Friday 29 April 2022

The dangers of specifics and specifically the specifics of nature in poetry


Let us take, for example:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils...

This poem immediately demands the reader think about specifics - specifically specific ways of doing things, and daffodils.

What are the problems with that? 

Firstly, it prevents the reader exploring their own ideas of how, for example, to wander in a lonely manner, or what they might see when doing so.

If one instead said:

I wandered lonely as a wandering lonely thing

and:

A host of things you could see a host of

then the reader's imagination is allowed to run free inserting his or her own images as applicable to their own experience.

Even better:

I did something in the way I like doing it

and:

I could see what I wanted.

thus not restricting them to wandering, being lonely, or seeing too many things at once.

Secondly, the nature question. These nature specifics - and they appear in an awful lot of poems - also exclude those readers who do not have access to 'nature'.

The city dweller is lucky if they've ever seen a vale or hill, and their knowledge of daffodils is likely to be either of that circle of yellow planted by the council on the concrete roundabout where the turn-off for Tesco is, or the drooping yellow things they've taken out of the green bucket outside the petrol station as a last minute present for Aunty Nora. These daffs are not dancing in the breeze - they're gasping for air. 

So what is this poem supposed to mean to these people?

To sum up: such specifics limit the imagination of the reader and are also exclusive.

While I'm at it, may I suggest that poets are a bit too obsessed with loneliness, solitude, lying on couches, and being vacant and pensive. They should get out there, get some mates, and get a life. And if they can't be bothered to get off the couch (ok, fair enough), at least watch something decent on Netflix.

Sunday 10 April 2022

Villanellia

You thought that you would try the villanelle.

The sonnet form just didn't work for you.

The villanelle has caught you in its spell.


Your free form was... too free, so what the hell,

You thought that you would really turn the screw.

You thought that you would try the villanelle.


You confined yourself to your small writing cell.

You thought that it might take a day or two.

The villanelle has caught you in its spell.


You thought, at first, that it was going well.

You thought it couldn't be that hard to do.

You thought that you would try the villanelle.


The police were called because of the bad smell.

All your efforts had just made you start to stew.

The villanelle has caught you in its spell.


I'm afraid that it's a sorry tale I tell.

Dylan Thomas, Auden, Bishop, Plath, they knew.

You thought that you would try the villanelle.

But the villanelle's a bugger to do well.

Tuesday 5 April 2022

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