Napa Poetry Conference: Robert Pinsky workshop

Robert Pinsky  asks: What would you like to accomplish in the poem that you haven't written yet? Who is the reader? Where does the poem begin? Language  is social. When you write a poem, it's a social act though you're in the privacy of your own mind, there's somebody already in your mind.

Drama is the process of passing it on. The stories. Writing for the clan. Ethnicity, local information prop writing for all the people. I am. Perspective: where to write from to get the eclecticism, the areas of language that are exciting. How do you begin: with an image? The rhythm of a long line, a mood, a smell, a color, texture, moments of conversation?

Write for 10 minutes on what you want to achieve in a poem. Don't think

Listen for alliteration in your prose, it's probably the place where your feelings come alive. Look for words someone may want to repeat over, or savor it slowly and repeatedly.

Bad writers borrow, good writers steal.


MH:

I dreampt an odd phrase last night:
Take all the good lines that were ever written
and then divide them by all the good poems
that's the definition of the length of a line.

The poem I'd like to write is similar to Sharon Doubiago's Hard Country in that I want to be able to sustain the flow and the energy of a poem, the ordering that is so long and encompassing. Something that flows effortlessly, is sustained, doesn't bog down, or lose energy.

I write in series of loosely connected images. Like staring at an optical illusion of black and white squares and in between, the illusion of a red or green one appears. I want the reader to be able to imagine a line, or remember an image in between each of mine.

I want to involve the reader intimately like flashbacks, mini eternities. Yet I don't want the reader to get lost in thought. I want them to be guided by my images like guided fantasy or meditation. The danger is in losing the reader, or the energy of the poems.

Also in each line, I'd like to make startling compact transitions from one idea to another, a nonpredictable line. The roses at dawn bled coats of color into the sky. Dawn/flower/sky is too predictable. I'm looking for something more compact, more of a surprise to the reader, and to myself the writer.

If I were to fold the poem in half lengthwise how would it read? How much information to put in? How much shorthand to use? Private language?

Then there's the content. In the ease of driving long winding country roads, my mind follows multiple convoluted trails much faster than I could possibly ever write, or even speak. The synapses or, leaps of conscious thought interest me. Especially the spaces between thoughts.

What triggers an idea, or an image and the next? I want to capture all those thoughts that encompass so much of the world. Not just the new ideas I had in my mind, but more than the summation of of ideas. It's subduction.

I tend to write in spurts. There are weeks, even months in between where I have no tangible poems, and then one day I can't stand it any longer and it just pours out.

I want to write deceptively simple poems that end suddenly and the reader is left hungry for more. Something like Seamus Heaney's oyster poem— so much is encompassed in a handful of lines. I haven't even begun to mention context.

When I write, there is a poetic direction, a poetic driver—sometimes it's a runaway carriage. I'm not in control of my craft, though I try. My ideas are strong in natural imagery, but weak in order.

I want to be able to title poems the way Hemingway does: The Sun also Rises, the tongue of the ocean, these lines resonate.

7/27/1987
added 9/17
I cleaned this up, and Blogger stalled on the upload so I lost all my corrections and had to start anew.