How Did This Setting Get Me Into This Situation?

Sara Robinson

As we have learned, virtually anything can be a subject for a poem.

The poet Pablo Neruda, said that there were only eleven subjects. Now that is interesting especially since we also know he didn’t really provide the list of eleven (that I can find anyway). However, in her book, The Discovery of Poetry, Frances Mayes gives us her list of potentials, including “beginnings, memory, art, time,” etc. I submit these as they relate the most to the settings/situation topic discussed here.

There are numerous options for settings. What if we are next to a quiet stream? Nothing much happens, but then we see a water strider tiptoe across the water. Suddenly a large-mouth bass grabs it. All at once we have a situation and we can write about it. We could describe a natural setting, no conflicts, just words about how we feel one with nature. Or we can take this setting and let the situation become a metaphor for something larger in life, predator vs prey; now we are witnesses.

As poetry has evolved, so have types of poems appeared that especially describe particular settings. Types include pastoral (usually a rural landscape, maybe some sheep); aubade (usually about dawn, maybe a lover who leaves); carpe diem (where the setting is time); and ars poetica (where the poet writes about writing poetry, some situation). There are more but you get the idea.

I think a poem could have master settings and this takes me back to Neruda’s eleven subjects. I tend to think there are three “master subjects” for poets: Love, Death, and Themselves. Poets historically take these three, put them into a variety of situations and settings and then reveal and possibly resolved.

In Cesare Pavese’s poem, “Grappa in September,” this line that starts a stanza:

“This early, you see only women./… Then he ends with these two lines:

“steeping them to their depths in the soft air. The streets/ are like the women. They ripen by standing still.” (see Mayes’s book). Masterful!

I began my  creative writing career after retiring from industry. I would love to talk to readers about my writing and the memoir, as well as my short stories and poetry. My latest poetry book, Sometimes the Little Town, is based on the photography of Hobby Robinson. I have 3 other published poetry books and a memoir. I live in central Virginia and enjoy all the wonders that abound in the local area. Much of my writing focuses on these experiences as well as reflecting on how I am evolving as a poet and writer. In Fall 2014, one of my poems about my Jewish heritage appeared in Poetica Magazine. Looking for places to buy my books? 

Check out: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Solace 

Tension and Release in a Poem

Sara Robinson

We are living in a dynamic literary age where diversity is a significant driver in poetry writing and publishing. We have poets representing minorities (i.e. ethnic, LGBTQ, religious, immigrants, and others). These poets are winning prizes, gathering acclaim, and getting published by well-known presses. Their “voices” are getting wide attention, gathering crowds, and likely influencing the public discourse, not just on literature but society as a whole.

Why is that? And what does it mean for all of us? We need to think of poetry, more than ever, as “all-inclusive.” These practicing poets of today are clearly our future. What can we learn from their voices? For one thing, besides being fearless and experimental in their writing, they practice with great craft the use of “tension and release.” So, let us look at what this means and how best to employ it.

Using the first person POV is a revival of what once was considered obsolete. “I feel my pain, and I want you to feel it, too,” is a graphic introduction. The poet and novelist, Sherman Alexi, in his poem, “ How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” for the Poetry Foundation starts out by saying, “All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms./ Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food….”

Today the “I” is expanded further into the hot topics of race, sexuality, gender, and politics. These topics are the latest to bring us into inclusiveness of today’s social science. How then do we write powerful tension-invoking poetry that satisfies with a follow-up release? Does it need to be something we personally have experienced? We could start by listening and immersing ourselves into unfamiliar territories, maybe an aisle in Walmart, or outside a courthouse sitting on a bench listening as people leave, or go in.

How does release work? Using our language toolbox, we give the reader possible resolutions, connections, empathy, and tenderness. Here is an example:

How best to express the tragedy of a repressed group whose population has been reduced to single digit numbers than to describe weapons of destruction shooting flames and bullets outside a crumbling shaking building while inside same a middle-aged woman gently hums as she washes the hair of her blind and deaf ninety-year old mother.

