[Rick Mullin]

In the end, I want to be surprised by what I've written. I don't believe in formulas or exercises (such as consciously writing the opposite of what I intend or believe). But if my initial logic is challenged, I might end up surprised. I compare writing in form to drawing without looking at my drawing hand or the paper. Drawing while looking at the model. It is a completely different process from writing in form, but it delivers similar results. You have to use the noggin writing in form, certainly, but you also turn off the cerebral, knowledge-based approach to writing as you go--just as you turn off your knowledge that a finger has three joints and the middle finger is the longest when look at the hand you are drawing rather than the one you are drawing with.

Many of my poems start with a line that may or may not have other lines or ideas attached. It rarely ends up as the first line in the poem. Quite often I arrive at a subject that would never have occurred to me.

But these guys can explain it all much better than I could ever hope to.

RM

[Roger Slater]

Rick, the Stooges do indeed have a lot to teach us about poetic composition, but not as much as Don Music, whose technique most resembles my own. Here it is, caught on film.

[Julie Steiner]

One of the reasons I've never been a successful liar is that if I don't believe in something wholeheartedly, I can't summon the passion to persuade anyone else to believe it, either. The same applies to my poetry.

So, despite these liberating compositional examples, and despite what I said earlier in this thread, for the most part my muse ditches me unless there's a pretty close correspondence between fact and truth. Much as in translation, I find that the excuse of form gives me only so much leeway, and no more, to tweak.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

[Susan McLean]

Like Julie, I have a strong allegiance to what I think is true when I am writing. That doesn't preclude making things up, but if someone points out that the things made up do not conform to truth (and I agree), I cannot be happy with the poem. Sometimes when I try to imagine how someone else sees the world, I get it wrong. And sometimes in trying to show how I see the world, I can get some facts wrong. I'm open to being corrected in some cases, but not in all. If you tell me that I cannot have felt what I know I felt in a particular situation, you will not convince me.

I think one can overintellectualize the creative process by trying to impose any particular way of writing on all writers. So much of what we do is intuitive, inventing the process all over again for each poem according to the needs of that poem and our own skills at the time. Trying out a new form is a process of discovering how techniques we already possess are limited or enhanced by the form, which often pushes us into developing new techniques. I can describe afterward what I did (though I can't always explain what made me make some of the connections I made). But I don't go into a poem with a plan of how it will all fit together. I learn to trust my instincts. I like tackling difficult forms to see where they will take me. But once they take me to a particular place, I can't just take the content of that poem and fit it into a different form. The form was how I got there, intrinsic to the result. For some people, perhaps fitting the content of one poem into the form of a different poem would be a challenge they would relish. My mind doesn't work that way. I'd rather write a new poem than do multiple variations on the same poem.

Susan

[Janice D. Soderling]

RE Maryann (#50) and Julie and Susan above. That is how I work too. If I start with a form, I need to have an idea. If I have an idea, I need to find a form. Once I am launched, I have to be true to my intent.

I wasn't going to say more on this subject, but this morning's breakfast reading gave me some input that I'd like to share. In an essay by Italo Calvino, Eugenio Montale, 'Forse un mattino andando', the following leapt out at me, reminding me of this thead.

The 'miracle' is Montale's first theme, which he never abandons: (...)

I think that sums it up for me. Often a critter will suggest--especially in those inspired "rewrites" that we sometimes are subjected to--that the intention of the poem has no relevance for the critter, that the critter is tone deaf to what the poet is trying to do and feels free to cut and stomp and, in effect, write a poem of his/her own that totally ignores the INTENTION.

I posit that there even though in the early stage a defined intention may not have coalesced, a "truth" or "intent" will soon assert itself and by the time it has come to the stage of being posted for crit, the poet has (or should have) some basic idea of what he wants the poem to do.

Susan says;

If you tell me that I cannot have felt what I know I felt in a particular situation, you will not convince me.

I concur completely. The critter may disagree with my theme only by telling me that I haven't made it clear to him/her; then it is my job to return to the grindstone try to do so.

And I concur wholeheartedly with (Julie speaking): for the most part my muse ditches me unless there's a pretty close correspondence between fact and truth. Much as in translation, I find that the excuse of form gives me only so much leeway, and no more, to tweak.

Maryann sums up my attitude:

You're emphasizing reader response, but what I'm focusing on is workshopping process. You remarked earlier that you don't see why poets object that "that would be a different poem." I'm explaining why they sometimes do, and that the objection can be very strong.

In another line from the Calvino essay, he says:
Montale is one of the few poets who knows the secret of using rhyme to lower the tone, not to raise it, with unmistakable repercussions on meaning.

In conjunction with another Calvino essay--on "Daisy Miller"--I reread James's story yesterday. And it struck me that this story could be read in different ways. A reader from the Bible belt, where I grew up, would very likely see Daisy's death as her getting her just deserts--just as did the strait-laced Americans viewing her conduct and cold-shouldering her.

Another example. I just completed Kate O'Brien's excellent "The Anteroom" set in Catholic Ireland of the late 1800s. I am sure my take on it differs from that of my devout friends.

But in these cases we are speaking of finished products and they are open to interpretation and discussion. But a work-in-progress is a different matter IMO, and there the author/poet should remain true to his/her theme or vision and while the critter is free to diagree, he/she should not be so frivolous as to suggest a rhyme word or cut that ignores the writer's intent.

Going off-topic, I just want to add that "Forse un mattino andando" blew my mind completely when I was young and read it for the first time. I read it in translation, and I posit that a lot of harmonious forces were at play--Montale who never left his theme/vision when he created, the translator who stayed true to that theme/vision, and the receptive reader, i.e. the young me.

