So You Want to be a Poet?
Part One: The Search for the Right Word

Why write poetry at all?

What (when you come right down to it) is wrong with prose? There is no shortage of great novels. Books on philosophy, economics, science, and how to succeed in writing poetry exist in large numbers, and essentially all are written in prose.

If one chooses to write poetry, one does so deliberately; and it is reasonable to ask why - what can one achieve with poetry that is not possible with prose?

Nowadays, of course, it is expected that one can construct a relatively simple set of rules for every human endeavor. That is as true for writing (or reading, or listening to) poetry as it is for relativistic quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, that isn't going to stop me having a go!

There is a set of rules, of course: these define poetry as opposed to prose - and (as always) in the hands of an artist these rules can reveal magic; in the hands of the same artist the breaking of the same rules can also be revealing.

So you want to be a poet? Pick a form - a meter, perhaps; a rhythm. A rhyming scheme (or not). You need to decide whether you want your poem to be declaimed in public, or read silently and privately (we discussed that aspect in an earlier article). If the latter, you may need to think about how you want it to look on the page.

What Are You Trying to Do?
The question at the beginning of this article can be expressed as: what is your objective in writing poetry (or rather, a poem - there has to be start for everything, including a life's work)?

The objectives of poetry are at least two-fold. One is to encode a message to allow its oral transmission to other groups, and indeed to other generations with a minimum of erosion of content or meaning. The poetic form contains within itself codes to assist in memorization, and to enable the listener to be sure that the transmission is accurate.

The second objective is related to the message itself: to convey emotions, insights, and so forth that the reader may find useful in their personal development, or allows them to reinterpret the text in the light of their own experience. This last is important in our continuing to find poetry stimulating after many years, or even centuries, when every aspect of the world that provided the context for the poet has changed or disappeared. It's also important in allowing the reader to find poetry accessible in translation.

Now, my immediate reaction to a couple of paragraphs like the last two would be something like 'pretentious poppycock!' (or other well-known words or phrases along those general lines). And, furthermore, I would think of something like:

        There was a young lady of Riga,
        Who once took a ride on a tiger.
        They returned from the ride
        With the lady inside
        And the smile on the face of the tiger.

The missing element from my vilified paragraphs is, of course, entertainment! What else is The Mediadrome for? I hear my distant editor muttering.

As an art form, the intention is to do this in the clearest and most economical form possible.

This doesn't mean that a poem has to be short - Paradise Lost or The Canterbury Tales or Endymion (or, come to that, Troilus and Criseyde) are great poems, and by no means short.

However, the majority of modern poetry is relatively short; and (long or short) it is vital that every word is exactly chosen. We can regard the most important element in the writing of poetry to be "The Search for the Right Word".

Good Poets - Bad Poems
Even great poets write bad poetry. Often, this never sees the light of day, because many poets are themselves good critics, and all poets have friends who are critics, and some of them are good, too. The secret - after you have written a poem, and worked on it till you think you've got it right, is to put it away in a drawer, and don't look at it for a while. Then read it again - is it still perfect? Once you have passed this hurdle, give it to a valued, gifted, trusted, and honest friend. OK, well, as close as you can get! Listen carefully to what they say. Then go back to the privacy of your room, and kick the walls. Put the poem back in the drawer. Repeat. Try not to lose too many friends!

However, there are a number of poets who are capable of writing good - even great - poetry, but lack a self-critical faculty, and don't seem to have any friends. (Always remember that being a poet's friend is a thankless task - and often of very short duration!)

I think it is instructive in this context to look at the poetry of Wordsworth. He is what I think of as an 'accessible' poet; there are few people who find nothing of his engaging. However, he is also perhaps the most variable of our great poets. J. K. Stephen (1859-1892) wrote:

                             A Sonnet
        Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
        It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
        Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
        Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
        And one is of an old half-witted sheep
        Which bleats inarticulate monotony,
        And indicates that two and one are three,
        That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
        And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times
        Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
        The form and pressure of high thought will burst:
        At other times - good Lord! I'd rather be
        Quite unacquainted with the ABC
        Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

The Solitary Reaper is an example of what Wordsworth could do when his brain was not engaged. It starts out as though it's going to work:

       Behold her, single in the field,
       Yon solitary Highland Lass!
       Reaping and singing by herself;
       Stop here, or gently pass!

