I love the way minds make connections. Here I am reading my “How to Write” books, and I came across a William Carlos Williams essay: Poetry as a Field of Action. What struck me after reading this essay were the similarities between Williams’ ideas about composing the poem, and Brande’s, Mosley’s, and Carlson’s ideas about writing prose: you have to allow yourself to take a journey. Williams called for poets to make discoveries in the language of the poem that are distinctly American and that are dictated by the poem itself–not dictated by the subject matter or ???fashion.’ This is easier said than done. Brande, of course, says that writing is best when coming from that space in between consciousness and dream. Williams seems to concur: “the poem is a dream–a daydream of wish fulfillment” where the poet must concern herself with “a new way of measuring” that reflects–or better, takes into itself–the current world in which she lives.
Sometimes when we allow ourselves to work from a place of connection upon connection without knowing where we’re going, we discover things more beautiful. It’s like posed portraits versus the candid shots we capture with our cameras when no one knew a picture was being taken–always more life, beauty, and surprise that seems quite right for that moment. The strength of a poem comes from the poet’s ability to give up control while maintaining a sense of direction. To really apply Williams’ idea of the poem as a field of action, the poet has to be willing to give up the steadfast hold on her subject matter for a bit of wandering in the open field. Not ???I want to write a poem about that time when . . .” but writing–writing and letting the words lead you.
Last summer at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, Rosanna Warren said this to me after our discussion about a poem I’d been struggling with: the poem cannot be powerful because a father has died in the poem; the poem must learn to be powerful because of the poem itself. I think what she meant was for me to let go of the content and allow the situation of the poem to be illuminated through the form. This makes sense–but how does one go about making this happen?
If the poem becomes most powerful when we allow the language of the poem to shine a light on the human condition–we must allow the reader to experience what we have experienced without leading the reader around by the nose. Again, “the poem is a daydream of wish fulfillment.” If the subject becomes more important than the art, then the art is unsuccessful because it has placed itself at the mercy of the experience rather than placing —lets call it faith–into the form so that a deeper experience can be delivered.
This is difficult for me–stepping aside of what I want to share–this content–so that I can watch it take the form it needs to take and be moved into art. Carolyn Forche’s poem “The Colonel” is a good study for me. It helps to decipher how a poet might go about working in this open field–this field of action. I will pretend I have never read any conversations about this poem, and simply imagine that Forche was attempting to share the story of this most terrifying moment. Her choice is to stick close to observed fact rather than to dip into the reflective voice. Instead of ???I feel,’ there is the reporting voice in order to preserve the details of the memory–and yet, much feeling emerges. Forche maintains control by allowing herself a direct address to the reader, and still moves from reporting to art with a subtle shift in comparisons: “They were like dried peach halves.” This comparison seems absolutely normal–still in the realm of observed fact, and yet, it is a beautifully grotesque image.
How is Forche able to convey the strength of this story–this moment she wants to share–and still move it into the art of poetry? I think she has allowed herself to wander into the open field–to let the poem dictate its form without being heavy-handed–not “I am going to write a political poem now.” No. Instead, Forche lets the poem come through speech. W.C. Williams says “This does not mean realism in the language” but “ways of managing the language.” Forche manages to convey her precarious situation with observed fact: “the moon swung bare on its black cord over the house” and “pistol on the cushion beside him.” She doesn’t force metaphor or metered language here; instead she lets herself move about in the room, looks around, records details, and then she opens herself up to the terrifying sack of human ears on the table. Here she makes the leap from the grotesque to the beautiful–from the observed fact to artful narrative: an ear flowering in a glass of water– “it came alive there” and listening for the reckoning–“some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.” These observations don’t necessarily recreate the reality of her situation, but they share the memory, and are able to convey emotional depth so that the reader experiences the terror with her. The historical fact cannot be the art; the terror cannot be the art; this awful man cannot be the art. Instead, Forche uses her language to fulfill Wiliams’ call that the poem be “commensurate with the social and economic world in which we are living.” The reader does not know where the poem will go, just as Forche did not know how her evening would end; and yet, every word is just where it ought to be.
Free-verse, open-field poetry is not about being free to say what you want to say–it’s a way for the writer to open herself to discovering moments of previously unknown beauty in that undiscovered country of the subconscious mind. Again, “the poem is a day dream.” This technique works for prose-writers as well, of course: “If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever be to his reader.”–Flannery O’Connor.
Writers must be open to wandering a bit as they write. We’ll still get to where we need to go, but we’ll have a much more beautiful time of it in the fields.