A Trail of One's Own

It has been said that poetry is to writing what jazz is to music. While there is some truth to that axiom, there is, obviously, more to writing poetry than syncopation and dissonance. That is not to say jazz is less difficult or less important in meeting a creative need. Just that, in my mind, it has less dimension and does not have the capacity to express the richness of our human experience that poetry has, or more precisely can have. There are as many reasons for writing poetry as there are poems being written. There is, in all of us, an innate need to express ourselves in some way, create a landscape of one's own making in which we can journey beyond the boundaries of our everyday lives.

Poetry, to me, can be divided into two groups, one no less important than the other in purpose and effect. The first is poetry written as an emotional outlet: a catharsis; written without regard to revision or craft; of the moment; written to elicit an immediate response or to treasure privately words that can not or should not be spoken.

The second group is poetry in pursuit of craft: words written that become more than the sum total of the work. This poetry is the end result of shaping and editing. The act of writing is the catharsis, the end result often anti-climatic. As in any art process, the fun, the meaning is in the process itself.

William Stafford, in his preface to "My Name is William Tell", addresses his view of the journey the craft-minded poet must take:

Doing art takes a kind of sniffing along, being steadfastly available to the signals emerging from encounters with the material of the art - the touches, sounds, balancings, phrasings - and the sequential and accumulating results of such encounters. To look up from the sniffing to find a critic's approval or a public's taste, is to forsake the trail. And that trail is one-person wide...art is absolutely individual in a non-forensic but utterly unyielding way.

It is not enough to say "I write because I can", but rather "I write well because I must."

There are many approaches to crafting a poem - basic rules, guidelines that have been established by experienced writers that one follows. However, what makes poetry, as in any art form, exciting and challenging is to learn how to bend the rules and create one's own personal voice, one's own personal view of the universal landscape and blazing one's own poetic trail. In future articles, I'll explore some methods I use in writing and revising my poetry. I'm still learning, still looking for that perfect poem, still sniffing along this incredible pen and paper landscape.