1 An Elemental Guide to Poetry and the Workshop Max Roland Ekstrom Copyright Max Roland Ekstrom 2020-2021 For Chi-Hung Yim and David Barber Introduction 1 The Five Elements 2 Earth: Shape 3 Fire: Imagery 10 Air: Logos 15 Water: Intertext 21 Void: Elision 25 Alchemy of the Elements 28 The Poet and the Workshop 34 The Poet’s Journey 40 A Note on Sources 41 Further Reading 42 1 Introduction The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. --William Blake I hope you are reading this book because you want to write the next great poem. While this is something nobody can teach you, I will show you a large terrain of possibility, both in the tradition of English-language poetry, and in the ways in which you can best chart your path forward. This is the guide I wish I had when I was starting out. While I know you will not follow my path exactly, a brief survey will help you better set your expectations, plan your journey, and make the most of your time on the trail. Core to understanding the terrain are five basic poetic elements--earth, fire, air, water, and void. These correspond to the aspects of shape, imagery, logos, intertext, and elision, respectively. We will devote a chapter to each of these elements, exploring poems from half a millennium ago up to the beginning of the 20th-century. We will also make a detour to the Chinese. Of equal importance is how to build a sustainable practice as a poet to last a lifetime. We will roll up our sleeves and examine the mixing of these five elements as kind of alchemy, while also touching on critical topics such as revision, dealing with strong emotion, cliche, and how poetry can best reflect and draw from your own life and experiences. We will discuss how to get the most out of collaboration with your peers through the workshop, including how to choose poems to workshop, how to give the best feedback, and how to approach criticism from others. Most of all, I hope to offer you my companionship. The poet’s journey can often be a lonely one, but by surveying this wonderous living landscape of language, I hope you feel an invigorating sense of camaraderie. I am fortunate to have you with me. Let’s begin. 2 3 The Five Elements Numerous cultures throughout recorded history have studied the ways of nature and classified them according to irreducible elements. Nearly half a millennium before Christ, Ionian philosopher Heraclitus defined four humors of the body according to four primal forces. More or less contemporaneously, the Chinese developed a system of five elements for similar purposes. The Hindu Vedas also attest that all matter is formed of five basic elements and integral to spiritual and physical wellbeing. While today these ancient insights have been largely superseded by a scientific view of our planet and bodies, elemental wisdom still has much to teach us about the realm of the spirit, which is our concern in this guide. We will look at poetry as composed of five elements: earth , fire , air , water , and void Earth is the element of shape that gives poems their form and governs sound. Fire is the element of imagery that sparks the imagination. Air is the element of logos used to convince readers of poetic truths. Water is the element of intertext that forms the river of tradition. And lastly, void is the element of elision , whereby poetry grows stronger by what is left unsaid. Other poets may classify poetry in different ways. But by insisting on these five basic elements, we lay a foundation for a lifetime of study and reflection. As you grow and develop, you will eventually depart from these basics into your own sphere of speciality. But these will still represent points of origin in your own journey to come, and sites of refuge to return to whenever you become wearied by the world and need again the healing power of these elements. Each element influences the other--earth contains water, water enriches air, air feeds fire, and fire consumes earth. They can be combined endlessly, but never the same way twice. While rarely is a poem strong in all five elements at the same time, every poem must employ each element to some degree. Strive to understand them to gain insight on your own strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, the realization of your greatest poem is limited only by your imagination and determination. 4 Earth: Shape Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it. --Seamus Heaney Many poets share the unfortunate misunderstanding that the the shape of a poem is dictated by its lineation , or its line breaks. Never be fooled by mere appearances. Masters of shape realize the true form of the poem is only unveiled by the ear . Eyes can be deceived. Ears are never fooled by the tricks of new lines and whitespace. Thus the ear can unlock the hidden rhythmic pattern any poem establishes when read aloud. Think about song lyrics without music or notes. They will likely establish a clear silhouette in your mind even if you aren’t hearing the music or seeing the words on a page. This is because the lyrics manipulate elements of rhyme and rhythm to create patterns. In fact, the term “lyric” harkens back to the Greek lyre, which accompanied the recitation of poetry. Lyric poetry and song lyrics are kindred spirits. Most poems written until the mid-20th century followed certain metrical conventions, such as iambic pentameter. The line breaks of a poem meant something very specific--they informed the reader of meter. Eye