Weekly Poetry Assignment 4: Difficult Subjects
November 4, 2007 by John Hewitt
Even though I am competing in NaNoWriMo, I know there are plenty of you out there who still want your poetry assignment for the week. I am going to stay with the quick tips format for the poetry posts as well. This week’s topic:
Six Tips For Writing Poetry About Difficult Subjects
- Every horrible subject you can imagine has already been written about. There’s some brutal, brutal stuff out there.
- Writing about painful subjects is a great way to deal with that pain.
- Don’t be embarrassed about having problems or faults, everyone does.
- Don’t judge the importance of what happened to you by the quality of your poem. Some things are very hard to put into words, especially for the person who lived through them.
- Today’s reader is surprisingly hard to shock.
- As great as poetry is for dealing with difficult subjects, you don’t want to spend all your time dwelling on the negative. Find time to write about the good things in life too.
This Week’s Assignment
Try to write about something you’ve never written about before, good or bad. Look for a brand new thing.
For Further Reading
This week I am featuring some great articles from one of my favorite sites, Zen Habits.
- 6 Practical and Powerful Ways to Overcome Depression
- Haiku Productivity: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential
- Removing Negative Thought: Tips To Overcome and Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone
- Solve Tough Problems with a Brain Reboot
Related links
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Persona Poems (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: About Forms and Lists (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: A Brief Glossary of Meter (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: The Good the Bad and the Meter (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Syllabic Verse (1.000)
Contact John Hewitt
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Email: hewitt@poewar.comPhone: (520) 261-6104
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Twitter: @poewar
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Dear John
How good of you to keep up with this whilst in the throes of NaNoWriMo! Or are we affording you a welcome break?
Yrs appreciatively anyway…
(Meanwhile I just have to go back and post a revision to last weeks’ poem.)
Shock, horror – misplaced apostrophe! “Last week’s poem” I mean, of course.
As with all writing, poetry is eaiest when you write what you know about. A person’s experience can become a fount of creativity, as can feelings, weaknesses, and strengths. It is possible to take observations of close friends or family members and use these, but this is harder. Sometimes to make the poem crystal clear, a little projection of feeling in time mayt be necesssary. We don’t just mold words to comform to shapes and feelings, we mold ideas to deliver power.
Here is a poem I wrote last summer where some projection forward in time was needed. The feelings comveyed in the poem are real. The projection allowed me to sharpened the focus for the reader.
The Beauty I Have Found
When with my eyes, I look at you, my sweet,
I see an aging woman, gaunt and thin.
I see your gnarled hands and wrinkled skin;
I see your sagging breasts and calloused feet;
I see you strain to catch each breath anew;
I see you bent with age and all worn out.
For why I shed a tear, there is no doubt:
I see a shadow of the girl I knew.
But if I look on you, not with my eyes,
whose blindness cause me pain, but with my heart,
I see the wond’rous girl, who stole that heart.
I see the glimmer in your deep brown eyes.
My heart is filled with love, and joys abound,
as tears flow for the beauty I have found.
©James Garner 10 Jul 2007
OK… I’m going to try something different, and try to write about a victim of racism from the perspective of their mother… (note I have never been a victim of racism; this is written about my friend.) Please give feedback! I’m only thirteen btw.
NEVER UNDERSTAND
She was a fighter, a believer, and yet
Broken now. Dying embers in her eyes remain
Of the gaze so steadfast, so searching,
A blazing look
And she’d know you, or
She thought.
But she is broken.
Some days,
She would step back, needing
To be alone, and away,
Because she was different, her culture,
Unfamiliar,
It scared them.
So they dealt with it, in
Their own way… just pretend
She can’t feel.
If we hurt her, then she can’t hurt us.
But she would fight, some days,
She’d had enough. She’d stand her ground,
But then there were so many of them. She was alone;
Alone in a whole new world.
Spit at her, jeer at her,
You don’t belong…
Belong?
NO, she never did. Yet,
She would have done,
Yet, she had the right to. But
Belonging
Is feeling that you’re at your true home.
She never felt at home here.
Oh, my dearest daughter,
Can’t you see that I tried,
Tried to do right by you?
One day we will go home, my dearest,
One day we will return.
Couldn’t you see that they only feared you?
Feared diversity…difference?
And
What they couldn’t understand
They pushed aside… so still,
They will never see more than they wish to,
Never know more,
When they think their knowledge
Is complete.
They should envy you, my precious,
Envy your pride
Your culture
Your understanding, and
Your open mind.
They will never understand…
So,
They have not broken you,
Only made you stronger.
Pity them; it is they
Who are weak.
By Jenny McBride, age 13
James: I like this the best of anything of yours I’ve seen. Maybe because I am turning 68 in 6 days, lol. But no, not only for that reason. I like the feeling so well conveyed, the language and movement of the poem. And I take my hat off to you – sonnets are SO difficult, and you’ve managed this one very nicely indeed, with textbook correctness, yet so well that the form is unintrusive.
Jenny: Another fine effort! I think you have a natural “ear” for poetry, which is bound to get better still as you keep reading and writing. The best two pieces of advice I got when starting out were:
1) Avoid adjectives and adverbs; they weaken the work.
2) Make the pauses were the breath would naturally pause if you were speaking it.
I look at this poem and see no extraneous adjectives or adverbs. And for the most part your pauses follow the breath – except where you have chosen to emphasise a particular word by putting it at a line end or beginning, and you seem to have a good instinct about when to do that.
