{"id":371782,"date":"2019-04-09T09:34:03","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T13:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=371782"},"modified":"2021-11-30T18:19:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T23:19:57","slug":"how-to-make-a-poem-371782","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/how-to-make-a-poem-371782\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you make a poem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speakers of a language rely on its words to carry out even the most mundane acts of communication. But the same words are poets\u2019 medium of creation.<\/p>\n

How do poets turn bare utterance into art?<\/p>\n

James Longenbach<\/a>, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at Rochester, offers an answer with his newest book, How Poems Get Made <\/em><\/a>(W. W. Norton, 2018). It grows out of his decades of teaching poetry. \u201cI was pushing myself to find a way to describe how we work with the most basic elements of the poem,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sonic nature of the language\u2014the way that you\u2019re seduced into a web of patterns that has to do with like and unlike sounds, that has to do with the stress of syllables, that has to do with the length of the sentences, that has to do with the length of the lines and the ways they introduce tensions into the lengths of the sentences\u2014all those things are pacing your experience of the poem and giving momentum and release to your experience of the poem,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s all taking place on the level of sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

A singular focus on the sonic quality of language sets poetry apart from all other forms of writing. It\u2019s what makes poems a form of literature that people are especially apt to listen to, or read, again and again\u2014and again.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might want to read a parking ticket a second time, but I doubt you\u2019d do it for pleasure,\u201d says Longenbach. \u201cThe language, rightfully in that situation, isn\u2019t trying to bring attention to itself in a way that\u2019s creating sonic patterns within the sentences, within the words, within the syllables, that are giving you a tactile or a sensory feeling that in turn gives you pleasure. A poem, one way or another, has to do that, or else there\u2019s no reason for it to be a poem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poems aren\u2019t simply vehicles for conveying information; they\u2019re sonic and temporal events. Longenbach writes that \u201cwe savor our experience of the poem\u2019s language as it unfolds in time, luring us forward.”<\/p>\n

\"James
\u201c…the particular way in which a lyric poem engineers the juxtaposition of such words may alter those associations instantly, if not permanently, making the bluntest monosyllables seem magical,\u201d writes poet James Longenbach, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English, in his latest book, How Poems Get Made<\/em>. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sounds of English<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Longenbach draws on examples stretching from Old English poet\u00a0C\u00e6dmon to poets of the Renaissance and Romantic eras, and on to modern and contemporary poets. His book is explicitly about poetry in English. At its root a Germanic language, English was reshaped with the Norman invasion of England in the 11th century, when the French language became the tongue of the English royal court. Today, more than 70 percent of words in English come from non-Germanic sources. Modern English pivots endlessly between Germanic and Latinate words; \u201coften we feel we\u2019re grappling with more than one language at once, as if the act of writing in English were already an act of translation,\u201d Longenbach suggests.<\/p>\n

Germanic English words can seem plain, and even vulgar; words from Latin might sound authoritative or captivating. \u201cWe\u00a0all hear the difference, even if only subconsciously,\u201d he says. \u201cThings like that are revealed in every sentence you speak. Even in the sentence I just uttered. Things like that are<\/em>\u2014all those grungy little German words. Then I leapt to a Latinate French word: revealed<\/em>.\u201d But a poet’s skill can upend such associations, Longenbach notes, juxtaposing words to make even \u201cthe bluntest monosyllables seem magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

English\u2019s complex history underpins the first of the poetic building blocks he names: diction, or word choice. He identifies the other fundamental tools as syntax, or the arrangement of words; figure, or metaphor; and rhythm, the pattern of stressed syllables forged by choices in diction and syntax. The interplay of these components creates a \u201csonic drama\u201d that is performed from the level of a single line to that of an entire poem.<\/p>\n

The thrill of the plunge<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Emily Dickinson once wrote about a fellow poet, whose name has been lost: \u201cDid you ever read one of her Poems backward because the plunge from the front overturned you? I sometimes (often have, many times) have\u2014A something overtakes the Mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cplunge\u201d she describes is \u201cthe temporal process of getting from the beginning to the end of the poem,\u201d Longenbach says. Moving the poem\u2019s reader or listener through the time of the poem, gaining the momentum of inevitability that gives readers the thrill of a plunge, is the work of the poet\u2019s sonic choices. Throughout How Poems Get Made<\/em>, he joins\u00a0Dickinson in her experiment of reordering a poem\u2019s lines to find how drama builds.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust getting the words down on the page\u2014that\u2019s like a painter squeezing out the paint on the palette. Now you\u2019ve got something to work with, when you\u2019ve got the words on the page,\u201d says Longenbach, the author of 13 books of and about poetry and a poetic contributor to such publications as The New Yorker<\/em>, The Paris Review<\/em>, and The New Republic<\/em>. \u201cAnd working with it often means moving them around. Changing the order. What happens if I put this first? What happens if I take what I wrote first and put it last? And that can be wonderfully revelatory and very exciting for students when they see the huge effect that comes from what might seem like to them, at first, doing almost nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting to the heart of poetry<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But what can strike students as a small editorial gesture in fact goes to the heart of what poetry is. Through its simultaneous acts of echo, diction, figuration, syntax, and rhythm, a poem forges a \u201crepeatable path of discovery\u201d and a \u201cnew knowledge of reality.\u201d It\u2019s a kind of understanding that Longenbach labels \u201clyric knowledge.\u201d It\u2019s not an information-based form of knowledge; it\u2019s an enchantment by \u201cthe movement of the medium,\u201d a pleasure that\u2019s infinitely repeatable, growing richer with time.<\/p>\n

It might sound mysterious, but Longenbach points out to his students that they revel in sound and repetition when they listen to pop songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got the song completely memorized in their head and yet they listen to it over and over again. It\u2019s not because they\u2019ve forgotten the song. It\u2019s because they like how it feels to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Read more<\/h3>\n

April is National Poetry Month, established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate the art of poetry.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"words
\nStudents celebrate World Poetry Day with on-air readings<\/a>
\nStudents and tutors from the University of Rochester\u2019s Language Center were on local radio this week to mark World Poetry Day with a celebration of poems in Arabic, Korean, Portuguese, and American Sign Language.<\/span><\/div>\n
\"student
\nPoetry a \u2018powerful catalyst for dialogue and peace\u2019<\/a>
\nIn honor of World Poetry Day, University of Rochester students at the Language Center share some favorite poems in the languages in which they were written. <\/span><\/div>\n
\"cell
\nPoetry in the age of the tweet<\/a>
\nThe pace of digital life has only quickened over the last twelve years since Twitter was founded, but the slower process of reading and crafting poetry continues, robustly, at Rochester.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speakers of a language rely on its words to carry out even the most mundane acts of communication. But the same words are poets\u2019 medium of creation. 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