[Roger Slater]

"he/she should not be so frivolous as to suggest a rhyme word or cut that ignores the writer's intent"

If it's my poem being workshopped, I invite such frivolity if your suggestion would improve the poem. It's my intent, so I'm free to change it if you give me a good reason to do so.

The poet's intent really needn't have relevance for the critter or the reader, in my opinion, unless the poet specifically asks for suggestions that are limited to a given purpose.

If my suggestion for your poem seems to alter your intent, know that I didn't come up with the suggestion out of thin air, but suggested something that seemed consistent with elements of the poem as you posted it.

[Janice D. Soderling]

If my suggestion for your poem seems to alter your intent, know that I didn't come up with the suggestion out of thin air, but suggested something that seemed consistent with elements of the poem as you posted it.

Yes, Roger, that is where this kind of comment is extremely useful. It tells me, the writer, that I am not getting across what I had hoped to get across. I have full respect for the crit per se.

Again, off topic. Regarding the Montale poem, I went back to re-read it just now and the George Key translation still blows my mind. This may be because I assimilated it early.

Then I went to look at the original in the bilingual edition (translated and annotated by) Jonathan Galassi. With respect to Galassi, who has done a monumental job, his translation (of that particular poem) fails to move me as the George Key translation does. So I am unsure about my previous statement regarding translator fidelity. As we know, language is a tricky business.

[Charlotte Innes]

This is an amazing discussion—I am saving it for when I teach my creative writing class this fall! I loved Ed’s quote from Roethke and his own comment:

“I think Roethke's famous line 'I learn by going where I have to go' is famous in almost equal parts because it's so apt, and because it's so fuzzy. Form sparks ideas sometimes, as Nemo says, that's for sure.”

That’s closest to the way work. Actually, when I start scribbling in my notebook, I am writing what seems like prose—no lines. And then the music starts to emerge—I literally start to hear it. (My God, I have something in common with Yeats!) And I sometimes surprise myself by writing a sonnet without intending to. As Jean said, sometimes a poem seems to demand the sonnet form—the inherent argument structure of a sonnet, perhaps, the mini-essay approach? But I don’t write many sonnets, Tim! Re your comment about women poets. Hmmm… Perhaps Shakespeare really was a woman? His sister Judith, perhaps? (!)

I’m not a musician, but poetry is music—people tell me that when I read, I move my entire body as if I’m dancing. The comments about music, drums, are all so pertinent. There’s an essential sound that’s right for each poem, I think.

However, as a fairly recent newcomer to poetry, I find it worthwhile to set myself the task of writing something in a difficult form, a Sapphic or a sestina, for example, just to see where it will take me. BUT I always start with a subject. The only Sapphic I have written started because those that I read in that form seemed to have something tender but contemplative about them. (Those that I read!) My poem ended up being about a kind gesture.

Sometimes, fairly early on in the process, I find that a poem just falls into iambic pentameter. Lately, everything is coming out in trimeter—what does that mean?! Perhaps form AND feeling come to some kind of agreement in the subconscious—and we don’t have any choice in the matter at all. Which ties in with Mary’s initial comment, and those subsequently in agreement, that there is some kind of “essence” of form in what we write.

But Tim Murphy says it best: “What the poem says is its center.” What is a poem without a center? A dead body?

And Clive is right: poems are neither simply form or substance. Why do students find them so hard to take apart? Because there’s a huge juggling act going on between language, syntax, sound (including the music of assonance, etc), substance (often the working out of quite complicated ideas), and on and on…

Tim Love’s quotes suggested to me that ideas about “form” shift from era to era, too; and that Michael Donaghy caught the complexity of the matter “… serendipity provided by negotiation with a resistant medium." I love that!

But of course, of course…. we’re all different! With different approaches to writing… There’s no such thing as the Essential Poet Person. (Is there?!)

And is there an “essential truth” in a poem? I’m not sure that’s always the case. Ellen Bryant Voigt once said to me (after a lecture she gave on syntax) that formalists like poems that end with a click (doesn’t that come from Yeats?) and free versers leave things open. Perhaps all poems leave something open? That’s something to debate, perhaps.

As for having tea and biscuits with sonnets, as Mary said…. to me, as major (English-born) tea-drinker that sounds like bliss!

But yes, I also burn beans (Thanks, Janice. Great image.)

And I now understand the blurb from Mark Irwin on my most recent chapbook: “Charlotte Innes finds nothing but form in devouring passion.” He must have been thinking of Kant. (I hope! I’ll have to ask him…)

[Carolyn Moore]

I'm little use at answering the question that started this thread years ago and will hide behind a timid "it depends." However, my publishing credits have picked up since I stumbled onto a "kiln" approach to revision, which means several firings for each poem.

Most of my recent work is in my own perverse form of loose blank verse (for which, paradoxically, I have very strict rules). However, I take a metered draft and run it through two of these three strategies: a free verse diet (amazing how many prepositional phrases and deadwood "logical connectors" reveal themselves as unessential and as merely padding out the meter), strong-stress lines (known in these fora as "accentual verse," I believe), and syllabic lines. The poem returns to meter chastened and refined from the firings it goes through. And sometimes I am humbled to discover that the poem needs to be about something I kept subordinate in early drafts.

So to return to the question that started this thread, I would say that I try on several forms of line for size before the poem returns to meter. And every now and then I discover that a poem is better suited to rhythm other than blank verse.