Shooting My Poetry Mouth Off
by Richard Krawiec
April 2010
At a recent poetry conference, Alan Michael Parker, from Davidson University, pointed out that most poems fail because the poet settles for too little. “Your first draft is documentary,” he said. “But in your second draft, you need to make a conscious choice to create art.”
Too often poets, haiku poets included, don’t make this choice. I see it in my work all the time, and in the work of the students I’ve taught for the last couple decades. This is partly because haiku, as a form, succeeds in precisely capturing a moment, and sometimes we feel if we have documented that moment accurately, our work is done.
Years ago I wrote in my notebook
| a praying mantis settles on the oar I stop paddling |
This certainly fits the haiku form, but although there is some indication there of meaning, the phrasing fails to extend the haiku beyond documenting the moment. It fails to rise to the level of a poem. There is no conscious use of rhythm or music, nor any compression of language or meaning. What are these three short lines about? Me. They are about me stopping to look at an insect on my oar. Well, yeah, I did that. So what? There is an indication there might be a deeper meaning to these captured images, but that indication is secondary to the observation. It doesn’t come close to art.
Haiku, like all poems, are concerned with setting images on lines in a way that they express the inexpressible. To accomplish that in a poem, as opposed to say an essay, there needs to be a precise use of rhythm – not necessarily syncopation, but there should be a reason why each line’s syllable emphases are constructed in that particular way. There should be a sense of music to the words, a flow, even if it’s intuitive to the reader. A poem is not an encyclopedia entry.
So I set about trying to turn these images into a poem. But in order to do that, I had to stop looking at it as a haiku, and try to understand it as a poem first. What is the meaning of this event, and how do I express that in poetic language? In order to turn these images into a poem, I had to be willing to risk losing the haiku. The poetry has to take precedence over the form.
wBy the time I was finished revising it, I felt I had accomplished what I set out to do. Sometimes, in looking closely at my observations, and revising them, often what I thought of as a haiku becomes a longer poem. Many mornings I step outside with the idea I am going to write haiku. So the way I gather and phrase images is influenced by my predetermined notion of the form I will be working in. However, this sometimes changes. Some images work better in a longer poetic context. The form I initially intended to work with may spur the first observation, but as a poet, the images have to determine if the initial instinct on form was correct.
In this case, the images did fit into haiku form.
| landing on the oar the praying mantis halts the kayak |
In this final version, the poetic elements I worked with serve the needs of the haiku. The music of the ‘l’ and ‘n’ in the first line, reverse order and move the poem into the second line. The double alliteration of ‘t’ and ‘s’ at the midpoint of the poem mesh with the enjambment of the word ‘halts’. The ending upbeat of ‘kayak’, even as the final ‘k’ slices the poem to a close, disturbs the rhythm in a way that was unexpected. Just as the events of the poem turn out to be unexpected.
By enjambing ‘halts’ I made the insect, the representative of Nature, an active agent that stops its own movement, and controls the kayaker’s motion. I felt a simple verb change, from ‘settles’ to ‘halts,’ along with the new line break, enhanced the emphasis on spirituality. So, what was initially an observation that had some meaning embedded has become a poem that more obviously deals with larger themes than a simple documentation of the events could. It became a poem. A good poem, or bad poem – that’s for others to decide. But at least, in this case, I made that conscious decision to attempt to create art.
Shooting My Poetry Mouth Off • Richard Krawiec
April 2010
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I agree that poetry must take precedence over form. Form is solely viable in its use as a structure…It’s when poetry and structure become one that it succeeds. Form and content… But a vase may take many forms…so the potter is free to bring out the character of the vase. The clay is meerly the building block…what are you building????
It’s so good to read critical analysis on writing haiku. I think that the more we can talk about the craft of haiku writing, the conscious choices that writers make to achieve particular effects, the better. But in my few years association with the haiku world I’ve learned that it’s not always welcome.
Workshopping has always been a part of my writing experience, the kind of workshop where the author has to remain silent while the rest of the group discuss his/her work. Yes, it can be tough but the one most valuable thing I’ve learned from it is the separation of ‘the writer’ from ‘the writing’. And it’s only when we can do that, for ourselves, that we can objectively assess our own work, decide what ‘it’ needs.