Poetry and The Artful Dodger

So here we are in Metalworking manufacturing the perfect cosh, I mean, poem. Something to hit your audience over the head with to achieve monetary gain.

You have got to be able to hold the poem in your hand. But at the same time it had got to be dense enough to knock your victim out with.

Harder said than down.

So density of language - it’s gotta hurt

Lines instead of sentences - pauses where the victim goes ugh! and Agh!

Metaphor - you are saying one thing but hitting them over the head with another

Rhythm and Rhyme - Swing softly above your head and swoop low

We will go into this with more detail soon. I learned everything I know from the Artful dodger

Poetry - the Science of the Cosh

To begin with let us hit ourselves over the head with a poem.
Weigh it up. How heavy will the blow be?

You listened in your physics class didn’t you. Yes that’s right, physics not English Literature (actually I am not sure what you call it now, but we just called in English. English class - all encompassing. By God we knew what that meant. Shakespeare, Yeats, John Donne, and a composition. I didn’t even know about the five paragraphs. A composition - fantastic word - maybe life was rosy in those days after all.)

Anyway, the physics of poetry - how heavy will the blow be - well that depends on density.
There you have it folks. The poem is supposed to be the big heavy lump of metal. Kind of like a cosh. You know, all concentrated for maximum effect. Whack!

Thing is, there is a science to the cosh too. Too light and it has little effect. Too heavy and you can’t get the proper swing. God bless us but they taught us the works at St Pats in Cavan. So you want to be a poet. Swing the cosh and not just any old cosh, but a cosh of perfect distribution.

How do you make such a thing? Well not in English class for sure, but maybe Metalworking. I was too academic for that in St Pats, didn’t even get the choice.

Accounting or Woodwork, English or Metalworking.

(More in a while)

Never Too Young to Shave

Okay, maybe it should have been this one.


Cut While Shaving

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

by Charles Bukowski


Don't give up on me. All of this is leading somewhere. Your writing will be the better for it eventually. Your shaving skills will be even more impressive.

Surviving the Things on our Minds

I want to come back to the questions of the previous post, Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Other Blunt Objects in a moment, but before any of that what you really need right now more than anything is a poem. Trust me. None of your namby pamby stuff here, no outdated (by a couple of centuries) school curriculum, nothing to shock the socks of your mother too much either, just a darn decent poem that fills the void other poems leave behind.

Survivor

Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.
It helps
keep my mind off things.

By Roger McGough

I really like this. Forget poetic structure and all those nasty things for a moment, think about what he is saying. Open up the newspaper, listen to the radio, the television, read the headlines on the internet, but hey we’ve got things to do today, right? We’ve got poems to write after all.

Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Other Blunt Objects

So to begin, I have to ask the question, what is it you write? I don’t know the answer to that, and most probably you don’t either. Oh, you may think you know, but don’t be fooled by that. Anyway we will figure that out later.

There are some labels we use, which I guess could be considered useful: poetry for one, fiction, non-fiction are others.

If we were to go with these, and why not since labels are how we begin making do, but we will dispense with these when the need arises.

So what is the difference between a poem and a short story? What is the difference between a short story and a novel? What is the difference between fiction and non-fiction?

Easy questions. Tough answers. Think about it a while. I mean really think about it. Don’t just say, “oh well everybody knows that” and move on. Stop yourself in your tracks. Ask the question. I know you know, but I bet you don’t know.

The best way to approach it is to return to basics. Look at a poem in a book, look at a short story. Look at a short story, look at a novel. Begin with the obvious things you notice no matter how foolish they appear since the answer(s) to these questions lies here.

Which would you rather be hit over the head with - a poem, a short story or a novel?

Alley Cats - The Art of Survival in Writing

So of the three alley cats do you recognise any?

The cat in the middle is Bob Dylan. The cat on the right is our man Allen Ginsberg who wrote the infamous poem the title of this blog has come from, Howl. The other mee-ow is Michael McClure. Enough in your education for now.

The point is that Dylan was hanging out with the poets, and the poets were hanging out with Dylan, and words were changing everything including the Times. The writing came from the heart.

It was not determined by marketing departments or authoritarian figures but from the self. It is very hard to write from the self nowadays. I think it always was. But particularly now people want writers to be celebrities and writers often want to be perceived as celebrities.

The first secret in writing well is to resist this. Ignore trends and multimedia advertising. Write what you want to write in the word you choose and stray up the alley with all those other cats if that be the consequences. Eat your dinners out of trash cans, wash beneath fire hydrants.
Be true to yourself. It will be its own reward. And I promise you, it will lead you to greater success that a brief period of time under the intense heat of some bright studio lights that will eventually pale, flicker out and die.

Learning how to Howl

Okay young writers out there, this is it. It is your time to create or destroy your minds. I, for my part, if you are interested, will do my best to encourage both your minds and your writing to achieve the best of your potential.

You are the writers of the future. You are the ones whose books will sit upon library and bookshop shelves, that will be read in school and at home.

Through this blog I will offer advice and encouragement. I will attempt to remember my ‘younger days’ - how it felt to write in the early stages. Times are different, I am not ignorant of this, but the challenges of writing have really not changed. There are some processes which all great writers employ. I will hopefully outline these in a way you can understand and learn from.
I can answer your questions, your queries. I can stand firm under the barrage of your anger if necessary.

This is new territory. I have worked a lot with young writers in the past through workshops in school and in the community. I have even been a writer in residence at a school in Ireland for a school year. But this is the first time I have put keyboard to screen to work with an anonymous, faceless, cyber gathering - if there is a gathering at all. I may indeed be twittering on to myself for most of the time. But so be it. I have a lot to learn too. And no matter what level of writing you are at it all comes back to the basics in the end.

We have something we want to say. And so for now, let us howl together, shriek into the night.