and ear were in this sense married. Let’s really take a moment to delve into the implications of this. The visual shape of English poetry prior to the 20th century and its sonic shape were united, like body and soul. The idea you could have one without the other was unthinkable. And in many other parts of the world, the idea was essentially the same. Poems were expected to bring order from chaos, and it was the poets who were charged with creating this order. Because of this crucial bardic pedigree, it’s not possible to understand shape-making today without learning a little about what it meant in the past. So let’s travel back in time a good 500 years and have a look. Here’s an early example of the iambic taking shape, first published in 1520, untitled, writer unknown: Westron wynd when wyll thow blow The smalle rayne downe can rayne-- Cryst, yf my love wer in my armys And I in my bed agayne! Here is the same poem, in modernized spelling, with the syllable pattern emphasized: 5 West ern wind when will thou blow The small rain down can rain -- Christ , if my love were in my arms And I in my bed a gain ! Despite its various departures, we can already see the earthly shape of iambic congealing in this poem, the de DA, de DA, de DA pattern that came to dominate English verse for several hundred years. 70 years later, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote this sonnet to open his sequence, Astrophil and Stella : Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,— Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,— I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe; Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain. Allow me to mark up this poem a bit, inserting slashes to group the syllables into feet , the basic unit of traditional meter, and bolding to indicate metrical stress: Lov ing/ in truth /, and fain / in verse / my love / to show , That she /, dear she /, might take / some plea /sure of / my pain ,— Plea sure/ might cause / her read /, read ing/ might make / her know , Know ledge/ might pi /ty win /, and pi /ty grace / ob tain ,— I sought / fit words / to paint / the black /est face / of woe ; Stud ying/ in vent /ions fine / her wits / to en /ter tain , Oft turn /ing oth /ers' leaves /, to see / if thence / would flow Some fresh / and fruit /ful showers / up on / my sun / burn'd brain Another poet may scan these lines slightly differently than the above. But all would have to agree it’s iambic hexameter--meaning it has six feet per line, or around six stresses. While it’s important not to reduce the concept of meter to mere stress 1 , as rough-and-ready approximation, it allows us to illuminate poetic shape, like stars that shine down on a midnight garden. In that spirit, try finding the stresses in the remaining six lines of the sonnet: 1 Traditional meter in English is often called accentual-syllabic , because it groups syllables into feet that form a metrical pattern according to their stresses, or accent. As feet are the unit of measure, and not stresses nor syllables, the number of stresses and syllables in a line can, in practice, vary considerably. 6 But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows; And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way. Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write." As you can see, the iambic pattern is pretty sturdy, and while it varies occasionally for emphasis, 2 each line holds pretty fast to the de DA, de DA iambic pattern. The poem always finishes each line with an end-stop, or the end of a grammatical unit. Nothing is enjambed-- started in one line and completed on another. As subsequent generations of poets mostly opt for shorter lines of pentameter (five) or tetrameter (four) feet, enjambment becomes both more necessary and more appealing as a way to create tension between line and phrase. More than a hundred years later--Shakespeare come and gone--let’s pick up an excerpt from An Essay on Poetry by the great English wit Alexander Pope (1688–1744), written at the tender age of 23. The first line may sound familiar, but pay attention to how readily the iambic pentameter scans, and how even with the rhymes, Pope bends it to his purpose: A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fir'd 3 at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, While from the bounded level of our mind, Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise New, distant scenes of endless science rise! So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try, Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; Th' eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last; But those attain'd, we tremble to survey 3 Fired, except in one syllable. 2 Variations in the iambic pattern are known as substitutions . Too few substitutions and a poem can seem monotonous. Too many, and its core iambic pattern is threatened. See Further Reading for more information. 