Monthly Archives: February 2024

Process: shosin

Ah, the manuscript process! It interests me even when I’m not in the midst of putting a collection together, because it seems there is no consistently efficient way to go about it–no matter what people claim. It’s fascinating to read, in interviews, articles, and blogs, how poets decide on the poems to gather into a book; I have put together three full-length collections, and yet I can’t say that I have developed a method I can rely on. Each volume seems to have had different inceptions and different means of getting to an end.

My first approach is to choose several dozen poems, about a third of which have been published in literary journals. After that, no system: I ponder possibilities. My last two books had titles early on, which helped a little, and my chapbooks have had themes that guided me about what to include or exclude. Not so this time. The process this time reminds me of how I put together Water-Rites, which evolved from my MFA thesis in 2003. In other words, I don’t really know what I’m doing! Which feels edgy and uncomfortable, and is probably therefore a good thing. I don’t want to get too confident or at ease with writing. Creativity sometimes thrives on obstacles, or on the prompting to do more, to try new things, to solve problems.

Putting Abundance/Diminishment together at the “lighthouse” in 2019

This past weekend, I started curating in earnest, laying out poems and reading them to find out whether there are resonances and “conversations” between them. One method is to try grouping the pieces by theme or style. The overall book may then be divided into sections, which is a not-common approach in contemporary poetry books. But my first attempt arrived at seven sections, which strikes me as maybe two or three too many divisions for a manuscript. Also, the sections were wildly divergent in tone and context. Some divergence keeps a book from being tonally monochrome, but I don’t want my text to throw my readers from port to starboard willy-nilly, either. As a reader, I like poetry collections that have chapters/sections. How necessary are they, though? Maybe I don’t need them.

I was thinking about Louise Glück’s book Wild Iris, which is not divided into sections and which even has many poems with the same title (seven called “Matins,” for example). But the poems appear naturally, with a sense of flow–and there are not a lot of twists from poem to poem, though there are twists within the poems.

Billy Collins’ books are not separated into sections, either. He has said he doesn’t work towards a theme or arc, just chooses poems that he thinks are good enough; and yet his latest collection, Musical Tables, is full of short poems (um, a style or theme? Possibly). I have been doing a bit of research on this through my bookshelves and online, seeking further direction. Clearly, there’s work ahead, and even though I’m in my 60s I’m still a novice when it comes to manuscript-making.

Shosin: 初心 , or “beginner’s mind,” may serve me well here. (See Suzuki’s classic book). Wish me luck? I think I’ll need it. And if you have some advice, let me know.

Waiting

Trying new things, slowly. I made a profile on Chill Subs, even though I am about to take an extended break from submitting poems to journals. The task I have recently set for myself is to curate (?) collect (?) another set of my poems to make into a new manuscript. Generally, I start with a selection of about 100 poems and winnow, revise, and substitute from that initial batch. It takes time. Eventually, though, I will get around to exploring the Chill Subs platform to see whether it makes sending out poems any easier. My guess is that it won’t help all that much, since my real problem with submitting work is a lack of motivation and uncertainty about whether a poem suits the editorial tastes of the journal–or whether the poem is even a good poem. I have trouble judging my own poems, though I feel I am fairly adept at critiquing the work other people compose. It’s that log in my own eye, perhaps (Matthew 7:3-5).

The days are lengthening, but February remains a long month, typically a time of year I feel achy and low in mood even as the woodpeckers “laugh” their noisy calls high up in the trees and sun shines brightly on the not-melting-much snow. But the snow feels right; last year we had an “open” winter, and that lack of natural snow-mulch takes a toll on the kinds of plants and animals that reside here. In another week or two, the urge to put a few seeds in seed trays will likely take hold of me. For now, however, the seeds stay nestled in their unopened packets under the desk in my kitchen.

Waiting.

This superbly handsome pileated woodpecker photo was taken by my friend Fred Zahradnik at nearby Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.

lìchūn

As is not uncommon in our region, we have a warm and sunny spate of days that evoke thoughts of spring…often thoughts that are dashed by late-arriving snow and ice storms. The days are an hour longer than they were at the December solstice, and some plants bloom or start to bloom: witch hazel, snowdrops, hellebores, skunk cabbage, winter aconite.

In the Chinese lunar-solar calendar, these weeks mark the start of spring: 立春 lìchūn. (Hence the new year commences, celebrated this year on February 10.)

I love the emergence of new growth in springtime and enjoy looking for buds and leaf-tips, but winter’s crucial to this environment. It plays its role by enforcing dormancy and restful, unperceived rejuvenation. Nonetheless, sometimes I resent the way it teases–knowing that the freezing will return and that mid-March snows are not uncommon here. That has made me think to post my poem “Spring Lies,” which appears in The Red Queen Hypothesis.
~~

Spring Lies

Sun through fog. The leaves of beech trees gleam
low under the tall expressive line of ash and poplar
whose topmost reaches, feathered by the mist,
wait budded but un-leafed. The starlings stop, are
tethered to their twigs for brief collective
breaths and urgent calls that rally all
to action once again—a whir, black-speckled sky,
the poplars barren after the birds’ brawl
moves off. An hour goes by. The meadow’s damp
expanse reveals patches and threads of green.
Here, mud seems harmless: winter has decamped.

Meanwhile, a small town near a river bank
sighs beneath a dank slide, silenced, loses
all but longitude and latitude.

People want to feel the home they choose is
safe but, at best, they stake a compromise—
fire, flood, crime rate, mud. Spring’s temperate. Spring lies.

~

Patterns

I recently finished reading Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison, a series of essays that considers the structure of written narratives in fiction, mostly in novels. Alison’s background context is the Western-developed Aristotelian dramatic arc, that “exposition/rising action/climax/falling action/denouement” plot that generally follows chronologically. She then examines several novels, modern and contemporary ones mostly, that don’t adhere to the classic structure.

I’ve read some of the books she looks at, and have decided to put others she mentions on my to-read list, but mostly what I took away from her text is my own recognition that poets have been varying structures for a very long time. I don’t mean just the patterning difference between, say, a sonnet and a pantoum or free verse but a poem’s narrative structure, its approach to chronology, imagery, argument, world-building, and more. When I was reading, I thought of examples of poems that spiral, meander, make wavelets, are fractal in nature, or explode (to use some of Alison’s terminology).

In particular, the cellular or networked ‘form’ of storytelling seems basic to poetry–each cell a room or stanza, interlocking or sitting nearby with space around each one. The space connects as well as makes gaps, leaves room for reflection and recombined connections and new patterns; sometimes the stanzas float like little blocks on the page (or screen)…interrupting the narrative and enhancing it as well. Poetry’s narrative is often collage-like, and I notice this aspect in some newer novels as well–but I read much more poetry than fiction these days. Maybe it’s time to plunge into more novels again? At any rate, Alison’s book has made me reflect on narratives, lyrical narratives, literary structure. Maybe even the structure of a new manuscript? (I ought to get to work on that.)

If you want a taste of this book, you can read part of her opening chapter, which appeared as an essay in The Paris Review, here. I don’t teach in a classroom anymore, but if I were instructing a creative writing class I might put this book on the reading list.