It is that last line at which he loses it, but the poem goes on for another twenty-eight lines. This poem is a type which is sometimes called 'ecstatic poetry', and some people believe that this relieves the poet of the obligation to make sense. This concept, and this poem, was critically analyzed by Robert Graves (1895-1985). Graves is best known at the moment for his book I, Claudius, but he began his career as one of the group known as the First World War Poets: he was severely wounded in 1916.

       Machine-guns rattle toy-like from a hill,
       Down in a row the brave tin-soldiers fall:
       A sight to be recalled in elder days
       When learnedly the future we devote
       To yet more boastful visions of despair.

Later, Graves was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 1961 to 1966. He considered that a poem should make prose sense as well as poetic sense, and that even for ecstatic poetry a poem cannot make "more than sense" unless it first makes sense! He really disliked The Solitary Reaper, and took it apart, more or less line by line, to show its faults.

This illustrates an important point - nobody is harder on poets than their fellows! The tool most often used is the parody, which with the pen of an expert becomes a rapier indeed!

Here is Hugh Kingsmill (1889-1949) having a go at A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad:

       'Tis Summer Time on Bredon,
       And now the farmers swear;
       The cattle rise and listen
       In valleys far and near,
       And blush at what they hear.

       But when the mists in autumn
       On Bredon tops are thick,
       The happy hymns of farmers
       Go up from fold and rick,
       The cattle then are sick.

So, anyway, the mere fact that a poem is written by a great poet doesn't mean that it is therefore a great poem. This concept will reappear later.

Is Anyone Out There?
A part of the objective of a poem is of course the audience. Who do you imagine is your audience? The literati, or humanity at large? Would you like to feel that your poem will be read with interest and excitement a thousand years from now? Would you like to feel that it changed - enriched - lives? Or are you writing it for yourself, to exorcise your personal demons, or to crystallize a moment of delight? Why (as I said before) are you writing poetry, rather than prose?

There are artists (not only poets) who believe that they have experienced an epiphany, and want to tell everybody about it. God has spoken to them, and it is their duty to pass it on. Actually far more artists believe in the personal revelation than will admit to it in public - don't feel that I am putting this aspect down!

There are poets who quite deliberately choose to exclude readership for one reason or another: the use of foreign language interpolated in an otherwise English poem can do that (although again, remember the Lennon and McCartney lyrics to Michelle). Eliot inserts a few German lines into The Waste Land, and a couple of French lines here and there. However, the complexity of this poem lies in allusions which are described by Eliot in the notes which follow the poem: but I believe that a great (or even a good) work of art is apparent without further explanations by the artist, which are of value only to the scholar.

Separation from a class of readers is not only achieved through the use of unusual words or foreign languages, of course: it can also be the use of jargons known only to the poet and his (or her) group. Do what you must: but I believe that exclusionary vocabularies should be avoided or used with great care.

Now, as I said before, poetry is an art form that carries the use of language to its highest level. But that doesn't mean you have to have an enormous vocabulary (although it helps!) because, like Shakespeare, you must remember that your audience does not want to be put off, not only by foreign languages or jargon, but even by language which, while undoubtedly English, it can't understand. However, having said that, remember that Shakespeare did in fact use a very large vocabulary in his plays without becoming incomprehensible.

And Then There's the Rest
So here is the beginning. You have chosen to write poetry rather than prose. You have a reason for this, and as part of that you must know who your audience is. You must make sense - even if you then rise above it! You will be judged not only by your audience, but by the 'poet over your shoulder' - and by the different poet who is yourself at a future time.

Ready? OK, then. In the next episode, we will look at the forms of poetry - the meter, the rhythm, to rhyme or not to rhyme, the short verse or the long epic. The death of modifiers, and...the search for the right word!