Writing poems in a series

It's coming soon…

...and spaces are still available.

I'm teaching a class on Writing Poems in a Series at Richard Hugo House, November 13, 1:00-5:00 PM.

(It's my favorite way to write—a good way to avoid the blank page for as long as possible.)

Here is the official description:

Writing Poems in a Series

How do you follow that great idea—that fabulous first poem—for an entire book? Do you ever get an intriguing idea and then wonder how you'll keep it going? In this class, we'll discuss different ways to explore a theme and its variations through images, narrative and voice. We’ll read examples of how other poets—including Louise Gluck, Carolyn Forche and Oliver de la Paz—extend themes and weave multiple themes, and we'll write through some exercises to help unearth those extensions, to explore and expand our basic idea while maintaining a connecting thread through each of the poems.

Truth: I'm lazy, so I love already having a direction when I sit down to write. And that's why I love creating poems in a series.

I hope to see you then and there.

Poems in a series

Over on Jeannine Blogs, Jeannine Hall Gailey talks about, and asks about, writing poems in a series.

This is a favorite subject of mine, and here is the response that I posted:

Thanks for bringing this up. (I sent my essay on it in to P&W, although that's a long shot.)

I've realized that most of my poems that I'm working on right now are thematic but not actually a series (no necessary ordering). And right now I'm having trouble finding a solid rhythm in any of my projects, which is uncomfortable for me. Even when I'm coming up with some intriguing one-off ideas, it's still uncomfortable.

For fitting those one-offs into a collection, I've heard a few ideas to try: Find the thread that holds them together (chances are there is some overarching abstract idea that each of these poems is expressing in a different way). Then you can retitle the poems to fit your theme, or you can divide the poems into sections and use the section titles to bring in the theme. Okay, I'm out of ideas for now.

Finally, I proposed a session on writing poems in a series to Winter Wheat, and the response was positive. So this is even more on my mind than usual.

Hunting the wild series

That's what I'll be talking about during the Writer's Craft part of this Thursday's It's About Time Writers Reading Series.

Interested? Here are the details:

Thursday, February 12
6:o0 PM - 7:45 PM

Ballard Public Library
5614 22nd Ave. N.W.
Seattle , WA 98107
206-684-4089

The evening's featured readers are Elizabeth Austin, Sherry Reniker, and Jack Remick.

Plus, there's an open mike, so bring your poems.

All in one

I like to work on poems in a series.

The other day, I started a free write and I immediately thought about how cool it would be to write a series.

Then I wondered whether that would be diluting my efforts, diluting the poem. If I set out to write six or twelve or forty poems about a subject, am I spreading my idea too thin? What if, instead, I put all the energy and effort and time that I would give to a series on this one poem?

The anxiety is that I will have a whole lot of poems that are completely unrelated to one another and I will never be able to pull them together into a book manuscript. That would be a bummer. But there's a chance that they would be stronger poems. (They might even get published.) That seems like a fair trade. Who knows? Maybe some of those poems will still grow into a series. The point, for me, is not to plan it that way.

So I'll try to stop working so far into the future.

How about you? How do you think about a poem when you begin? How do you think about a project?

Direction!

Yesterday, I finished reading Vita Nova by Glück and started to read A Sweetness Rising by Roberta Spear. The juxtaposition of the two set off a little spark and gave me my next idea.

In an earlier post on Corn Shake, Ms. Nez spoke of having a direction (actually, I think she said DIRECTION!). I love that idea. I usually think in terms of a series or a theme—each of which seems a little more buttoned down or sewn up.

The concept of a direction seems more open and encompassing. It can broaden and include more, similar to the different angles or voices in Glück's The Wild Iris and even similar to what I was trying to accomplish in my manuscript The Body Makes a Plot.

So I'm excited! The work I'm thinking of will be related in subtext I think to the Camargue poems but more personal, more rooted in my own experience. Now I just want to let it wander, explore it, play with it the way our new kitten plays with his favorite toy. I'm just happy to have my next direction.

I think I've asked this before, but I'll risk repetition: How do you approach a new project? How do you start?

Poems in a series

I've been reading through more of Louise Glück's work, first Ararat, then The Wild Iris, Meadowlands, and now I'm starting Vita Nova. I admit I'm not reading as closely or carefully as I would like—that's a skill I'm still trying to build.

But I think I shall have to come back to The Wild Iris—even more than the others, it begs multiple readings. I'm intrigued with what she has done—and the way that she has extended it to a full-length book.

First, she has multiple conversations and angles going on, all focused around a central theme (Eden). In the book (if I'm reading this right), plants address people, and people address each other, and the sky addresses God. Sometimes, God (if I'm reading this right) addresses the reader, or the people. Interleaved between these poems are vignettes between members of Glück's family, as well as several poems titled "Matins" and several more titled "Vespers." At the same time, the book moves through the year—through spring and summer to Autumn.

I've struggled with writing full-length works. In my own one full-length manuscript, I have a collection of poems about Pandora, and then other poems mixed in, but they relate more in tone or in general idea (middle age!) than in actual theme. Chapbooks are a more natural length for me, and I'm impressed with the focus that Glück maintains, especially in this book.

