Tutka Bay Lodge Workshop
Carolyn Forché
“In
one’s early childhood, let’s say during those moments when I first felt called
by the desire to write, those moments were always like odd instances slightly
removed from the web of time, always linked to something one calls mystical
instances, when the barriers of identity are lifted and there is a break,
during which time such instances present themselves, completely, mysteriously,
enigmatically interconnected but all the while disconnected from the web, this
characteristic requiring them, at the same time, to be elucidated.
In order to characterize these
instances the two aspects are necessary—that is, a separate, liberated instant
and its elucidation that allow one to think one is outside of time, rather like
those moments Proust describes in Remembrance of Things Past. . . .One can say
as much for Proust as for Georges Bataille: both conceived of literature as a
possibility of exploring those strange moments.
Musil calls them “the other state,” that is, something that truly
belongs to another logic, another time.”
—Jacqueline Risset,
—W. H. Auden
from
Mark Strand:
The subject of most poems tends to be loss—the loss
of love, the loss of friends, the loss of life. They tend to be sad,
death-haunted affairs, because if you think deeply at all about your
experience, you think about your experience in time, your life, and you can't
avoid the fact that it will end in death. Everything about a poem—especially
its cadence and its meter—is a reminder of time. In fact, a poem keeps time.
But the amazing thing is that poems provide us with pleasure. The very words
that bring loss to mind are also the source of pleasure. What we have in poems
is loss without pain, loss of a different and harmless order, one that we
control, that we can put aside or take up. A different actuality, different
from the one which may harbor pain, is what allows a poem to be beautiful.
I think a poet's focus is not quite what a fiction
writer's is, it's not so fixed on the world outside. It's fixed on that area
where inside meets the outside, where the poet's sensibility meets the weather,
meets the street, meets other people, meets what he reads. So a poet describes
that point of contact, and inhabits it when he is writing—the edge of the self,
the edge of the world—that shadow-land between self and reality. Sometimes the
focus is tipped slightly in favor of the self, sometimes, more objectively, in
favor of the world. Sometimes, when the balance is tipped towards the self,
strange things are said. After all, the farther you are from the world that
everyone recognizes as the world, the odder it looks. Some novels do report on
this liminal space, but most do not. They are focused on what's 'out there,'
and the novelist erases himself to ensure the autonomy of the narrative. A poet
would never erase himself. For it is his voice that is the poem. Does that make
any sense?
It is one of the exasperating things about the way
poetry is taught. It is assumed that an understanding of the poem is the same
as the experience of the poem. Often the experience of a poem—a good poem—will
elude understanding. Not totally, of course, but enough, enough to have us be
close to what lies just out of reach. I think that for most poets in the
writing of their poems there is a point when language takes over and they
follow it. Suddenly, it just sounds right. In my case—and I don't like to bring
myself up in this way—I trust the implication of what I am saying, even though
I am not absolutely sure of what it is that I am saying. I'm just willing to
let it be. Because if I were sure of whatever it was that I said in my poems,
if I were sure, and I could verify and check it out and feel, 'yes, I've said
what I intended,' I don't think that poem would be smarter than I am.
It is 'beyondness,' or that depth that you reach in
a poem that keeps you returning to it. I suppose you have to like being
mystified. That which can't be explained away or easily understood in a poem,
that place which is unreachable or mysterious, is where the poem becomes ours,
finally becomes the possession of the reader. I mean, in the act of figuring it
out, of pursuing meaning, of trying to characterize the experience of it, the
reader is absorbing the poem; even though there's an absence there or something
that doesn't quite match up with his experience,
it becomes more and more his. And what becomes his is, of course, generated by
language, language designed to make him feel connected to something that he
doesn't understand. He comes into possession of a mystery, and instead of being
frightened by it, he feels that he has some control over it. But does he? Or is
it simply that language has permitted him the illusion of control? My own
experience suggests that language allows me the feeling that it can go only as
far as my consciousness will take it, even though I know the opposite is true,
that I go where language leads. And it leads me again and again to the sense
that it is holding something back, that it contains more than I can possibly
grasp, that mysteries exist, and are encountered most seductively in poems. I
even feel at times that poems are the protective shell of the seductiveness of
language. What am I talking about? Even the meaning of the phrase I've just
uttered suddenly eludes me."
