GUEST POST: Amy Dryansky Talks Writing Without Purpose (On Purpose)

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Amy Dryansky, Grass Whistle, guest blogger, poetry lab, writing techniques, Writing Without Purpose (on Purpose)

Bardswell’s Ferry Bridge, Franklin Co., MA

When I’m starting new work I like to move directly from the dream-space of sleep into the one-eye-shut space of writing. I grab my coffee and notebook, and settle in somewhere quiet. In good weather, that means outside; otherwise, in bed, or a comfortable chair, but rarely at my desk. The formal place of “desk” I save for the more intentional work of revising and editing.

I try not to pay too much attention to what I’m writing as I write. I don’t want to break whatever fragile thing is trying to emerge. Keats called this space where we create “negative capability,” but I prefer the “purposeful purposelessness” described by the philosopher Suzanne Langer. I think of it as deliberately keeping my gaze just slightly out of focus. Stare too hard and you could miss what you’re trying to see.

That said, where I am definitely filters down into the writing. For almost 20 years I’ve lived in a small, rural town, and spend a lot of time walking my dog, and (unfortunately) driving. The landscapes I pass through have become imprinted in my consciousness—I guess you could say they’re a kind of infrastructure. If a crow is squawking nearby, or the wind is blowing, if the bee balm is flaunting its spiky magenta blooms, then that will almost certainly make its way into my work. Sometimes in an obvious way, as images, sometimes it will just seep into my unconscious and enter the writing as rhythm or some other aspect of form.

Often I find the germ of a poem coming to me as I walk or drive through my day. I say it aloud, testing the feeling and sound, and then I record it on my phone or scribble it down. When I finally have a stretch of uninterrupted time, I start from those words, and try to re-enter where I was at that moment. I rarely have a plan; I just go where it feels like the words want to go and trust that what I’m struggling to say will eventually become more clear. Most of the time, it does: a form begins to emerge, line breaks assert themselves, images sharpen, the speaker’s attitude or diction develops. Once that happens, I can look at the poem with a more critical eye, and begin to shape and revise.

“Through Line,” a poem of mine published in Orion, is a perfect example of that process. The poem isn’t “about” where I live, but it’s built from the farms, roadsides and meadows where I walk and (too often) drive; the creatures (and humans) that weave in and out of my day; the long iron bridge I cross to get to work. The bridge is so narrow only one car can pass at a time, which means I get to linger as I make my way to the other side, taking in the view of the Deerfield River, feeling the wooden planks thunk beneath my tires. And it means I can also take in, over and over, the warning sign posted on one of the uprights: “No climbing, no jumping, no rappelling at any time.”

“Through Line” isn’t a poem “about” flowers and cows and birds and fences. But, like many of the poems in my book, Grass Whistle, those things (and many others) do provide a kind of infrastructure for what I’m writing—like that bridge, they’re a jumping-off point. I guess I’m always looking for that place, keeping my eyes half-open, hoping for a soft landing.

Through Line

 

Innumerable robins, dandelions

gone over to perfect

 

overexposures poised for release an iron bridge

spanning a steep-sided river, shadows

 

falling sideways through the cables:

no climbing, no jumping, no rappelling

 

at any time            the roadside

an uninterrupted stream of ripening

 

timothy, bird noise and cow

their brown and white arrangement, their undisguised

 

inquiry as we pass     breaking up space

like the barbed wire’s staccato

 

of uprights and horizontals       a flimsy boundary

when you consider

 

what we’re made of                       and that somebody

—despite the brand new barn’s

 

acknowledged comforts and the farmer

checking for gaps

 

hawkweed, celandine and buttercup

might mask—

 

somebody             might change their mind

something             could break

 

and how would we know with all of this

blooming         this temporary

 

rise and fall and light rain softening our edges?

 

Note: A shorter version of this piece originally appeared on the Orion blog

Amy Dryansky’s newest poetry collection, Grass Whistle, was released in 2013 by Salmon Poetry. Her first book, How I Got Lost So Close To Home, was published by Alice James Books and individual poems have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals, including Orion, The New England Review, Harvard Review, make/shift and Upstreet. Dryansky’s received honors/awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.  She’s also a former Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mt. Holyoke College, where she looked at the impact of motherhood on the work of women poets. Dryansky currently teaches in the writing program at Hampshire College and writes about what it’s like to navigate the territory of mother/worker/poet at her blog, Pokey Mama.

GUEST POST: Terry Wolverton Talks Dis•articulations Technique

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Dis-articulations, guest blogger, poetry lab, Terry Wolverton, writing prompt

A couple of years ago, I found myself growing weary of my own poetic voice, of predictable themes and emotional stances to which I found myself returning. They seemed less like burning preoccupations and more like habits or mannerisms.

