Poetitudes

I recently had a brief but invigorating chat with my friend Sarah about poetry, which she's only just begun writing. Like most new poets, she writes when she overflows, spilling her Self all over the page. She asked me to read her stuff, and in the course of an elliptical conversation punctuated by a anecdote or two I described to her what I thought about poetry and how to "improve" it. Being both as qualified and unqualified as any other journeyman wordsmith, I've decided to share.

As I said, new poets are often exhilarated at the writing of poetry, of both releasing emotions and thoughts that are pent-up inside, and also at the prospect that what's been written might be read, communicated, and understood. This exhilaration in the act of expression is that "feeling" that people get. New poets – in a generalization that I should know better than to be making – are often less concerned with the poem itself than what it accomplishes, within themselves and in communication with others.

This is okay! Catharsis is a critical aspect of creation. However, most want to "improve" their work, and this is where my anecdote comes in.

One night, junior year of high school, I found myself up late at night, on the computer, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, and very much in the throes of that "feeling." I wrote with the swing of the music and the gyrations of my heart, and then went to bed. I had written about two stanzas, and finished the poem with two more the next day or so. I ended up putting it in the next fM. Magazine because I needed a piece, but I wasn't totally satisfied with it.

A few months later I needed something to submit to the Young Writers' Conference, and thought that that poem had some promise if I cleaned it up. So I sat down with it, thought about it, and fixed it up nicely – by removing the first two stanzas (saving one line and two or three images) and writing something entirely different. It would be difficult to overstate how much it improved.

I edited the poem by eliminating the bit that was written during the "inspiration," when I had that "feeling." This isn't to say that the inspiration was unimportant – it served to sort of find the poem and crack it open for me. I certainly released a lot of good feelings doing it, but the poem itself, if it wanted to be good, had to grow beyond that.

More later.