Still, the poem is at one remove, so I experience it as a set of ideas I agree with rather than something I feel strongly. I think it would be even more powerful written from the perspective of a friend – yourself – and focusing on the victim’s immediate words, appearance and so on.
Apologies! Not anonymous (above) but me.
The Mirror
There’s a mirror
Right down the hall
I hate it
I want to break it
Cause when I walk down
I see my reflection
I don’t want too
I wish it weren’t there
I’m 5′4 and 3/4
I’m 117-120 pounds
I’m the girl next door
That’s what everyone says
I don’t see it
I was cursed with
The inability to see
Both emotional and physical beauty
I’ve been called disgusting
Ugly, stupid and whore
I’ve been told I needed
Psychological help
That’s what I see
When I look into the mirror
I see what others see
I see all of the negative
I always worry about my weight
About my smarts and what I say
Sometimes I feel I care
More than I should
I feel as if I’m nothing
But no one cares
No one knows only if
They look in that mirror
The mirror says it all
The mirror reflects everything
I hate that bloody mirror
It makes me cry
It makes me sad
Like my insides have died
Like I want to hide
I hate that mirror
OMG, 10,732 words, I can’t believe it . . . I love you all.
It just keeps getting better, an hour and a half into the day and now I know where I am headed, one of the characters whispered the secret into my ear this morning, I odn’t know how I’m going to get there, but I sure know where we’re going.
Breaking through
Inside dark closets
No light is ever shining
Until the Muse laughs
Rianon,
The feelings expressed are very deep. Some would say that they are evidence of needing help. Perhaps nothelp, but healing, and perhaps a re-focus. Use your writing to express yourself and find your voice. As you work, beauty will floww from your mind and hand.
On poetry consider the following:
My observation is that prose captures ideas, powerful in themselves, and music captures emotion, which compells action. Poetry exists halfway between prose and music, with power to embody ideas and power to sway the heart. I find that this comes from the shape and rythem of the words. If a poet wishes to write truely moving work, he or she must consider the sound and shape of each word as well as its meaning, and both must fit. This is work.
Some suggestions:
‘There’s a mirror down the hall’ rolls better off the tongue.
‘that whipsers ugliness when I walk by’
matches the feeling and introduces the conflict.
Tell me now the ugliness that you hear…
If you can, try to keep the beat, but do NOT force it.
Let the beat massage the soul.
Whenever possible skip the simile and go straight for the jugular of metaphor. It is more powerful; it is more concise.
for example:
…
I cry with emptiness inside;
I run away and hide…
Excellent links. Good propelling off point. No poem yet but ideas generated.
James, does this sound a little better, took me a while but I feel it speaks more. This is more of a passing sence feeling: more of a second put into a thought.
Waking up
I’d wake up
and lay motionless
stairing at the ceiling
I’d wake up and wish
that I was dead
with a tearing in my head
my body lay
as my head spun
I got lost
though I knew where I was
everyone’s moving
yet I’m still standing still
I wish I could
drink away the pain
then I thought of you
and got up to awake the day
with a smile on my face
Rianon,
This one IS stronger;
however, this is not what you need to ask.
You should ask yourself:
1. “do I like it?”
2. “Does it flow?”
3. “Does it say what I want?”
4. “Does it feel the way I want?”
5. “Is it correct (grammer, tense etc.)”
If not, work on it some more.
If so, put it aside a day,
then come back and ask again.
Keep this up until it shines.
I once read a poem,
very short, very strong.
I can not remember the author,
it went something like this:
I blinked my eye
and twenty years slipped by.
From what I know of pain,
I dare not blink again.
In twenty words, this poem communicates
more about the passage of time and pain
than anything else I have read.
From what I see of your writing,
you could do this, if you were willing
to do the work.
Finally,
Write becaue you have something to say,
Write because you live and feel,
Wrtie because it brings you joy,
Write becuase you feel you must
or else you’d wither up and die
Best of luck!
Yay, Connie. Go girl, go!
ANTI-CLIMAX
He was a man who loved his dick,
skited about it – how BIG –
sometimes with a wicked grin,
sometimes tenderly, as if
offering me a beautiful gift.
But it wasn’t that
which finally persuaded me.
It was his eyes glazing over,
the intense blue going all misty.
It was his voice saying my name
soft and slow, drawing it out
into dreamy, almost exotic syllables.
It was the high cheekbones,
the long, soft mouth,
the tall, loose-limbed body,
the silken feel of his hair
against my face.
Even in memory
these attributes still
have power to stir me.
But after all that’s not a road
I’d wish to travel again.
It led to an unexpected,
far too final destination.
Frankly, it hurt!
Yes, there can be too much
of a good thing. … Perhaps,
if he hadn’t so obviously
thought that was all it took … ?
© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2007
Rosemary, hahaha, . . . . Not funny . . . why am I laughing. My mother always said if I laughed too “hard” I’d soon be crying.
That’s OK. It does have its farcical aspect, and besides I wrote it a bit humorously so as to avoid being pornographic. Old history anyway – it’s just that there are so few things I haven’t written about, lol.
Rosemary,
I’m with Connie … I am feeling a little self conscious that I found your poem a bit humorous. Maybe that’s just a reaction of a slightly conservative type to poems with phallic themes.
And, I guess it’s fair to say that this qualifies the piece as one on a difficult subject. Well done.