Category: poetry

As so many writers do, I’ve been letting the perfect get in the way of the good when it comes to these dispatches. I thought it would be a simple matter to re-purpose some of the prose that I sent along with my monthly packets, but the work involved in creating the packets (along with all of my less writerly responsibilities) makes even that relatively easy task more difficult than anticipated. I’m sure I’ll share that work at a later point. But for right now, let me discuss a thorny problem I’ve been having when it comes to my own poems — a craft element, as one would call it in the creative-writing MFA world.

The great problem I’m working on this month is the use of nonlinear time in a single poem — how to transition from one scene to another and to another or back to the first while making the poem feel all of a piece. There’s a lot of talk about keeping the reader in the “moment” of the poem, so this feels like an advanced technique to me, and one that I really want to master.

I did a lot of hunting for poems that use this particular technique and finally had to resort to crowdsourcing (thank God/dess for one particular Facebook community of women poets) to find relevant poems. So far, most of my work this packet has been of the thinking, reading, and researching variety, so it’s a relief to have at least half of one craft annotation finished. I’m trying not to think about the relatively short time remaining before the entire thing is due. As Anne Lamott would say, you do it bird by bird.

Here’s a listing of the poems I’ve found so far, with links where appropriate and bibliographical references where not:

• “Shirt,” by Robert Pinksy: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47696
• “Bike Ride with Older Boys,” by Laura Kasischke: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2005%2F10%2F01
• “Song of Napalm,” by Bruce Weigl: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42752
• “Brown Refrigerator,” by Bruce Barot: http://www.versedaily.org/2012/brownrefrigerator.shtml
• “My Mother Turns Ninety,” by Wendy Mnookin. From her newest book, Dinner with Emerson. Tiger Bark Press, 2016.

So far, the key seems to be anchoring the work in one particular image or phrase, especially by beginning and ending with it. While I’ve been aware of Robert Pinksy’s work since I moved to Boston 16 years ago, it wasn’t until I read “Shirt” that I became aware of the depth of his own craft. This poem in particular swings back and forth from the moment of putting on a shirt to all the implications of the object itself — stitched together most appropriate with the poetic technique of cataloging and the metric iambs he uses in his lists.

Do you know of a particular poem that also deals with nonlinear time?

Two clock faces photo credit Ron Kroetz via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0