How Not to (and How to) Serve Up a Poem

Poems are not short stories. This may seem like an obvious statement, but so many times I see struggling writers that seem to think they need a beginning, a middle and an end in a poem — all things needed by story writers. Yes, there are certainly poems that are more narrative in nature, like ballads and epics. Many of these form the backbone to Western literature, like Homer’s tales, Beowulf, Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Milton’s Paradise Lost, etc.  But an aubade, an elegy, an ode, a psalm, a lament, a lyric poem — in fact, the majority of poetry is not narrative in the way that requires beginnings, middles and endings, or clarity of plot/time. Though we occasionally see a contemporary long-form narrative poem, for the most part this genre is a child of times gone by.

Getting a Taste

Today it is often the very quality of elusiveness and the fact that we only get a little slice of time/space/action/thought that enhances contemporary poems. Let’s take a look at a couple of poems by Wallace Stevens.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is

In “The Snow Man” we do not need to know that the “man” in the poem has walked out of his cabin into the snowy woods. We infer that. Neither do we need to know that he will later come in and drink hot cocoa by a fire. The poem is complete in that it captures a moment of thought — a little taste — that ranges a bit in the “listener’s” mind about how it is only possible to conceive of the cold if one has a “mind of winter.” That is the subject of the poem, not a story about going out into the snow.

Ways of Savoring

Take a look at one of Wallace Stevens’ most famous poems:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
in the cedar-limbs.

In this poem we have a list of different ways to look at a single subject. A kind of 360˚ view that includes metaphors, images, and symbols. We don’t see the blackbird with just our eyes. Stevens says, “I do not know which to prefer/The beauty of inflections/Or the beauty of innuendoes …” In this poem he gives us both.  What he does not give us is any kind of linearity of time/plot. Doing that allows freedom for the subject — these ways of looking can happen all at once, over decades, or repeatedly — and to any number of onlookers. It gives the poem a timelessness that insures it will be enjoyed by generations of readers.

After Dinner Thoughts

Perhaps the most egregious crime of bad poetry is when the poet tries to summarize the poem for the reader. Poems are delicious treats that the reader will devour emotionally or intellectually. Readers bring to the table their own histories. Readers takes away what is needful at the moment to that reader. And it may be something entirely other than what the writer had in mind while writing the poem. That is the way it is supposed to be. Don’t tell us what the images and metaphors mean. And don’t wind it all up neatly with a denouement, as you would a short story or novel. Leave your poems open-ended. Let the reader chew on them for a while. The tastiest poems impart a flavor that’s meaningful — and unique — to each reader.

Good Sites for Poets

• The Poetry Foundation (A great all-around resource)
• Academy of American Poets
• Poets & Writers
• Duotrope (See my post “Finding Publishers with Duotrope.”)
• Poetry Society of America
• Poetry 101 (PDF download at Shutta’s website)