Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Poem Genesis
There seems to be a lot of fascination out there about how a poem goes from concept to completion, as it were. At readings, poets give explanatory intros, longer than the poems themselves, that include how and where and why they wrote each poem. Interviews often come back to these questions, more than just a craft primer, of what-were-you-thinking-when or where-do-you-get-your-ideas.
I certainly don't begrudge others their interest in those questions, though I only tend to find them interesting when the person doing the answering is especially funny and engaging. I think a lot of my disinterest is because I suspect my answer on the genesis of most of my poems would be similar:
"I had these two funny statements or ideas or facts--probably at least one of them was something not literally true that works in an interesting way when treated as if it is--and I realized there was a vague connection between those two things so they could be in the same poem. I wrote the connective tissue between the two things and figured out what they added up to. Then I rewrote the poem about 30 times, often losing what I had thought was the original point, as well as one or both of the initial lines. Then I had it rejected about 20 times."
It's not exactly compelling stuff, right? I mean, let's look at a couple poems from Torched Verse Ends that are online:
"Sturgeon's Law": My blog was already named when I wrote this poem, and I like the gist of Sturgeon's Law. I came across the facts in stanza 2 and used them to achieve the wrongheaded conclusion reached there at about the same time I realized the percent thing went with Sturgeon's Law. Then I found/made up a bunch of real and fake factoids, all misapplied. Stanza 1 came from a cartoon I wrote. My resume writing accounted for most of stanza 3. Snopes and my brain filled in the rest.
"Deathmatch Mode": I had a vivid dream wherein myself and three friends were repeatedly killed in various horror movie scenarios. It stayed with me after I woke up, but as I toyed with it, I realized the horror movie is really not my milieu at all. However, it took little effort to transfer the scenario over to video games, especially because I had been playing (I think) Unreal Tournament, which (at least the way I was playing it) is basically kill-kill-kill-die-respawn-kill-repeat-until-bored. I also realized the poem was turning into a loose proto-sonnet.
Are those explanations either interesting or useful? Do they enhance your appreciation of the poems in question, which should be the main point? I dunno...
I certainly don't begrudge others their interest in those questions, though I only tend to find them interesting when the person doing the answering is especially funny and engaging. I think a lot of my disinterest is because I suspect my answer on the genesis of most of my poems would be similar:
"I had these two funny statements or ideas or facts--probably at least one of them was something not literally true that works in an interesting way when treated as if it is--and I realized there was a vague connection between those two things so they could be in the same poem. I wrote the connective tissue between the two things and figured out what they added up to. Then I rewrote the poem about 30 times, often losing what I had thought was the original point, as well as one or both of the initial lines. Then I had it rejected about 20 times."
It's not exactly compelling stuff, right? I mean, let's look at a couple poems from Torched Verse Ends that are online:
"Sturgeon's Law": My blog was already named when I wrote this poem, and I like the gist of Sturgeon's Law. I came across the facts in stanza 2 and used them to achieve the wrongheaded conclusion reached there at about the same time I realized the percent thing went with Sturgeon's Law. Then I found/made up a bunch of real and fake factoids, all misapplied. Stanza 1 came from a cartoon I wrote. My resume writing accounted for most of stanza 3. Snopes and my brain filled in the rest.
"Deathmatch Mode": I had a vivid dream wherein myself and three friends were repeatedly killed in various horror movie scenarios. It stayed with me after I woke up, but as I toyed with it, I realized the horror movie is really not my milieu at all. However, it took little effort to transfer the scenario over to video games, especially because I had been playing (I think) Unreal Tournament, which (at least the way I was playing it) is basically kill-kill-kill-die-respawn-kill-repeat-until-bored. I also realized the poem was turning into a loose proto-sonnet.
Are those explanations either interesting or useful? Do they enhance your appreciation of the poems in question, which should be the main point? I dunno...
