-POETRY POINTERS - THE FORMS OF POETRY -

POETRY AS MUSIC, MUSIC AS POETRY
I have often told poets privately that they can increase the quality of their work in short order by doing several things that do not involve writing poetry. One of them is to listen to music-- specifically music that captures the dynamics inherent in all fine poetry, from Shakespeare to Keats, Eliot to Pinsky. This dynamic is one of an essential sound and rhythm-- something that surpasses the rule of any fixed form or preordained notion of what poetry is.

The fact is, you could hear such poetry, good poetry read in another language, and still know that it is poetry. What you are hearing is the "music"-- and it IS music, just as if you were listening to the scored patterns of Mozart, Bach, and Duke Ellington, or the improvisation of Charlie Parker and Ravi Shankar. The arrangement of sounds and their flow, first in score, second in performance, transcends the normal aspects of rhetoric or "story." Like the visceral impact of painting, music hits in the gut, or upon some super-sense, without further interpretation being necessary. Poetry is another of these arts-- and it is this that makes it different from prose. True, the semantic (meaning) aspect of poetry is shared with prose in many instances-- but it is the music of poetry that truly sets it apart. Unfortunately, many poets never get that musical consciousness into their work. As a result, their work might seem dry, rote, formulaic. Rather than pull one's hair out TRYING to instill that music through mere changing of forms, or stressing a certain sound device like rhyme or alliteration, I tell a poet to do the following:

Go to the store. Bring 25 dollars or so. Buy a very well-played set of Chopin's Nocturnes. Play them 100 times, sometimes listening intently, sometimes as background. Do this over a period of months. The poet (and poems) will begin to improve. Lines will become more elastic, rather than stiff (probably more enjambment will show up.) Meter will become more flexible. (No straight, metronomic iambs anymore.) Assonance and consonance will be less forced, but probably more prevalent, as tone colors come out in the form of intermingling vowels and consonants. Word choices will improve. Overall structure, beginning, middle, end, will become smoother, with the poet viewing an entire poetic architecture, rather than struggling to stack line on top of line. Why solo piano music? Why Chopin? Why the nocturnes?

While many types of music could be inspirational in this regard, solo piano lends itself perhaps the best as equivalent to poetic structure. The clear notes can equal words, the chords phrases, the scales or chord sequences can equal lines (or actually, sentences), entire melodic/harmonic strains the stanzas, and so forth. It need not be an exact equivalent, but the use of piano, with its maximal octave range and clear intonation seems the best starting point. (Leonard Bernstein, in fact, used this sort of direct comparison in discussing "musical linguistics" in his famous Norton Lectures, and the piano was his demonstration instrument.) Since melody is so important, and Chopin was arguably the world's most innovative melodist, his work is natural to explore. And nowhere does one find such a combination of surface simplicity and fathomless depth-- as well as full ranges of loud/soft, fast/slow, light/dark dynamics as in the 19 nocturnes of Chopin. They are all different, exploring just about all the keys of the scale, and many moods-- including moods that shift in mid-piece.

Most important when listening (and something you can't grasp as easily looking at the score) is the rubato, or stretching of the rhythm as written. This is done as part of the performance interpretation of just about any piece of classical music, and is especially prominent in solo renderings of classical works. The "pulling" that places an accent just before, or just after when it is expected, the slowing down and speeding up, this pulls the listener along, keeping him or her slightly off balance and ever attentive. A fine poet will write such elasticity into his or her work, and emphasize it in live reading.

In any event, I dare you to invest 25 dollars in your poetic career and buy the Chopin Nocturnes. Listen to them in the car, at home, in front of you, in the background, even while you sleep. Play them 100 times. Really, 100 times. And buy a good version-- since the nocturnes can be easily badly played, just as poetry can be badly recited. The versions I would recommend are: Artur Rubinstein on BMG, Claudio Arrau on Philips, or Maria-Joao Pires on Deutsche Grammophon. Of these, Rubinstein I would say is first choice. (All are excellent, but slightly different from each other--the overall speeds and that rubato thing, especially.)

After you listen to these, and get what I've been saying about all this, you may want to try Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas. They are quite marvelous too, and the next logical step after Chopin. Bach's preludes (really any of his keyboard music), Mozart's piano concertos (specifically the piano parts), or Beethoven's piano sonatas are also fertile ground. You may pick up different things from each. But try the Chopin first.

Do what I tell you on this. No matter how good a poet you may be at this time, or think you are, you will thank me for this advice.

Chopin's Nocturnes. Yes! Do it now.