Tension and release. Now you try it.

I began my creative writing career after retiring from industry. I would love to talk to readers about my writing and the memoir, as well as my short stories and poetry. My latest poetry book, Sometimes the Little Town, is based on the photography of Hobby Robinson. I have 3 other published poetry books and a memoir. I live in central Virginia and enjoy all the wonders that abound in the local area. Much of my writing focuses on these experiences as well as reflecting on how I am evolving as a poet and writer. In Fall 2014, one of my poems about my Jewish heritage appeared in Poetica Magazine. Looking for places to buy my books? Check out: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Solace 

 https://www.saramrobinson.com/ 

The Defense of Poetry

Sara Robinson  @facebook

Are we responsible for making poetry matter? How do we prove or defend the idea that poetry can make a difference? How will our lines influence society in general, our own lives, or even the conservation of nature? Do we use poetry to expose a morality of bad taste?

What about the use of hyperbole to create a defense of poetry? It could be noted that the use of extreme exaggeration, in a line, to make a point could risk overwhelming the entire poem. Or does the entire poem work as hyperbole?

How can we find a balance as part of our defense of poetry? Author Michael Robbins, in his new book, Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music (Simon & Schuster) stated, “No one has ever changed his life because of a poem or song…” Really?  Why do I find that hard to accept? On a personal note, a young woman heard me read my poem, “A Poem Written As Scars,” came up to me and said my poem changed her life. Later in the same book, [Robbins] also says, “There is no limit to what a poem can’t do…poetry makes all sorts of things happen.” These statements add to the confusion of how best to defend poetry.

Poets, since the beginning of the genre itself, have used its form to confront grief, describe horrors of war, starvation, and suicide. We have learned about the complexities of human lives through poetry. Witness Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. The tragedies of mental illness, for example, are laid bear with these and others. Poetry provides insight and intimacy without which we might not understand how precious life is.

Poetry has emboldened people to reveal mental turmoil, has given us the heartland of America, and has enlightened us.  Poetry may not give any one person everything or every answer. Humans are too individual for universal acceptance. But what would we have, if we didn’t have poetry?

I often say at readings, “While poetry is mostly fiction, it always states great truths.”

For many poetry is more accessible than philosophy and in this access people gain their sense of worth, even as why they are even here. When we read poetry about the wonders of nature, the sentiments of love, and the sadness of death, we share the experience with the writer. We also gain the sense of hope. Perhaps that one sense is the most important gift of poetry. Hope.

Poetry can be experienced alone or in public. Tea-sippers and whisky enthusiasts can appreciate poetry. When we share poetry at gatherings connections are formed that add to the value of the human experience.  Poetry can help us fall asleep or it can keep us awake and energized into action. We may not “binge-read” poetry, but I can show you books I could not put down until I finished. That’s another defense: poetry books are typically less than 100 pages, easier to complete at a sitting and easier to pick up for repeat readings. It is easier to carry a poetry book in one’s purse than a novel!

Even single lines can be poetry. How marvelous is that? Think about this line:

“I fix upon what would give me pleasure in my average moments…” (Marianne Moore)

When we read poetry in our average and spare moments, we can gain pleasure.

Who doesn’t love Mary Oliver? Here is a three line stanza from her poem, Landscape, that I believe is so powerful: “Every morning I walk like this around / the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart / ever close, I am as good as dead.” What an incredible validation of how our own personal openness can enrich our lives.

Louis Menand, in a review titled, “The Defense of Poetry,” for The New Yorker magazine, wrote, “When the going gets stressful, the stressed want poems.”

Amen to that.

 Author of Sometimes the Little Town (her fifth book and fourth poetry collection), is founder of Lonesome Mountain Pros(e) Writers’ Workshop, former UVA-OLLI instructor on Contemporary Poetry, and poetry columnist for Southern Writers’ Magazine. Published in journals and anthologies, she is a former Virginia Writers’ Club and Blue Ridge Writer’s Chapter officer.  Her most recent book, Needville has now been turned into a play.

Her website is www.saramrobinson.com