I admit that I'm not entirely comfortable with Glück's voice (and here maybe I'm mixing in impressions from Meadowlands). Her poems are taut, or fraught, with a ferocious longing, all contained in an intellectual discourse. Generally, I prefer a little less discourse and more imagery. (Startle me!) But I'm intrigued and continue to believe that this work has much to teach me.

Have you written a full-length manuscript completely centered on one theme? How did you maintain the theme for that many poems without losing energy or focus? How did you vary the poems, vary the theme without losing it?



P.S. In this morning's Seattle P.I.: a nice write-up of Open Books.

True confession

I think I'm starting to spend more time writing for this weblog than I am spending on poems. As you can tell, even that isn't very much time.

(I do tend to nag at me.)

Yesterday, for no apparent reason, I thought about a hooked rug that I started in seventh grade. Note that I said started.

My mom helped me buy the backing and skeins of yarn and the tricky little hook with the wooden handle, and I used a piece of cardboard backing from a package of rick-rack to wrap the yarn around and then cut along the edge so that I would have little pieces of equal length, and I drew my design and started to hook the yarn through the backing. When finished, the rug would have a bright orange background (think: '70s) and a yellow sun with blue eyes and a big smile.

I worked and hooked and worked and hooked and went through a lot of yarn and eventually grew tired and lost interest and that rug was not finished. Years later, my mother thought she'd take it up and get it done (she is a noble woman).

Long story, short conclusion: I do have a habit of leaving projects left undone—even in poetry. I'm thinking about my sharecropper poems, which have been languishing for a while now. And I'm concerned that my Camargue poems may reach the same fate.

That brings up the question: When is a series done?

It needs that emotional arc, and I suspect that I'm also looking for a narrative arc. Somehow, the series needs to finish the story that I'm telling. And plot has never been my strong suit.

Writing your way out of the end of a poem is one thing. But how do you write your way out of the middle of a series?

And, to bring up another subject, how do the poems in the series stand on their own? Or do they need to?

Staying in character?

Continuing this idea of poems in a series, I realized that I enjoy writing in character—giving each person in my made-up place his or her own voice. At least, I hope they read as different voices.

But while trying to find the voice of that character, I feel that I start to even out. I might think of a really great image—but syntactically, it doesn't fit the rest of the poem. It doesn't fit the character. Or maybe I'm expecting my people to be too ordinary?

How do you stay original and stay in character?

But seriously,

I've been working on my Camargue series—slowly—and I was thinking the other day about process: how different this process is from that of the last series of poems that I wrote.

In the first series, I wanted some of the themes and images to weave throughout the series. I started with a bunch of free writes and then moved lines and groups of lines around until I felt like I had sections that could be poems.

The Camargue series, and the process of writing it, is much more narrative—even if it isn't literally linear. I'm starting the poems one at a time and working on them as individuals—and I'm finding that it's much easier to get stuck.

(What do I write about now? Where is this series, this story, going?)

How do you work on a series of poems? What is your process? How does it change?

Emotional arc

Yesterday I rode my bike across the I-90 bridge to work and back. With a minor detour (missed a turn), it was a 34-mile round trip. That was a physical arc—and this morning I'm really on the downhill side.

Today I'm going to do a reduced bike commute and ride most of the way on the bus, which means I get to read. Novel or poems or Poets & Writers? Although I love the poems, I lean toward the novel—and why is that? Again I ask whether I should try writing fiction again?

Instead, I'm working on these Camargue poems, which are really like little interlinked character studies. It's another series in which I'm not sure the poems, and their characters, will be able to stand alone. But I realize that it's my own way of writing stories.

I fail at writing fiction because I'm missing the plot genes. I'm convinced: It's a DNA issue. But I'm thinking that maybe in these little poetry links I can replace a plot with an emotional arc—a concept that Lana Hechtman Ayers recently introduced me to. She's good at seeing the emotional arcs. I'm not, so that's another thing to work on.

When you're pulling together a collection of poems, or when you're working on a series of poems, do you look for an emotional arc?

Intermezzo

I finished Brigitte Byrd's Fence Above the Sea and was so inspired that I'm trying to write a similar work—inspired by, not the same. Usually, I am wary of repetition, and I avoid using the same word twice in a poem and even very many times in the same group of poems.

But I've been experimenting with repetition more lately (Go ahead, use "blue" twice in the same stanza). With this project, I'm working on weaving some of the same words and, more important, the same motifs, throughout a set of poems—repetition without redundancy.

I also want to weave in phrases of Italian (Byrd knits in bits of French). Because I don't speak Italian, I'm reading Italian poets to pick up phrases (quotes as opposed to plagiarism).

It could end up as one big derivative piece, but it's a challenging project. Because I want all the poems to interconnect in theme and language, I feel like I can't be done with one of them until I'm done with all of them.

In the meantime, it's keeping me busy.

How do you tackle big projects?