These
are George Orwell’s rules, from his essay “Politics and the English Language,”
as quoted by Mark Strand in his essay, “Notes on the Craft of Poetry”:
1.
Never use a
metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in
print.
2.
Never use along
word where a short one will do.
3.
If it is possible
to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4.
Never use the
passive where you can use the active.
5.
Never use a
foreign phrase, a scientific word or jargon word if you can think of an
everyday English equivalent.
6.
Break any of
these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
“The
artist’s task is to lead the isolated individual into the infinite life.” —Franz Kafka
A hidden
connection is stronger than an obvious one.
—Heraclitis
"Meaning
is not in things but in between; in the iridescence, the interplay: in the
interconnections; at the intersections, at the crossroads. Meaning is transitional as it is transitory,
in the puns or bridges, the correspondence." —Mallarmé
Degas: “Yours is a hellish craft. I can't manage to say what I want, and yet
I'm full of ideas....”
And
Mallarmé answered: “My dear Degas, one does not make poetry with ideas, but
with words.”[i]
“In actual fact objects are faint mirror images
of time. Objects don’t exist...Let the
mouse run across the stone. Now count
every one of its footsteps. Now forget
the word “every,” forget the word “footstep.”
Then every footstep will appear as a new movement. After that, since, for good reason, you have
experienced the disappearance of your perception of a series of movements which
you were erroneously calling footsteps (you were confusing movement with
space), movement will begin to fragment, it will be reduced to nil. A flickering begins. The mouse begins to flicker. Look around: the world is flickering.”
—from
“Oberiuty,” by Leonid Aleksandrove, in Chekhoslovenska rusistika, XIII, 68 no.5
"Half
an hour's meditation is essential except when you are very busy.
Then a full hour is
needed."
St. Francis De Sales
“the one who
hits the
target misses everything else...”
—Danilo Kis
“To read until one no longer understands a
single sentence. That alone is
reading.” —Elias Canetti, The Secret
Heart of the Clock p.134.
'After
you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the
concentration of your mind upon itself, having writing materials brought to
you. Put yourself in as passive, or
receptive, a state of mind as you can.
Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone
else.'
—André
Breton
Provided
the pen touches the paper and is full of ink, and I am bored and abstracted...I
create! A random word coming to mind has
an endless destiny, grows organs of phrase, and one phrase requires another,
which may have existed before it; it desires a past, to which it gives birth in
order to be born itself...after it is already in existence!
—Paul
Valéry, "A Fond Note On Myth" p.40.
"Meaning is not in things but in between; in the iridescence, the
interplay: in the interconnections; at the intersections, at the crossroads.
Meaning is transitional as it is transitory, in the puns or bridges, the
correspondence." —Mallarmé
“A
poem is like an antique pinball machine with metaphors instead of balls.”
—Charles
Simic
(as remembered)
“A
sentence in prose is struck forward like a golf ball; a sentence in verse can
be treated like a ball in a squash court.”
—“Archibald
MacNeice
'There are four things that do a man no good at
sea: sails, oars, rudders, and a fear of drowning.'
—Antonio
Machado
“The poet's I...is not
the poet as he is formed in the world; it is the world as it is formed in the
poet. Which means that if the poet is an
exception, this exception is of no interest, what is of interest is in what way
the exception conceives of the rule.”
Odysseas Elytis
“When we discover the
secret relationships of meanings and traverse them deeply we'll emerge in
another sort of clearing that is Poetry.
And Poetry is always single as the sky.
The question is from where one sees the sky. I have seen it from midsea.” (IV
Anoint The Ariston, from “The Little Mariner” by Odysseas Elytis, as
translated by Olga Broumas)
“Born from the summons of
becoming and from the anguish of retention, the poem, rising from its well of
mud and of stars, will bear witness, almost silently, that it contained nothing
which did not truly exist elsewhere, in this rebellious and solitary world of
contradictions.” (Rene Char, “Argument”)
Carolyn Forché's Practice Notes
The Reading Practice: Choose a poet whose work was completed prior to
1945 (Sappho, Homer, Blake, Dante, Dickinson, Whitman, Pound, etc.). At the beginning of one of the four seasons
of the year, decide to concentrate on the works of that poet: his/her collected
poems, a critical biography, criticism, journals, letters, prose writings. Keep this work on the bedside table. Change this poet each season.
