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having his or her child taken away. You might have read William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice or seen the film; such a scene is at the heart of it (interestingly, the main character is not Jewish, but Catholic). Norman Dubie wrote a stunning poem in the voice of a black woman slave who escapes to the north ("The Negress: Her Monologue of Dark and Light"), and it convincingly and com- pellingly portrays her physical and emotional journey. Sharon Olds has written of starvation, civil rights, suicide, abandoned babies without herself living through drought, risking lynching, or otherwise physically participating in those events. The imagination is free to fol- low whatever subject matter it finds compelling. To say otherwise that, say, a man can't speak as a woman, or an African-American as a Polish Jew, or a lesbian mother as Don Juan is to impoverish us all. You may want to bear witness to your own experience, but try not to define that experience too narrowly. 72 THE POET'S COMPANION IDEAS FOR WRITING 1. What issues in the world concern you? Write a rant; be as rhetor- ical as you like, get up on your soapbox and scream. Once that's out of your system, you're ready to begin a poem. Explore a large issue racism, sexism, violence, war, vanishing wildlife. Find out how and where that issue enters your life, intersects with it. Make it personal: the story in the newspaper on your kitchen table, next to the plate of eggs; the homeless person sitting next to the Coke machine outside the grocery store; a walk in the woods; a remembered incident from childhood. 2. The poet James Merrill wrote, "we understand history through the family around the table." In what ways does your own family story overlap with the story of others an ethnic group, a histori- cal event, a social issue? Write a poem about someone in your family and how his or her story is related to history. 3. Take a newspaper account of an incident -a riot, an assassina- tion, a bombing and imagine that you are one of the partici- pants. Rewrite the account as a first-person poem, using some of the details from the account. 4. Objects have histories, too. Take an object and research its social history; where did it come from? How was it used, developed, made? What groups of people used it, misused it? Write a poem talking about what you've found. A wonderful poem you should look at is Robert Pinsky's "Shirt" in his book The Want Bone. 5. Imagine someone who lives in another part of the world under very different economic and political circumstances. Have that person talk about your life in America from his or her perspec- tive. You can also do this exercise by imagining someone else in America, but of a different class, race, and so forth. 6. Everyone of a certain age remembers where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Think about where you were when some major event occurred; write a poem that draws a par- allel between something in your life and the event. Witnessing 75 7. What communities of people do you identify with and feel you belong to? Write a poem from the voice of this collective "we," talking about your troubles, your failings, celebrating your strengths. 8. In what ways do you feel oppressed? Privileged? Choose an object you own that seems to embody that oppression and/or privilege, and write a poem about it. It could be anything: a car, a lipstick, a tie, a photograph. 9. Write a poem that is a conversation between you and a politi- cally powerful figure from any moment in history. The person can be living or dead; you must have a question you want to ask this person, and ask it in the poem. Let the person answer the question, too; make it a true conversation. 10. Remember John Lennon's "Imagine"? What would your ideal world look like? Write a poem that begins, "Imagine . . . " and let yourself dream. Remember, though, that you'll need to stay specific "Imagine no war" sounds great in a song, but won't cut it as poetry. How would "no war" look in concrete terms? Offer an alternative vision. You don't need to cover everything that's wrong in the world; choose one thing, to start. Poetry of Place When we imagine the birch trees and wooded hills of New England, we remember the poems of Robert Frost and Donald Hall. We can't think of the poetry of Garrett Hongo or Cathy Song without envi- sioning the hibiscus flowers and volcanoes of Hawaii. The name Philip Levine calls up Detroit, its car factories, its black clouds and slick rivers. When we hear the word "landscape," we tend to think of poems [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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