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PIECING IT TOGETHER: THE "CHESS" OF POETRY
This time, another allegory and possible direction for creating fine poetry, outside of its writing. To develop poems of quality, the poet becomes immersed in a simultaneous offensive and defensive struggle as required in the game of chess. Chess, like poetry is an exercise in creativity, study, intuition, rules and patterns of progress. A poem must have a clear beginning, middle, and end, one building to the next, inexorably. Anyone who plays decent chess knows it is the same there. Like poetry, there must be a grand strategy, but also adept tactics as the "game" progresses to its conclusion. And like chess, one can study hundreds of games, one's own and others, including those of the great masters, learn from each, and yet still come up with an individual style and line that leads to a unique conclusion in every game played. For the poet, who is the opponent? Like Bobby Fischer playing many boards in simultaneous exhibitions, there can be many opponents-- rules, time/length, information, expectation and understanding, logic, all manner of problems, not the least of which is the confidence and preparedness of oneself. To win consistently, a poet must be ready to confront them all.

Does the poet have or at any moment retain the knowledge of ALL the rules and possible moves of the game, and their intricacies? Does he or she have not only the basic knowledge to start a game, but also knowledge in patterns of attack and defense, combined with the various lines and alterations of those lines that can move a flow of the game in a different direction, caused by either a brilliant inspiration on the part of the poet, or the threat of a particular obstacle that falls in the path?

The rules and logics are myriad. In poetry, beyond basic grammar and usage, comes retention of an available vocabulary that grows with experience of actual use in speech, not just out of a dictionary. What is OK to use, and when? Does one have three word choices there, or thirty-three? Whatever the number claimed, how many are really appropriate words, or the right definition for the context? And which one is perfect? Are the words or idioms overused, or archaic? Does the poet use a "big" word when a small one will do? Will the choice destroy a line, kill momentum, dictate disaster? If the poet is playing a particular mode, is he or she attacking blindly, to succeed or fail in a flash, or is the poet plodding along, in a pedestrian and predictable manner, word by word, line by line? Can the poet/player stay clear of such potenitally hazardous extremes, win the center of the board, and so assure victory?

There is so much there. For instance, if the poet writes a narrative, or story-based poem, will he or she be drawn into using an often weak-sounding past tense, face padded lines to feed details that narrative, get strangled in too-predictable feet or fearfully sate the dictates of the meter at the expense of clarity? Will the poet be so careful and fussy as to turn the poem into prose? Will the poet know how to bring the poem to its logical conclusion, and make the moves at the latter part, the endgame, that will force the great finish, the mate? Will the poet push the poem to such unecessary length that he bores the reader, ending the game at a draw? Or will a fragmented, lyric free verse be too obtuse, too difficult to follow, and so do the same? Finally, will the poet use his or her ego to move ahead, to take chances, and yet control that ego so as not to overlook a killer mistake? Everywhere, the poet, as the player, struggles with the moves, the lines, the history of an exalted game.

There is much drama in a chess match, and just as much drama (or there should be) in the writing of a poem. Think about that as you write. As the great chess player plans and assesses his or her pattern of play, as well as an opponent's, ten or twelve moves ahead, so must the poet build the poem-- not just word by word, not even line by line, but section by section, seeing a wider and wider scope of the gameboard and its pieces if success is to be gained. And the greater the ambition of the construction, in this case of recurring metaphors or sound patterns, the more difficult the obstacles, the more numerous the opponents. And all that said, is there still room for slapdash flair, for a swashbuckling defiance of convention? Yes, there is-- but only if the poet is so well grounded in craft, in the rules of the language, and what sonic and rhythmic devices require, that he can carefully break those rules without ruin. In the end, that's what it's all about, what we all strive for. It is that transcendent capability that separates a Fischer, Tal, or Alekhine from the pack, just as its separates a Keats, a Yeats, or a Williams the same.

This is a noble thing we do, writing poetry. And the funny thing is, beginner or grandmaster, we have the same tools or pieces, the same board, the same independent creativity, the same capacity for work. At least, all that potential is there in every one of us. With study, and practice, with trial and error, with experience and encouragement of others who have travelled the ranks and files, who've seen seemingly every square and permutation of the board, we write poetry. And we have our kindred among the chess players of this world, who toil in a quiet, raging logic, a beautiful calculated sort of madness, playing a game that is more than a game, just as we do.

Chess and poetry go together. I play the annotated games of Fischer out on a chessboard just as I read Auden or Yeats, or, as I wrote about last time, listen to the nocturnes of Chopin. All these sources are instructive, all are inspirational. Play them, study them, learn from them. They are, as I have struggled to articulate here, symbiotic. Go ahead, set up the pieces, scan the board--employ both mind and intuition. Find five reasons why you used that word, that line, that stanza, just as the chess player has five reasons why he moved that particular piece--even if those five reasons popped up just as he or she moved the piece, driven by experience, by intuition, by wild ironies, and love.

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