Choose a poet whose work
was published after 1945 (Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Michael Palmer, Lyn
Hejinian, etc.). Place one book by such
a poet in the bathroom. Change this book
weekly.
Xerox or copy by hand the
poems from these readings, both seasonal and weekly, and keep them together in
your own personal anthology. This is the
anthology you will take with you to the desert island.
The Writing Practice: Choose a place for your writing (desk, fruit
crate in cellar, kitchen table, box in attic).
During your writing time, clear this of everything that hasn't to do
with your writing. Keep dictionaries,
thesaurus, field guides, photographs, etc.
Choose a time of day during which it is usually possible for you to free
yourself from other responsibilities/activities (midnight, dawn, lunch
hour). Go to your place and write or sit
for thirty minutes.
The Writing Process: Make three
boxes: one for good lines, one for good sections/stanzas/paragraphs, and one
for loved words. These boxes can be of
wood, paper, tin, whatever material you like, and whatever size. Keep these boxes in the vicinity of your writing
place. During the first fifteen minutes
of your Writing Practice, empty your hands of the language that has coursed
into them since your last Writing Practice.
Write freely, quickly and without regard to form. Turn these pages over and save them for two
weeks. After two weeks, you will have
about thirty pages if you have written daily.
Read through these pages, and re-copy by hand or into your computer
whatever still pleases you or seems interesting (these two are not always the
same). Put the pages in an envelope,
date it and seal it. Put it away. Keep the re-copied pages. After two months, do the same thing with the
re-copied pages. Put these final
"gleanings" into your Poet's Notebook (springboard, ring binder,
whatever). Along with these pages you
will keep your drafts of poems, newsclippings, photographs, epigraphs, lists of
loved words, lists of treasures of mind, lists of visual snapshots, lists of
lists. Work on your poems using this
notebook.
The "Loved Words" List: Keep lists
of the words you most love—for their mnemonic power, their sound, whatever
quality. Read through these lists before
you write. Here are some of Odysseas
Elytis' "loved words" (from The Little Mariner, by Odysseas Elytis,
translated by Olga Bourmas, Copper Canyon Press, out of print): agape,
Alexandra, All Soul's Day, anchor, anemone, Anna, ant, arch, arm in arm,
armoir, aspen, astringent, August, bait, barbette, barrel, basil, basket, bay
leaf, beach, beam-reach, beeswax, bell, bergamot, birdsong, bitter sea,
blanket, blueing, bluefish, bluefly, boat, bolt, bougainvillea, boulder, braided
rug, bride, brine, butterfly.
The "Visual Photographs": Make lists
of visual snapshots: quick verbal photographs of places/times/people. A shorthand memory. Here are some of Elytis': (he names them after the islands where he saw
them—some might enter poems, some become poems in themselves)
KERKYRA
Spring night in a distant
quarry graveyard. That luminous cloud of
fireflies that lightly shifts from grave to grave.
SKIATHOS
Just as the small boat
meets the sea-cave, and suddenly, from the awesome light, you are enclosed in
frozen blue-green mint.
AEGINA
Eleven o’clock, wind on
the uphill to Old Chora. Not a soul.
BILLIO
Who lets her nightgown
drop, picks it up, discards it finally and sits facing the balcony, her bra
unfastened in the back.
The "Treasures":
keep a list in your notebook of the works of art, passages of music, the
paintings, lines of poetry, etc. which
have been made by others, and which you have taken into yourself for safe
keeping. Here are some of Elytis':
HOMER
dusky water
brightly burnished
interiors
then an ineffable ether
was cleft from the sky
SAPPHO
many-eyed night
FRA ANGELICO
Left view of the
“Coronation of the Virgin” (Louvre
Museum)
BEETHOVEN
Sonata for violin and
pinao no. 2 in A major, opus 12.
Sontata for violoncello
and piano no.5 in D major,
opus 102, 1.
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