking. While I have separated these ideas out individually, in reality they work together so closely it's not clear where one finishes and the other starts. I find these are things best taken into account at the revising stage of writing, and over time if you continue thinking about them, hopefully good choices happen earlier and earlier in the drafts of your poems.
Sound can be examined at the following levels:
Individual words
Apart from the meaning, the sound of consonants and vowels contributes to the experience of the poem; and when the poet manipulates patterns of words to form sequences of sound like alliteration and assonance, this contribution increases. Alliteration and assonance can support or undercut the poetic form or genre, and contribute feelings of closure or relationship in unrhymed poems. Some simple examples are using letters like s, th, ck, sh, to indicate a physical sensation of sliding, stickiness, snake-like movement; or round vowels like o, ou, ow, to indicate a balanced openness. Where you may want to temporarily break free of a chosen form, these devices can preserve the general feeling of unity of the broken section with the rest of the poem, such as Milton's use of the following words in a description of Hell, where he breaks the blank verse meter he is using:
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death
(Paradise Lost, 2.621)
I find the best way to begin being aware of the feelings associated with consonants and vowels is to find the words you already use and examine the effect they have. An example is the phrase I used above: a balanced openness.
The balance is expressed in the sound by the two 'a''s either side of the 'l'; in addition the heavier stress on the first syllable is "balanced" by the longer although lighter second syllable. The past tense use of the word by adding the letter 'd' means the word does not end with a trailing off sound of 'nce' but the complete ending of 'd'.
Openness obviously starts with the wide mouth of the 'o' which rounds down into the 'pen' and stretches out with the 'ness' to make it more than describing the quality once or of one finite object. The repeating of the 'e' vowel sound helps bring to the second and third syllables a continuation that also contributes to the effect aligning with the meaning of the word.
Combining these two words as a phrase, therefore, combines these two experiences of sound to create a specific effect that may or may not fit into the poem you are creating.
Whether this applies to languages other than English I do not know, but generally I have found that the sound of individual words (nouns and adjectives especially) often can be felt to contribute to our experience of their sense.
Individual lines
This is where meter comes in explicitly. Above I started to talk about combinations of sounds within and between words. Looking at a line of poetry, the alliteration and assonance within words and between words is one layer of sound; the other is the manipulation of meter (and by association, line length). A poem being in free verse does not mean there is no meter or the metrical effect does not matter. It simply means the poet has no explicit grid of meter to write on top of that is universally recognised; the poet may have - often does have - their own habitual regular or irregular meter(s).
The sound of individual lines by meter can be harder to assess because it is a subtler effect and can be drowned out by alliteration and assonance. I find it useful to think of the background meter as the drumbeat underneath the clash of cymbals (alliteration and assonance), and the flowing melody (actual words chosen).
I'll only discuss this briefly, because there is so much written on the use of meter to contribute to the effects of poetry (see Shaw's Blank Verse text as an example that focuses on one poetic form).
In non-free verse, the meter is an externally imposed idea that the actual poem must treat with but not completely live up to, so that its fluctuations become expressive and not monotonous or robotic.
Continuing with the blank verse examples (as this is my favourite form), substitution of any of the five "feet" of the iambic pentameter line alters the expected meter and helps express what may be happening in the poem, or sometimes in the relationship between the reader and the poem.
Keats with his exquisite sense of metrical manipulation provides any number of useful examples of different forms. One of my favourites of his, Ode to a Nightingale, includes these lines when talking of his morbid invitation to death:
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.
The two strongest metrical effects here, in my opinion, are the substitution of the first iamb foot of the first line with a trochee, emphasising the 'Still' over the 'wouldst', as the strong answer to his preceding question, and in the second and third iamb feet of the second line, trochees again, this time expressing the sense of rising with the word 'high' and the falling of from here through the 'requiem' emphasising falling down to (literally) earth with the word 'sod'. In terms of word choice, the sybillance of 'still', 'wouldst', 'sing' and 'sod' both approach the melodious idea of the nightingale's song, and form links between these words that are so important in the meaning Keats is making. The rhyme of 'thy' immediately preceding 'high' increases the effect of the trochee substitution.
With free verse, the reader must go with the poet's meter and be thrown up and down and sideways as the poet chooses (rather like the expressiveness of classical music compared to the regular beat of pop music).
The long and flexible lines of Whitman in his deservedly adored Song of Myself shows how this can be well done.
Again examination of Whitman's meter has been done in more detail elsewhere, so I will just note that his changes of metrical emphasis can match his meaning, such as in the last line of the first section of this poem:
Nature without check with original energy.
I interpret the sound effects as follows. The stresses on the words 'without' and 'with' are arranged in the line so that the stressed 'out' of without appears stronger after the unstressed 'ure' and 'with' preceding it; and later in the line, 'with' appears a little stronger by preceding the (again relatively) unstressed 'o'. The repetitive use of the 'g' in particular, in the words 'original' and 'energy' help combine and heighten the focus on this phrase.
Stanzas and overall poem:
The sound effects of groups of lines and the poem as a whole rely on the work done we have just discussed - individual word choice, and relationships between words in terms of stress and alliteration/assonance.
Looked at in view of a number of lines, the progression of the reader's expectations of meter, and their experience of the variations or effects of sound becomes cumulative, and this can be used in terms of progression, and unity.
Progression of meaning of the poem can be matched and expressed also in the progression of sound effects. For example, moving from a regular, lightly-stressed, buoyant stanza full of o's, l's, n's, r's, etc, to a more irregular, highly-stressed stanza using u's, z's, hard g's, ck's etc, starts to create a story, and the thoughtful poet will have done this deliberately, perhaps to reflect a change in feeling in the meaning of the poem, an event or a change of speaker, or perhaps how much we should rely on the sincerity of the words.
At this stage examples can become time-consuming to explain, and probably unnecessary anyway. I would suggest taking a look at some sonnets of Shakespeare for a manageable hunk of words.
You may be asking "where are the contemporary examples?". Go look at your favourite contemporary poems and figure out how their sound affects their sense. One of the tests of good poetry, in my opinion, is whether the sound actually contributes to the sense, or seems random, with opportunities for emphasis lost.
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