I have learned that if I do not understand what a poet is doing — don’t understand a poem, or why it was published (especially for non-linear poetry) the best way to “get” it is to try to write an equivalent poem. Get the same sound and rhythm in the language, bring in new themes at the same time as in the original, but flip the themes on their heads, so it’s not just a rote copy, but a structure I have to understand. So if the poem is about summer in New York, make a poem about noontime in a small town. If the intent is to show a reaction to death, at the same place in my poem show a reaction to a wedding. Those sorts of simple flips.
In Cathal McCabe’s “The Roof,” a concrete poem so simple I can’t reference it without giving away the whole poem, (in the New Yorker of November 19) this simple flip might create a poem about rain filling a basement, for instance, creating a visual by arranging the poem on the page. I’ve actually written quite a few concrete poems, so I know a couple of the tricks his poem does are pretty slick…read the last four columns of his poem vertically, and you’ll see what I mean. Hiding other words and a whole reaction inside such a single, simple word is very hard to do, and admirable. Also fun.
In Lia Purpura’s “Prayer,” the first half of the very short poem seems to be a simple moment described: “Its occasion // could be // a spot of sun…” But that opening balances, sets off and conceals the ambush of the second half/sentence of the poem, which just goes on and on in my head long after I’ve finished it. Since that sentence is about going on and on, this also is a difficult trick to pull off. It is these sorts of difficult tricks that make poems worthy of The New Yorker, I believe. Puzzle poems, jump poems, poems with a second layer, something you maybe don’t notice right away.
This rewriting technique is what brought me first to appreciate John Ashbery. His poems at first seem to be totally non-linear, to the point of having no ties between any of the lines. At which point, what is the point. But when I tried to emulate one of these poems, I had to admit there were relations, or near-misses, between each line, and these near-misses were very hard to pull off with the sort of gentle breath control Ashbery shows. His poem in the Nov 26 issue is “The Fop’s Tale,” and its first three lines are these: “The day began inauspiciously. // Well, well, I have patients who visit my family. // Silly, they don’t count.” So, patients visiting family is evidence of how inauspicious the day began, or maybe an argument against it, and either way they are dismissed in importance in the third line. Who is they, the family, the patients? So there is your task — try to write three non-linear lines that actually can build a story like that, with two different possible readings like that. I would point out he keeps that end-rhyme in mind for a couple more stanzas before abandoning it, and sort of starts another one with opens/mentions and so on. So you’ll want to shift rhymes in and out as you go as well, but nothing too close. And the first stanza is a call and reply argument, but that does not appear anywhere else. Do the equivalent of that, too. Then there is a theme of going to bed/making children/sleep/and at the very end, love. And a theme of/set of references to different countries. I find the more I try to create an equivalent poem, the more I appreciate the poem he did create, here.
Finally, take Ellen Bryant Voigt’s “Bear,” which relays an incident about a bear after birdseed and suet under the eaves, and a man who fearlessly charges down and takes noisy umbrage “in his white loincloth like David against Goliath.” the poem deepens a little with the line “would she be saying you my dear are the person who married him // which of course I did” and then at the end references that little line in a turn that flips the whole poem into a meditation about marriage, about what it means to be together, about the risks of committing to each other, about acceptance, misunderstandings, and loneliness. See, even by the description you can tell this poem ain’t gonna be easy to emulate either, eh? ;->
Such chewy poems these all were, and worth the work to understand them.
Peace in poetry,
P M F Johnson