Hello all! We’re at Day 18 of NaPoWriMo. For all of you just joining us, welcome! And for those who’ve been here since the start, thanks for sticking with it!
NaPoWriMo: April is National Poetry Writing Month!
Today I am still doing a bit of clean-up after the holiday weekend, as well as significant time invested in my latest COVID neuroscience diary, so please forgive me for returning directly to the well that is The Practice of Poetry. The exercise I’m offering today is originally by Deborah Diggs, called “Block, Pillar, Slab, and Beam.” It’s found on pages 139-140.
“A poem is a small or large machine made of words.”
William Carlos Williams
Write a poem in which you literally build and/or take apart something for your reader. Focus your attention on constructing or deconstructing concretely your object, taking into account technical terms, instructions, perhaps even the source of your materials. The object you build or take apart may be small, like a bird feeder or a model plane, or it may be huge, like a house or a monument. Likewise you may treat this occupation very literally, as Elizabeth Bishop does in her poem, “The Monument,” or figuratively, as Carlos Drummond de Andrade does in his poem, “The Elephant,” a work that creates an otherworldly animal from scraps and garbage.
The purpose of this assignment is to help you take your mind off emotional content and invest it in a process. In fact, this assignment could also be expanded to include the very enactment of a process. That is, you could interpret your object by way of instructing your reader how to build or destroy it. In this case you might try a present tense, directional tone, as if you were writing an instruction manual. On the other hand, you might begin your poem in the past tense, chronicling a construction through memory. Then connect, as you write, narrative details of character and scene. What season was it when your father built the fallout shelter? What did the light look like, or the snow, or the dirt piles? This exercise will help you to understand that a poem proceeds, line by line, and is built, itself, of words, of a language full of things that resides against a horizon, a horizon that can focus and enhance the subject.
Originally I designed this assignment for my undergraduates, but I have used it myself many times. Some poems that might help you get started, besides the ones mentioned above, are Frost’s “Directive” and “The Woodpile,” along with John Ashbery’s “The Instruction Manual,” and Stanley Plumly’s “Hedgerows.” Note that the title of this assignment is taken from one of Wittgenstein’s language games in Philosophical Investigations. This, too, might make for some interesting reading.
Here are the poems referenced in the exercise. First, “The Monument,” by Elizabeth Bishop.
The Monument
Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.
Then on the topmost cube is set
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced with odd holes,
four-sided, stiff, ecclesiastical.
From it four thin, warped poles spring out,
(slanted like fishing-poles or flag-poles)
and from them jig-saw work hangs down,
four lines of vaguely whittled ornament
over the edges of the boxes
to the ground.
The monument is one-third set against
a sea; two-thirds against a sky.
The view is geared
(that is, the view's perspective)
so low there is no "far away,"
and we are far away within the view.
A sea of narrow, horizontal boards
lies out behind our lonely monument,
its long grains alternating right and left
like floor-boards-spotted, swarming-still,
and motionless. A sky runs parallel,
and it is palings, coarser than the sea's:
splintery sunlight and long-fibred clouds.
"Why does that strange sea make no sound?
Is it because we're far away?
Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor,
or in Mongolia?"
An ancient promontory,
an ancient principality whose artist-prince
might have wanted to build a monument
to mark a tomb or boundary, or make
a melancholy or romantic scene of it ...
"But that queer sea looks made of wood,
half-shining, like a driftwood sea.
And the sky looks wooden, grained with cloud.
It's like a stage-set; it is all so flat!
Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!
What is that?"
It is the monument.
"It's piled-up boxes,
outlined with shoddy fret-work, half-fallen off,
cracked and unpainted. It looks old."
-The strong sunlight, the wind from the sea,
all the conditions of its existence,
may have flaked off the paint, if ever it was painted,
and made it homelier than it was.
"Why did you bring me here to see it?
A temple of crates in cramped and crated scenery,
what can it prove?
I am tired of breathing this eroded air,
this dryness in which the monument is cracking."
It is an artifact
of wood. Wood holds together better
than sea or cloud or sand could by itself,
much better than real sea or sand or cloud.
It chose that way to grow and not to move.
The monument's an object, yet those decorations,
carelessly nailed, looking like nothing at all,
give it away as having life, and wishing;
wanting to be a monument, to cherish something.
The crudest scroll-work says "commemorate,"
while once each day the light goes around it
like a prowling animal,
or the rain falls on it, or the wind blows into it.
It may be solid, may be hollow.
The bones of the artist-prince may be inside
or far away on even drier soil.
But roughly but adequately it can shelter
what is within (which after all
cannot have been intended to be seen).
It is the beginning of a painting,
a piece of sculpture, or poem, or monument,
and all of wood. Watch it closely.
Next, let’s examine Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s “The Elephant”:
The Elephant
I create an elephant
of my scarce resources.
Some pieces of wood
taken of old furniture
might keep him straight.
And I fill him up with cotton,
silk and sweetness.
The glue will fast
his saggy ears.
The trunk curls
and it is the happiest part
of his architecture.
