[Robert J. Clawson]

I'm so frequently disappointed by either deeply personal poetry, by imitations, or by poetry built upon historic incidents or characters. Most of these require no flight of imagination, merely technical competence, perhaps a touch of insight, a flair of language

In the Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers, I read Henry Stimpson's interview of Richard Wilbur, in which Wilbur purportedly said, "If you translate from an author who is rather unlike you and find the right English words for what his main character has to say, it will affect what you feel able to write in your own person. It will enlarge your voice somewhat and also make you capable of impersonating a broader range of persons in your own poetry."

Of this, I like best, "impersonating," because I seldom encounter poems where the poet takes the risk of INHABITING a person other than himself, ie., the normal risk of the writer of fiction or plays.

When we think about Wallace Stevens's "fictive music," we should consider the "fictive" as well as the music. Music applied to the personal, to literary or social history, or anything else already written doesn't take the "fictive" risk.

I hazard that we will write our best poetry when we enter the realm of impersonation, when we try to go elsewhere and to be someone else. Again and again I'm stunned by Frost's "A Servant to Servants" because he takes me inside a person I could never have met, and because I marvel how, if he had met her, he could have got inside her head and presented her as HERSELF.

Face it, most of us live pretty ordinary lives. People tell me that mine has been extraordinary, but I never FEEL that it has, certainly not different enough to write many good poems based on incidents from it. When I take to writing, I generally set out to be someone else, elsewhere. I'm curious to know if you feel that this is a common feeling among poets or merely a technique for a specific kind of poem, such as the "persona poem" or the "dramatic monologue."

Bob

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Bob

I don’t have time at the moment to join the discussion you are starting here. I just want to assert what I imagine many will agree with that “A Servant to Servants” is indeed a masterpiece – and from many different perspectives. It is just the kind of poem we should be discussing at Musing on Mastery.

Kind regards

Clive

[Robert J. Clawson]

[quote]Originally posted by Clive Watkins:

"I just want to assert what I imagine many will agree with that “A Servant to Servants” is indeed a masterpiece – and from many different perspectives."

Yes, indeed, but I don't often hear this, Clive. I often draw blanks from Frost fans.

"It is just the kind of poem we should be discussing at Musing on Mastery."

I tried this a couple years ago, yes typed it all, but it didn't draw flies.

Year by year it continues to astound me. I have to go into a high school next week and the students want me to state my favorite poem and read it to them. However, I'm answering 20 questions in one hour, and I don't think there's time: probably easier to do "To His Coy Mistress" or "Dulce et Decorum est." Oh, too many "favorites." But "A Servant to Servants" is definitely elsewhere. Spine tingling lines.

Bob

[This message has been edited by Robert J. Clawson (edited January 15, 2005).]

[Robert J. Clawson]

Sorry.

[This message has been edited by Robert J. Clawson (edited February 07, 2005).]

[Henry Quince]

Bob, stop clicking twice! Patience!

[Henry Quince]

I agree with you, Bob. One cannot escape oneself, but by roleplaying, by projecting oneself into another personality, one can tap into regions of oneself that might otherwise remain hidden.

[Janet Kenny]

I have just been given a volume of poems by Gwen Harwood, an Australian poet who died in 1995. She excels at "going elsewhere". Tomorrow when I am less tired I will type some of her poems into Musing on Mastery. I know that Tim Murphy admires her.
Janet

[Roger Slater]

Your comment brought to mind Keats' famous letter to Woodhouse about how poets don't have their own identity, but inhabit the identity of others...certainly something that seems true of Shakespeare, for example. I'll quote more than I need to mirror your point, since the whole letter is irresistible (e.g., the last lines about writing "from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful").

My dear Woodhouse,
Your Letter gave me a great satisfaction; more on account of its friendliness, than any relish of that matter in it which is accounted so acceptable in the 'genus irritabile'. The best answer I can give you is in a clerk-like manner to make some observations on two princple points, which seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole pro and con, about genius, and views and achievements and ambition and cetera. 1st. As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I would write no more? Might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the Characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a wretched thing to confess; but is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature - how can it, when I have no nature? When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children: I know not whether I make myself wholly understood: I hope enough so to let you see that no despondence is to be placed on what I said that day.
In the second place I will speak of my views, and of the life I purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing the world some good: if I should be spared that may be the work of maturer years - in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of Poems to come brings the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs - that the solitary indifference I feel for applause even from the finest Spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will - I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them. But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself: but from some character in whose soul I now live. I am sure however that this next sentence is from myself. I feel your anxiety, good opinion and friendliness in the highest degree, and am
Your's most sincerely
John Keats

[Robert J. Clawson]

[quote]Originally posted by Roger Slater:

"Your comment brought to mind Keats' famous letter to Woodhouse about how poets don't have their own identity, but inhabit the identity of others...certainly something that seems true of Shakespeare, for example."

Oh, thanks, Roger, I'd not read it.

"I'll quote more than I need to mirror your point, since the whole letter is irresistible...."

You bet!

I hope you've revived thinking about this on this thread. I may just be late coming to the notion. So often, in workshops, someone just having read my piece, will ask me something such as, "Did that really happen to you?"

No, I made it up.

Also, I reject the oft-said notion that all poems are autobiographical. What could that mean? Is Frost's "A Servant to Servants" autobiographical because we can detect his empathy or sympathy? He has obviously worked hard to leave her alone, to let her utter her story independent of the poet's intervention.

Shakespeare's a fine example because crowds of scholars continue to try to establish him biographically. So much of his work, particularly the plays, are pure presentation. What do we learn of him from the histories, that he wanted to please the Queen? Big deal.

Bob

[wendy v]

Roger, thanks for the Keats. It's a refreshing antidote to the current thinking that the poet is more important than the poem, that 'persona' is a static, independent state, and that poetry at its best is a kind of flashing advertisement of the Me. Much more interesting for me to think of the poet as water, which naturally has no form or configuration without the bowl, the cup, the riverbed, the shores and stones which provide its shape and meaning.

Shameless, I find 'did that really happen ?' and 'but that's the way it really happened !' equally useless ! Harold Bloom says of Shakespeare:

"If I could question him I would not waste my seconds by asking the identity of the Dark Lady or the precisely nuanced elements of homoeroticism in the relationship with the Southampton (or another). Naively, I would blurt out: did it comfort you to have fashioned women and men more real than living men and women ?"