For a long time I’ve been a fan of working within structures and their “liberating constrictions,” but I began to grow tired of inspiration itself, or at least, tired of the things that were inspiring me to write poems.

So I began looking for more mechanical processes and stumbled into a technique that I call dis•articulations. It consists of these steps:

1. Working from prompts.
   Early on, I would draw prompts from phrases in random books I’d pick up. Now, with a desire to have greater engagement/collaboration with others, I ask people for prompts; sometimes I ask my writing students, other times I post requests on Facebook. A prompt might be a single word, a phrase or sentence, the more random the better.
2. Fevered Writing.
   I learned from author Deena Metzger the technique of “writing faster than you can think,” to let the words pour out without first thinking of what will be said. We try to bypass the rational mind and channel the intuitive mind, where unlikely associations and juxtapositions can occur. Natalie Goldberg talks about this process as “writing meditation”; the goal is to keep the pen moving without stopping to think or discern or edit. A former poetry student of mine, Yvette Beltran, gave it the name “Fevered Writing.”
   Each round is timed—3-5 minutes—and begins with a prompt, not a topic, but a trampoline, something to bounce off.
   For a dis•articulations poem, I do four rounds of fevered writing, each time using a different prompt.
3. Dis-articulating.
   This is the OCD part of the process: I take apart the four rounds of fevered writing, creating a list of all the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, articles and conjunctions. These lists become the lexicon for my dis•articulations poem.
4. Writing the poem.
   The lexicon suggests the topic and the form of the poem.
   Here are my rules:
   • I don’t have to use every word but I cannot add any words.
   • I can change verb tenses.
   • I can change usage (if in the fevered writing “skin” was a noun, I might allow myself to use it as a verb in the poem).
   • I can repeat words even if they only appeared once in the fevered writing.
   • The title has to come from the same lexicon.
5. Blog.
   Throughout 2013 I wrote a new dis•articulations poem each week and published them on a blog: http://disarticulations.wordpress.com. I also posted the prompts, fevered writing, and lists of words.I invited readers to post their own poems created using any of these instructions:
   • Let one or more of the prompts inspire the poem.
   • Do your own fevered writing to make a poem.
   • Use the list of words to construct your poem.
   • Write a poem in answer to or inspired by my poem.

My dis•articulations poems seem both me and not me. The random prompts and the stricture of using only the words on the lists alter my voice in a way I find satisfying. I’ve produced poems I would never have gotten to using only inspiration as a guide.

But it’s humbling to note the recurrence of certain words or tropes. It’s fascinating to observe themes that recur in this work and just as interesting to note ideas and images that never seem to enter the work. I have a secret wish that some scholar or graduate student would undertake a study of these poems and see what patterns would emerge when viewed from outside the experience of creating them.

Here’s a sample poem with its associated prompts and lists:

First responder

Every day she crawls through a crack
in the psychology of the world,
tends its sores. She knows the industry
of breath, small patience of bones. Hands
contain the blood, keep it from leaking
into the tremulous universe.

She hides her secrets, all she’s seen, but
I can feel trees aflame against her
wide back, stones guarding her jaws, void in
her belly. After, she cannot be
indoors, studies stars until the rain
comes. Swimming in its gold-green light, she

wonders at chance: a house in ruin,
spark and smoke, holes blown into routine,
yet here is her girlfriend, staring up
at leaves raining jewels onto grass,
hand covering hers, moist air pressing
earth spinning past the place of terror.

The Prompts

Stones in the wall – provided by Doug McBride

Alligator light – provided by Sage Bennet

Flat earth – self-generated for a workshop

Mouse psychology – self-generated for a workshop

The Fevered Writings

Stones in the wall are like bones in the hall not like cones at the mall when I’m feeling small. Years ago Colleen said if she were a terrorist she would go to the Mall of America and now terrorists blew up the Mall in Nairobi. Fashion doesn’t last and the sparks rain down among the gold jewelry, the haute couture covered in blood. My girlfriend is a first responder, not in Kenya, but here. She sees the blood of the world; she tends to its sores. The mall is smoking rain now and the cash register is void.

Alligator light like the light in the rain forest. I can feel the humidity pressing like a hand but the light is filtered through the thickness of the trees. It’s like being indoors, so contained am I by the moist air and the leaves and vines all around me, so green, so tremulous and I want to crawl on my belly and swing my tail, greet the world with wide smiling jaws, grow scales, and large pointed teeth and swim in the rivers not yet set aflame from the industry encroaching.

Mouse psychology is the study of being very small and stealthy. It’s like keeping a secret of one’s existence and hiding in places no one thinks to look. The mouse feels its belly against the grass, feels the sun on its back, feels the cat’s breath on it’s neck. The cat wants to play but doesn’t know her own strength. She would chase it all afternoon but the mouse will find a hiding place under the house. Through the crack in the foundation he stares out at the world. The cat guards the hole – she has patience until she hears the call for dinner.

