The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 11 September 2009

Writer's Digest, October 2008, pages 67 and 68, have an article by Dorianne Laux on poetry with the title, "The Leap." There's an exercise at the end that I will quote, but let me summarize the article first.

Dorianne points out that Spanish poetry often uses a leap into apparently unrelated imaginary material (I was reminded of the magical realism genre, but let's ignore that for the moment). A number of Spanish poets have used this technique, and in the 1960s it was introduced to America by the deep image poets. So there are number of examples of "the imaginative leap" in contemporary poetry.

Next there is an example of such a poem by Ellen Bass. "If You Knew" starts with the simple question, "what if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone?" And then it goes into some examples of what you might do if you knew that someone would die soon after you touched them. The final verse then reads:

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

"If You Knew" by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line, Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

A simple if somewhat unusual question, some consideration of what you might do, and then the fantastic metaphor.

There's another example, a modern-day poetic fable by Joseph Millar, with the title, "Sole Custody." It seems to be a parent and child talking about life, and then swerves into a simile, of sailors and ships and oceans.

OK? So that's the leap, mixing a strong fantastic image or metaphor into ordinary life.

And here's the exercise...

Try a Leap

"Write an imaginative poem where you knew you ask a theoretical question and extend it for as many lines as you can. Choose your examples from different areas of life so that you look at the question from a variety of angles or viewpoints. You could also tell a brief story taken from everyday life wherein you describe many of the various physical particulars and touch on one or two emotional moments.

"From one of these two foundations, allow yourself to leap into metaphor; find an image or a series of images that can contain and expand your extended ruminations.

"This exercise can also be used to resolve and revise an existing poem you feel hasn't yet attained its fullness and power. It may not be easy to find your metaphor at first. Don't be afraid to try anything: a box, a wave, a leaf.... look at your own life and don't rule anything out.

"Another approach might be to begin with the metaphor and find the context for it later. ...

[Skip]

"You might begin by describing an extended action such as weeding the yard, sweeping the porch, or dressing for work. After you've described your actions in minute detail, take a look and see how this description could be a metaphor for something else. Make that the title of the poem"

All right? Three different formats, really, each focusing on using an imaginative metaphor. One poses the question, consider some mundane examples, and then turns fantastic. Another simply considers something about life, and adds the fantastic to it. And the third... what if our mundane life is the fantastic?

Go ahead. A heaping cup of ordinary, and a teaspoon of fantasy. Reminds me a little bit of Peter Pan sprinkling fairy dust. You can fly!

Write?