Experimenting With Poetry

There’s been a lot of talk in Ottawa recently about the value of being an experimenter in poetry, constantly trying out new forms, always open to new ways of writing a poem so one doesn’t get stale or bored. I’ve sat back from the discussion not because I don’t have an opinion but because I wanted to think about it and about why it doesn’t appeal to me at this point.

I had to ask myself if it is age-related – most of the poets talking about it are at least a few years younger than me. Or is it a stage of life issue? There’s no question I’m settling down – I’ve done the student years, the living in attics, the joyous partying times. I’m now happy to curl up on the sofa. I’m also traveling in a way I didn’t used to be able to.

So perhaps those play a role. Also, I’ve done some experimentation in order to reach where I am now, both in reading and in writing. I had to. It’s the way writers, artists, and composers find out which style is going to be theirs, which is their own voice among all the clamour. It seems like a necessary part of discovery.

But I don’t want to stay there, in discovery. I’m at the point where I want to concentrate on learning one aspect of the craft really well. Of focusing on it.

This doesn’t mean I think I’m better – or worse – than some of the other poets in town. Just different.

It’s like medicine. Some are born researchers, keen to search out new drugs, new treatments. Others want to be family doctors, learning as much as they can about everything. Or emergency room doctors, fast on their feet, constantly open to a new problem every minute.

And then there are those who want to specialize, to study just one aspect of the body in great detail.

In the end, I’ve realized that’s what I want to be – a cardiologist, if you will, not concerned with the superficials of the heart, but struggling with its relationships to every organ, every chemical pumping through the veins, every crisis and aging whimper.

To be precise, I’m specializing in lyric poetry, which is to say, in poetry that is not specifically narrative (most of the time), that is more contemplative and personal. Lyric is considered to be the most common type of poetry, which would normally have me running in the opposite direction as I tend not to be a pack-follower. But this form is the one my words choose. And so, I have committed myself to learning how to do it as best I can.

Here’s the first draft of the lyric poem for today:

The bird in the kitchen slides a feather in
your yoghurt bowl, black depths layered with
the ocean’s green iridescence beside
the purple grapes floating in a small sea of
rind-flecked white. Orange scents the room as
wings beat, each wing enough
for one heart, one day. You’d open a window out
of courtesy but it’s a grey day and the bird shines
better under your small light. Still the wings
beat, a flutter your throat echoes as one eye observes
you, wondering what you’ve got planned.

It might seem odd, but this is one of my train poems, written on the trip from Montreal to Schenectady as we passed Lake Champlain, a long ice-skinned lake covered with birds, the surface a tracery of their footprints. I wrote several other poems too, during the length of that narrow water, but this is the first one to be finished. Its inspiration comes from the sight of a feather falling, yes, but also from the memory of a pigeon that flew down a friend’s fireplace chimney when we were visiting one day. Judy showed great cleverness in catching the pigeon with a towel and releasing it outside but that’s not where the poem decided to go.

As happens so often with memory in poetry, it slips sideways, obeying its own truth, its own inner logic, especially through various drafts and edits.

Here’s another draft:

Looking for the Way Out

The bird in the kitchen slides a feather in
your yoghurt bowl, black depths layered with
the ocean’s green iridescence, each tip
its own evening dress, its own hat
trick party, beside the purple
grapes floating in a small sea of
rind-flecked white. Orange scents the room as
wings beat, each one enough
for one heart, one day. You’d open a window out
of courtesy but the sky is weighed down
by clouds and the bird shines better under
your small light. Still the wings
beat, a flutter your throat echoes
as one eye observes you, wondering
what you’ve got planned. You measure a towel
with your eyes, a soft one, bearing the imprint
of autumn’s leaves, a suitable nest to line
a box. But what do you know?

The work this poem mostly required was of expansion. It started as a short image with a couple of lines I really loved that I then had to build on, editing the new additions as I went. You can see one of my experiments above, “each tip/its own evening dress, its own hat/trick party”. It was hard to hit delete on those lines. They work in and of themselves. The problem is, they don’t work well with what followed so, as always, the poem wins over my own desires. The same happened with several versions of the ending, until I got one I was finally happy with.

By the way, you’ll notice I’ve ended many lines with a preposition, something I almost never do. I did try arranging the poem in different formats, but this is the one that creates the insistent movement forward the poem requires.

Current Version:

Waiting for Wings

The bird in the kitchen slides a feather in
your yoghurt bowl, black depths layered with
the ocean’s green iridescence beside
the purple grapes floating in a small sea of
rind-flecked white. Orange scents the room as
wings beat, each one enough
for one heart, one day. You’d open a window out
of courtesy but the sky is weighed down by
clouds and the bird shines better under
your small light. Still the wings
beat, a flutter your throat echoes as
one eye observes you, wondering what
you’ve got planned. You think towel, measure it
with your eyes, a soft nest to line a
box, bearing the imprint of
autumn’s leaves, perhaps a suitable
home. But what would you know? You of
the hollow bones bearing the weight of
supper’s flesh, each meal a girdle the
bird doesn’t have to understand. You’d rather
have wings to lift you to the sun, wings made of
the softness of feathers plus
sharp pinions to set you free.