Flat earth like a ball with the air leaking earth is leaking into the universe spinning off our course past stars and the space monkeys who ride their bicycles through outer space. I wonder if I’ll go when the aliens come to me. I’m usually up for an adventure, the change to see something new but I also love my routines. I’d miss yoga and gardening and my girlfriend and my cat, Annie. I’m neurotic even when I leave her for a week always asking the pet sitter to text me a photo every day, sometimes calling her on the phone.

The Lists

NOUNS – mouse (3), psychology, study, secret, existence, places (2), belly (2), grass, sun, back, cat (4), breath, neck, strength, afternoon, house, crack, foundation, world (3), hole, patience, call, dinner, earth (2), ball, air (2), universe, course, stars, space (2), monkeys, bicycles, aliens, adventure, chance, something, routines, yoga, girlfriend (2), Annie, week, pet, sitter, photo, day, phone, alligator, light (3), rain, forest, humidity, hand, thickness, trees, leaves, vines, tail, jaws, scales, teeth, rivers, industry, stones, wall, bones, hall, cones, mall (4), years, Colleen, terrorist (2), America, Nairobi, fashion, sparks, jewelry, haute couture, blood (2), responder, Kenya, sores, ruin, cash, register

VERBS – is (8), being (2), keeping, hiding (2), thinks, look, feels (5), wants (2), play, does not (2), know, would (3), chase, will (2), find, stares, guards, has, hears, leaking (2), spinning, ride, wonder, go (2), come, am (4), see (2), love, miss, gardening, leave, asking, text, calling, can, pressing, filtered, contained, crawl, swing, greet, grow, swim, set, encroaching, are, said, were blew, last, rain, covered, tends, smoking

ADJECTIVES/ADVERBS – very, small (2), stealthy, no, own, all (2), out, flat, off, outer, up (2), new, neurotic, even, every, moist, green, tremulous, wide, smiling, large, pointed, not (3), yet, aflame, ago, down, gold, first void, always (2), past, who, when (3) usually, also, sometimes, now (2), here

PREPOSITIONS – of (5), like (7), in (8), to (8), against, on (4), under, through (3), at (2), until, for (3), with (2), into, if (2), by, indoors, around, from, among

PRONOUNS – if (3), one (2), its (4), her (2), she (7), he, our, their, I (11), me (3), my (6)

ARTICLES – the (44), a (9); CONJUNCTIONS – and (15), but (5), so (3)

Terry Wolverton is the author of ten books of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, most recently Wounded World: lyric essays about our spiritual disquiet. She’s the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing studio in Los Angeles, and Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Tweets @TerryLWolverton.

GUEST POST: Laura Grace Weldon Talks the “Witnessing Stranger” Technique

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Bruce Weigl, guest blogger, Laura Grace Weldon, poetry lab, Tending, The Abundance of Nothing, Witnessing Stranger Technique, writing prompts

Poet, Laura Grace Weldon

 

Poetry workshops are new to me. It’s not easy to muster up the time and money to attend. It’s harder still to tremble through harshly critical sessions, coming away with little beyond self-doubt. But when a poet I adore offers a workshop, I’ve learned it’s always worth it.

 Recently I spent an afternoon at Oberlin’s quiet public library for an Ohio Poetry Association program with Bruce Weigl, who writes about his experience of war and his Midwest surroundings with equally sharp focus. His recent collection is The Abundance of Nothing, a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Poetry Prize. He’s a kind, humorous, and relentlessly encouraging man.

The exercise he gave us was divided into two parts. First we wrote as if we were walking through our childhood homes and neighborhoods. Next we wrote our impressions of a foreign city we’d never visited. The take-away? Most poets tend to come up with far more irrelevant, far less evocative language for what’s familiar.

So for this exercise put yourself in a relaxed state of mind. Then pick a place entirely foreign to you. Perhaps a remote river valley in Ethiopia, the bustling city of Hanoi, a tea garden in Istanbul, or a taxi driving through Buenos Aires. Envision yourself immersed in the sounds, colors, and action of this place. Then write what you see.

 Here’s what I wrote in our session, a piece that’s still in draft stage:

Baghdad

 

Vendors hawk smells

I long to taste.

Street life clatters and hums

with music I don’t recognize

yet find familiar.

People pass in every direction

some with hair the

glossy black I envy,

their lips staccato,

eyes legato.

 

I want paint in my hand

and words truer than prayer

to write on park benches,

telephone poles, buses,

and street side tables

where cards are played

and tea is sipped,

I’m sorry.

We’re all so sorry.

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of a poetry collection titled Tending and a handbook of natural education, Free Range Learning. She lives on a small farm where she’s an editor, nonviolence educator, awe junkie, and marginally useful farm wench. Connect with her via her blog and Twitter.