7 The growing labours of the lengthen'd way, Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! Note how infrequent the enjambment is, and how the end-stopped lines serve to increase the assertiveness of the rhyme by making it seem to coincide with the argument. While the neat rhymes may sound a little corny to the to the modern ear, they are never forced, and the meter never strained. Yet Pope wrote in a language much the same as ours, so we can’t so easily diminish him by claiming he had it easy 4 . It’s a stunning effort. Peak after peak, summit after summit, Pope effortlessly reaches the next foothold. He humbles us--reminding us that at every stage of our quest to become a better poet, a new level of challenge surely awaits. Iambic isn’t always so trim and tidy. Breaking chronological order, here is John Milton (1608–1674) in a touchingly elegiac mood, from the opening of “Lycidas”: Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. If Pope fired his iambic couplets with the force of twin torpedoes, Milton seeks a line that shows a speaker who’s all broken up. The subtle rhyme scheme helps quiet the poem, while enjambment and caesura 5 lends it an organic cadence. All told its rhythms are softer, slower, and brimming with nuance--well-suited to close observation of nature. We can feel the speaker search for something noble to make of his grief. With Pope’s warning in our mind--that learning a little is way more dangerous than knowing nothing at all--I want us to think about how we learn, not just what we learn. It’s all well and good to bone up on theory, to train ourselves to see what others can’t. But beyond seeing and even beyond listening is the work of getting our hands dirty. 5 A pause in the line, usually in the middle, and usually achieved through the end of a phrase or sentence--i.e., punctuation--coinciding with the end of a foot. 4 Pope enjoys liberties with contractions that wouldn’t fly today (dang’rous, tow’ring, o’er, etc.), and one rhyme has been lost due to English vowel shifts (brain/again)--at least on this side of the pond. His era also better-tolerated syntactic inversions, such as “Short views we take” instead of “We take short views”, or “Alps we try” instead of “we try the Alps”. But by and large it’s still the same English. 8 Reading poetry from previous eras should be like field work--or as Heaney put it at this chapter’s heading, digging in the dirt. Rolling up our sleeves brings us in contact with the stuff of poetry, the particular interplay of rain, wind, heat, and soil that’s occurred over thousands of seasons. And in the following four elemental sections, I will show more examples of poems from various places and times. Even when we’re not explicitly focused on shape, try to sense it--with your ears, with your hands, and with your heart. With all that under our belt, we can fast-forward to a more recent example of poetic form that is much closer to today’s sensibilities. Here is a deceptively simple but profound example of shape from American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), a master of lyric modes who disassembled and rebuilt the aging beauty of Victorian forms for the jazz age: Ebb I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge. Without wading too deep into the technicalities, hopefully you can readily spot the poem’s stresses and rhymes, and allow your ear to pick up on its essentially iambic structure. Note how it’s simultaneously taut yet languid 6 . The short lines, paradoxically, make every word seem slower and more drawn out. The whole poem is but one syntactic unit--a single sentence in four phrases--draped unevenly over the 7 lines. The imagery is simple and clear. Yet the title allows some hope. What has ebbed may later flow. Finally it’s time for us to consider free verse. Let’s pay extra-close attention to shape and sound here. They are no less vital--perhaps even more vital--to the free-verse poem. And there is no better guide to this new frontier than William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): Complete Destruction It was an icy day. We buried the cat, then took her box 6 Millay appears to have slowed the lines by deploying trisyllables. If you’re interested in how that works, please see the Further Reading section. 9 and set fire to it in the back yard. Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold. This poem is iconoclastic for more than its abandonment of meter. Its opening line is highly unconventional 7 . But it also nods to what came before by offering the possibility of an iambic scan (It was an i cy day ) that the rest of the poem vehemently refuses. The next line--the moment the poem produces its corpse -- opens up assonance 8 in cat and day ; icy and buried . This pattern of heavy monosyllables continues, suppressing any other sonic pattern besides the most primitive coincidence of consonant and vowel. Longer, polysyllabic words can suggest cognition, reasoning, rumination. But the speaker of this poem, struck by grief, seems reluctant to think at all. When we reach the extra syllables on line six--”Those fleas that escaped”--it suggests an extra breath, akin to exasperation or perhaps a morbid sigh the speaker releases out on the ice. In both Millay’s and Williams’ examples, we are seeing poetic shape on one end of the spectrum--tight, controlled, appalled. Yet these poems, precisely because they are short, show us the tremendous power of shape. A well-wrought piece of jewelry may outshine the gaudiest chandelier. And we’ll look more at how to attenuate a poem in the last element, “void,” as earth and void pair naturally together. But more or less automatically, when a poet focuses on the shape of a poem, choices must be made about what to leave in and what to take out. I can’t underscore enough how critically important it is to understand how the aural shape of your poem impacts its reception. A poem’s aural shape and its lineation should harmonize. A few surprising line breaks can certainly serve a poem well. But typically, apparent problems with lineation are symptomatic of a more serious condition. Simply moving around line breaks can’t solve the problem of sonic form. Form and content also complement one another unless a humorous effect is desired. No limerick can be read at a funeral. A ballad is apt at storytelling, but weak at mystical contemplation. The couplet excels at capturing a heroic or lyric instant, but becomes comic if overextended. (I’m talking to you, Pope). You’ll notice this guide returns to the 8 Assonance when the vowels in two words agree, like ph o ne and c o mb. Consonance is when consonants do the same, like bu ck et and mil k . If combined correctly, they create rhyme. 