Sound and sense

In the last post, I talked about Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town and getting off the triggering subject. While I was rereading that section of the book, I came across the following:

"The poet's relation to the triggering subject should never be as strong as (must be weaker than) his relation to his words. The words should not serve the subject. The subject should serve the words."

I think Mr. Hugo is continuing to talk about the triggering subject, not that next surprising place the poem takes you. And, because he goes on to say, "This may mean violating the facts," I think he really means that the words should not serve the facts. If the house is yellow, you can make it blue.

But it made me think about that relationship between subject and words—subject as essence, not necessarily narrative. I don't think that one serves the other, or the other way around. Rather, I think of them as two Argentine tango dancers, wound into one another, seeming to trade the lead in a conversation, a fluid give and take, a partnership.

The poem is a dance.

First one thing, and then another

I was listening to Kathleen Flenniken read at Benaroya Hall the other night, and I was struck by the way she moves from one subject to the next—how her poem grows from one subject into something new and yet not unfamiliar, not out of the blue. You can hear and feel the connection and the transition.

It made me think of Richard Hugo's advice in The Triggering Town. He talks about the triggering subject and suggests starting with it and then getting off it as soon as possible (before you run out of things to say, as he points out).

The trick, for me, is getting off that first subject and opening myself up to what can become next, what needs to become next.

That movement, that seemingly easy and yet powerful transition, was again brought to my attention in today's poem on the Poetry Daily website. Highly recommended.

A poem for November

I always try to read this Richard Hugo poem on the first of November. It seemed like a good poem to memorize this month.

Skykomish River Running


Aware that summer baked the water clear,
today I came to see a fleet of trout.
But as I wade the salmon limp away,
their dorsal fins like gravestones in the air,
on their sides the red that kills the leaves.
Only sun can beat a stream this thin.
The river Sky is humming in my ear.

Where this river empties in the sea,
trout are waiting for September rain
to sting their thirst alive. If they speed
upstream behind the kings and eat the eggs
the silvers lay, I’ll pound the drum for rain.
But sunlight drums, the river is the same,
running like old water in my ear.

I will cultivate the trout, teach their fins
to wave in water like the legs of girls
tormented black in pools. I will swim a
week to be a witness to the spawning,
be a trout, eat the eggs of salmon—
anything to live until the trout and rain
are running in the river in my ear.

The river Sky is running in my hair.
I am floating past the troutless pools
learning water is the easy way to go.
I will reach the sea before December
when the Sky is turning gray and wild
and rolling heavy from the east to say
late autumn was an Oriental child.

—Richard Hugo