But there are also the tusks,
made of such a pure material
that I can not duplicate.
Such a white this richness
exposed in the circus
without loss or corruption.
And finally the eyes,
where is held
the most fluid and permanent
part of the elephant,
disconnected of every fraud.
Here, my poor elephant,
ready to leave
and search for friends
in a world already tired
that no longer believes in animals
and doubts things.
Here he is, puissant and
fragile mass, winnows himself
and moves slow
his sewed skin
where flowers of cloth
and clouds are allusions
to a more poetic world
where love retakes the natural forms.
There goes my elephant
through a crowded street,
but they do not want to see him
even not to laugh
at his tail, which might
leave him walking alone.
He is all grace, although
his legs are not of much help
and his big belly
threatens to fall off
at the slightest touch.
He shows with elegance
his minimal life,
and in town,
there is no soul willing
to take from that sensitive body
his fugacious image,
the clumsy steps,
yet hungry and touching.
But hungry for pathetic
beings and situations,
for encounters under the moonlight
in the deepest ocean,
under the roots of trees
or in the centre of the shells,
for lights that do not blind
as they shine through
the most thick trunks.
This step that goes
without crushing the plants
in the battle field,
searching for places,
secrets, episodes
not written in books,
which only the wind,
the leaves, the ants
recognize the style
while the men ignore it,
for they only dare to show themselves
under the peace of a curtain
to their tired eyelid.
And late in the night
my elephant returns,
returns tired,
the uncertain feet
melt in the dust.
He did not find
what he needed,
what we needed,
I and my elephant,
in which I love to disguise myself.
Exhausted of searching,
his engine falls down
as if it was a mere piece of paper.
The glue dissolves,
and all his inner material,
the forgiveness, the caress,
the feather, the cotton
spill over the carpet
like a dismembered myth.
Tomorrow I begin again.
Robert Frost comes next, with “Directive” and “The Wood-pile”:
Directive
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring and yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
Following that up, we have John Ashbery’s “The Instruction Manual”. Please view it over at The Poetry Foundation, because it has length not only vertically but also horizontally. I would want to preserve his line breaks, as long lines create their own effect.
(Ashbery is wonderful and if you haven’t yet encountered him, please check out his work!)
Lastly recommended is Stanley Plumly’s “Hedgerows”:
Hedgerows
How many names. Some trouble
or other would take me outside
up the town's soft hill, into the country,
on the road between them.
The haw, the interlocking bramble, the thorn,
head-high, higher, a corridor, black windows.
And everywhere the smell of sanicle
and tansy, the taste
of the judas elder, and somewhere
the weaver thrush that here they call mistle,
as in evergreen, because of the berries
I'd walk in the evening,
into the sun, the blue air almost cold,
wind like traffic, the paper flowering of the ox-eye
and the campion still white,
still lit, like spring.
I'd walk until my mind cleared,
with the clarity of morning, the dew transparent
to the green, even here, in another
country, in the dark,
the hedgework building and weaving
and building under both great wings of the night.
I'd have walked to the top of the next
hill, and the next, the stars
like town lights, coming on,
the next town whether Ash Mill or Rose Ash.
Then sometimes a car, sometimes a bird, a magpie,
gliding. This is voicelessness,
the still breath easing.
I think, for a moment, I wanted to die,
and that somehow the tangle
and bramble, the branch and flowering of the hedge
would take me in, torn, rendered down
to the apple or the red wound or the balm,
the green man, leaf and shred.
I think I wanted the richness, the thickness,
the whole dumb life gone to seed,
and the work to follow, the hedger with his tools,
ethering and cutting, wood and mind.
And later, in this life,
to come back as a pail made of elm
or broom straw of broom or the heartwood of the yew
for the bow, oak for the plow—
the bowl on the wild cherry of the table for the boy
who sits there, having come from the field
with his family, half hungry, half cold,
one more day of the harvest accounted,
yellowing, winnowing,
the boy lost in the thought
of the turning of the year and the dead father.
I hope these serve as good inspiration. Happy writing!
➡ IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
- National Poetry Writing Month: an invitation | NaPoWriMo: a short exercise
- NaPoWriMo, Day 2: Telling a Secret | NaPoWriMo, Day 3: Still Life
- NaPoWriMo, Day 4: One out of many | NaPoWriMo, Day 5: Hanging together
- NaPoWriMo, Day 6: Home and introspection | NaPoWriMo, Day 7: Like this or that...
- NaPoWriMo, Day 8: No more short shrift | NaPoWriMo, Day 9: Poem as voicebox
- NaPoWriMo, Day 10: Caught between the horns
- NaPoWriMo, Day 11: Living in the spaces in-between
- NaPoWriMo, Day 12: What’s the occasion?
- NaPoWriMo, Day 13: They say it’s all about timing | NaPoWriMo, Day 14: Mad Libs
- NaPoWriMo, Day 15: The bizarro world next door
- NaPoWriMo, Day 16: Now hiring | NaPoWriMo, Day 17: Short and sweet