7 The use of past tense is uncommon in the lyric mode, as is the weak, passive construction of “It was...” which is usually to be avoided, especially if a more active verb can be readily be deployed. These features usually lend the impression of prose--or of trite lines written with a crayon. Why is this not so in this poem? What if we open instead with “The land frozen over, / We bury the cat”? 10 sonnet again and again. To me, it has a special place in the tradition--perhaps it’s the haiku of the West. 11 Fire: Imagery As a poet, when I want the rose to bloom, it will blossom —Yang Lian According to the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , image and imagery are “poorly understood terms in poetic theory”, and rather than attempting to define them, its editors throw up their hands. Like anthropologists observing kindergarteners freely combining Legos and Playmobil, they conclude it’s “impossible to provide any rational...account of their usage.” So much for the academic vantage. For our purposes, however, we can start with our senses, accepting any sensory impression a poem offers us as an “image.” While imperfect, this gets us close to the volcano, even if we must proceed to the summit without a marked trail. For good reason. The language used to analyze metaphoric language is complex and intricate. Since Plato and Aristotle in the West, philosophers have been concerned with the implication of representation in all the arts, but imagery in poetry has always been a chief concern. For Plato, one problem was whether poets deceive their readers through the use of fabricated imagery. The charge that poets are a nuisance to public order and to political stability is perhaps hard to fathom in 21st century America. But many living poets and many more in very recent memory have faced persecution. Diverse poets such as Wisława Szymborska, Duo Duo, and Joseph Brodsky demonstrate imagery can inflame those in power. And the battle for representation among historically marginalized communities continues right here in the U.S. Arguably, for much of late-20th century American verse, imagery was prioritized. Free verse seems to make it more convenient to focus on image, and its greatest advocate, Ezra Pound (1885-1972), was convinced that East Asian poetry showed us the model to follow. He observed that classical Chinese poetry tends to be spare and focused on surprising imagery. He also felt that Chinese text was inherently more capable of producing imagistic ideas and associations, as Chinese characters are intrinsically pictorial. While Pound’s view is slightly reductive, it is the case that most Chinese characters are composites of a couple hundred radicals , or simple representations of things like a tree, grass, the sun, a person, a roof, earth, fire, water, etc. When combined, these radicals lend their sound or meaning to thousands of different characters. 12 Here’s an example of Chinese poetry, this one from legendary Tang 9 poet and Taoist sage Wang Wei (699–759; my translation): 竹里 馆 zhú lǐ guǎn 独坐幽篁里 dú zuò yōu huáng lǐ 弹琴复长啸； tán qín fù cháng xiào. 深林人不知， shēn lín rén bù zhī 明月来相照。 míng yuè lái xiāng zhāo Bamboo Pavilion Perched alone amidst thick bamboo I strum my lute and whistle-- In the deep forest absent of anyone, a bright moon brings companionship. No English translation can capture the music of the poem in Chinese, owing to the vast differences in the languages 10 . Notably, Wang Wei wrote this poem in a traditional syllabic form--the idea of free-verse was unthinkable to him as it was to classical poets of the West. But perhaps this translation can give you an impression of what Pound--and generations of writers after him--found so astonishing about the Chinese poetic tradition. The imagery of the poem transports us instantly across space and time, allowing us to enjoy a moment of refuge from our crazed, technological world. While Pound was extolling the virtues of Tang minimalism, Chinese poets themselves were chafing at their inherited restrictions. Lu Xun (pen name of Zhou Shuren, 1881-1936), one of the leaders of the New Culture movement, sought to counter the rigid formalism of Chinese writing and was galled by its inability to express any but the narrowest bourgeois sentiments. He recognized the effect the Chinese language’s arduous written conventions had on literacy rates, keenly aware that an illiterate public would have a hard time combatting traditionalism and superstition. Like the slipper used to deform the feet of growing girls, Lu felt millenia of literary restraint was doing real harm to China’s entrance into modernity. Here’s a famous effort of his to seek redress: 10 I offer pinyin phonetics of the Chinese characters, but these phonetics represent modern Mandarin pronunciation. Chinese at the time would have sounded significantly different. 