hahahaa.

KS

On 16/01/07, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Quoting Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > In connection with Jon's posts, this Ars Poetica blog is pretty
> > interesting http://www.logolalia.com/arspoetica/
> >
> > I expect most of us have an ars poetica poem.
>
> Yes, Alison, and here's one of mine, from Divan 5...outrageously long,
> perpetrated when I was a teacher of poetry-writing...
>
> Max R
>
> Twelve Tips for Beginning Poets
>
> 1
>
> Open with a sense of the occasion:
> well, here we are, and isn't it an eye-
> opening happening place to be!
>
> 2
>
> Look sharp: see to visuals; I eye,
> you eye, we all eye (apologies to
> the sight-impaired, who may see what I mean).
>
> 3
>
> Looking back? perspectives make themselves felt,
> are experiences in themselves. Down
> the vista of years and back we zoom: sight-lines
> are time-lines are flight-lines are life-lines.
>
> 4
>
> Insinuate a sense of place—
> position position position!—
> and also reposition.
>
> 5
>
> Angle your vision: there are
> three sorts: obtuse, acute, and right.
>
> 6
>
> There's the shimmer of presence,
> the fading ember of after-glow,
> the glimpsed-beyond-time under-glimmer.
> There's also the slow fade, not to be
> confused with loss of focus: dog and I
> watched the flowing river, the streaming sky;
> then it was 'river: your dog your me your sky',
> then riverdogmsky,
> then rrddmmss.
>
> 7
>
> Sniff out synaesthesia: images
> on the nose…rainbow-music—
> unless you're colour-deaf.
>
> 8
>
> Lean hard—bodily—on pulsing
> syllables: kinesthesia.
>
> 9
>
> Sensory deprivation can be avoided;
> soul-malnutrition is harder to fix—
> see below.
>
> 10
>
> Outer and inner correspond:
> and when they don't can maybe
> make creative mismatch;
> you work as go-between. Feel
> the weather in your bones—
> or the feel of not to feel.
>
> 11
>
> Uplift seldom achieves lift-off: though
> feeling is all, feelings may drag you down.
>
> 12
>
> Eye-contact is in the contract;
> not the glittering eye, the glimmering:
> downcast eyes break hearts. Whisper it from
> the rooftops: reticence rules!
> Directness, yes; but indirectness also.
> The poem implies; the reader infers.
>
> 13
>
> Gratify expectations; defy expectations.
>
> 14
>
> Be brief: less than one page, in short. You young
> generation baulk at page two, but if
> you have as much to tell as I, keep on—
> at this rate we'll need a second semester:
>
> 15
>
> please sign up at the office. Not that it can
> be taught: you learn by doing—as I did,
> as I still do. There have been rules—best if
> you know what it is you're ignoring. Stay,
> pay, and make your mistakes in front of me.
>
> 16
>
> Adjectival indulgence is indescribably
> sickening. Less is more.
>
> 17
>
> Minimise the syllables—cut cackle,
> he cackled; well, just do as I say.
>
> 18
>
> Maximise the working words: at best
> they'll have both grunt and grace.
>
> 19
>
> Minimise those initial capitals—
> short of illiteracy, you upper-case I.
>
> 20
>
> Don't become phonetically frenetic,
> super-concerned with sibilant consonants,
> frigging fricatives and cussed percussives;
> do hear the sounds of the various vowels,
> the curt and the mellow, the flipflop diphthong;
> the mouth-filling and the mealy-mouthed.
>
> 21
>
> Excess alliteration, inadvertent
> or otherwise, is enjoyed by the
> innocent, avoided by us others.
>
> 22
>
> Deny the decadence of the decasyllable
> (oops, that was thirteen). Ezra Pound's 'first heave'
> was 'breaking the pentameter'—ours, our
> second—is restoring it. As of old we
> pace the pentameter by placing pauses—
> varied caesurae fight monotony.
>
> 23
>
> The run-on line over-
> flows; the end-stopped line gives pause.
>
> 24
>
> The shorter the line
> the slower
> the plod;
> the longer the line the quicker the gallop.
>
> 25
>
> More unstressed syllables and the line will bolt.
>
> 26
>
> Be prepared to repeat yourself, repeat yourself;
> a modest word that way becomes a key,
> a key. Today it is insinuate.
>
> 27
>
> Don't be a wimpy haiku-weakling—take
> Max's course, build mighty stanza-muscles!
>
> 28
>
> But wait! before you do any of this,
> become:
>
> 28a
>
> a well-nourished soul; my house-mate/soul-mate
> doubts I'd write this way if I had one. How
> acquire one? A question of soul-wearying
> dispute; most say it takes a heap of pain,
> that of others shared, your own in solitude;
>
> 28b
>
> musical – hearken wherever music
> (language beyond language) penetrates,
> mindful of words as we need them for living;
>
> 28c
>
> well-read (reading list on application);
>
> 28d
>
> topped-up by listening to whatever thrives
> in what's spoken round you—both
> the vivid vulgar violent vernacular,
> and the music of others' murmurings. Then
>
> 29
>
> join the struggle against stifling cluttering cliché,
> whether it lurks within you or around you.
>
> 30
>
> Be a born observer, one on whom nothing is lost:
> some of us (though not me) began that way.
>
> 31
>
> Borrow, steal, sometimes acknowledge:
> way back, that 'vista of years'—Lawrence;
> 'nothing is lost' I found in James;
> 'under-glimmer'—Basho;
> 'the feel of not to feel'—Keats.
> As for unconscious theft—don't have
> a bad unconscience about that.
>
> 32
>
> Shun the numbering of sections—affectation!
> Modest asterisks make best dividers;
> worst are Roman numerals:
> X marks the bossy-boots.
>
> 33
>
> Surrender to your vision utterly;
> then treat it with utmost suspicion—
> revision revision revision.
>
> 34
>
> It won't be perfectible—nurse it, love it,
> lick it into shape, get rid of it.
>
> 35
>
> From life's flux, flurry, loves and losses—
> lest you forget; in case you can share—
> your words must make living order.
>
> 36
>
> Fix it as moments in time, unfolding time,
> time that gives, in which we live. Strange! it also
> steals, conceals, buries, ferries to a dark
> terminus, obscurest transfer station;
> observe: memory's deadly enemy,
> memory's necessary element.
>
> 37
>
> Figures of speech are (figuratively speaking)
> flowers of fresh discovery, best if
> stemming from a deep taproot:
> similes are like linking with merely
> base metal, nudge-nudging on;
> metaphors electrify, leap great gaps,
> sparks that shock, that galvanize,
> moments made momentous.
>
> 38
>
> In the beginning is the ending—
> so many poems are up themselves
> (the odious composure of closure)—
> how on earth, on paper, on the voice,
> can yours not be?
>
> 39
>
> This won't take much longer: fifteenthly,
> don't let it just trail away untidily
> on a rising inflection…
>
>
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