9 The Tang dynasty is considered a golden age of Chinese civilization. 13 自嘲 运交 华盖欲何求，未敢翻身已碰头。 破帽遮 颜过闹市，漏船载酒泛中流。 横眉冷 对千夫指，俯首甘为孺子牛。 躲进小楼成一统，管他冬夏与春秋 zì cháo yùn jiāo huá gài yù hé qiú, wèi gǎn fān shēn yǐ pèng tóu. Pò mào zhē yán guò nào shì, lòu chuán zài jiǔ fàn zhōng liú. Héng méi lěng duì qiān fū zhǐ, fǔ shǒu gān wèi rú zǐ niú. Duǒ jìn xiǎo lóu chéng yī tǒng, guǎn tā dōng xià yǔ chūn qiū Self-Deprecation Star-crossed and without a choice, as I dare to turn my head it’s already struck. I hide my face in a torn hat and cross teeming markets, leaking like a broken boat ferrying wine. Squinting back at the thousand pointed fingers, I bow my head as if playing a child’s loyal ox. 11 Safe inside my apartment I reach detachment, indifferent to summer, winter, spring, and autumn. 12 If the poem’s goal is the overthrow of traditional forms, then it is a shot across the bow, not a breach of the hull. The original Chinese of the poem features precise syllables, ornately polished literary language, and heavy allusion (more on that topic in the Water section). Lu is determined to fight with fire. Metaphors cascade line by line, introducing an entirely new visual at every turn. The approach grants each image a large independence from the one before it, allowing each line to stand in relief, like a series of painted panels. This also forces difficult choices 13 for the translator. Like many poems, its “story” must be pieced together, like a puzzle. While there’s never only one right way to read a poem, I offer this gloss: an unfortunate gentleman, hit on the head (perhaps while out shopping), hides his face in his hat as he bleeds into it. He scurries away, bowed over double like a dumb ox, returning to his apartment where he reconciles 13 I take the liberty of placing a “like” on like 4 and and “as if” on line 6 to capture Lu’s use of classical Chinese parallelism. 12 The last line’s word order may be deliberate, since in Chinese, autumn and sadness are nearly homonyms in many dialects, qiu vs chou. 11 Duke Jing of Qi, a famous statesman from the time of Confucius, let his son ride him around like an ox. 14 himself to a spiritual strategy of philosophical withdrawal. Notice how the ending curiously echoes “Bamboo Shrine”--and many classical poems like it. Whether he intended it or not, Lu’s poem became a revolutionary anthem, endorsed by Mao Zedong and painted on banners paraded down thoroughfares. The poem’s idea of self-sacrifice, though, is bittersweet; its outlook on the proletariat masses is ambivalent, and the solutions it proposes are deeply personal. Wherever poetry--and society--was headed, it was going to get there only at great cost. Ezra Pound’s life is a different witness to these costs. After serving as a radio propagandist for the fascist Mussolini regime, Pound was returned to the U.S. as a prisoner and a traitor when Italy fell to the Allies. Many of the ideas proposed at the onset of the 20th century, including the fascism and antisemitism Pound espoused, contributed to the century’s death toll. 14 Robert Frost (1874-1963) met Pound in London in 1913, just prior to the start of World War I. While eager for his seal of approval, Frost famously declined to join Pound’s Imagist 15 movement. Instead, he developed his own style where image was important, but never at the expense of other elements. Let’s dig into a lesser-known masterpiece: Hyla Brook By June our brook’s run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground (And taken with it all the Hyla breed 16 That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)— Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed, Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent Even against the way its waters went. Its bed is left a faded paper sheet Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat— A brook to none but who remember long. This as it will be seen is other far 16 Frost was an accomplished amateur naturalist. Hyla is a genus of frog. 15 Pound’s literary movement first centered around American figures such as H.D., William Carlos Williams, and Harriet Monroe, founder and editor of Poetry magazine. This early, narrow phase of 20th aesthetics would give way to Modernism, considered the most significant stylistic trend in 20th century poetics. 14 Pound’s insights continue to reverberate. But his antisemitism and fascism--which at times become intertwined with his aesthetics--must be called for what they are: repugnant. 15 Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song. We love the things we love for what they are. The poem teems with lively imagery, from the “groping” brook to the frogs to the sleigh-bells. As it gains steam, it adds to its litany, rolling up the frightening image of “dead leaves” that indicate sinister forces or dark emotions. The poem seems to evoke the speaker’s pain, despite its enigmatic obliqueness. Frost always put nature at the center of his art. This is a notion the Chinese masters surely would have approved of. All poets play with fire. Prometheus stole it from the gods, but was punished with eternal suffering. John the Baptist healed with water, but heralded one who would come to purify with fire. Let the spark inspire you, but remember it is also the most dangerous of the elements, capable of consuming nearly anything before it. Don’t become a burnout. Use your gifts wisely.