Strange Terrain: A
Poetry Handbook for Reluctant
Readers
is forthcoming in spring 09.
Strange
Terrain is based on the program "Entering the
Realm of Poetry"
I developed for the NH Humanties Council & have taught
in many venues since.
If you are interested in hosting or attending the
program--in a single session
or series of sessions--contact me at 603-835-6783 or by
email.
Meanwhile, this intro will get you started towards
overcoming difficulties with poetry, letting go of a belief
that you should "get" it, and learning to let it
get you.
from HOW TO
MAKE USE OF THIS BOOK
When I tell people I write
poetry, I often experience a sensation of wind; my partner
in conversation has backed off just enough to let more air
circulate between us, as if it were viral.
There is something about poetry, about how it was taught,
about its reputation as encoded messages only a certain
kind of person can crack, that makes otherwise healthy,
highly functional people, literate and perfectly
intelligent—even those who love to read—squirm with a sense
of inadequacy, burst into sheer belligerence, or quietly
avoid it like the plague, especially in public.
But deep inside, there may be a wistfulness, some primal
memory that knows it could be different—we could be let
back in, we could have a nonadversarial relationship with
these mysterious missives from the hearts and minds of
others; we could be readers of poetry.
Think of it as Poem Traumatic Stress Disorder.
This book is your self-help manual.
It is my belief that everyone can gain from the “news” that
poetry brings us. With a bit of instruction, poetry will
bring you significant new interactions with the world
around you, with ideas and sensations, with yourself and
others—not to mention that it will literally expand your
mind: According to a study published in New
Scientist, billions of neurons per
millisecond light up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve
whenever we read poetry.
To these ends, STRANGE TERRAIN is structured around three
premises or necessities integral to being comfortable
with—and finding comfort in—poetry:
Demystification, Information, and
Remystification.
First,
demystification: Readers will benefit
both from a glimpse of what it is that poets are up to in
pausing to write about their experiences or perceptions of
the world, and from a reminder that poetry is not personal
or private “journaling” but an art and a craft. The two
introductory chapters that follow this give you a chance to
discard any sense of estrangement you might have felt in
the presence of poetry in the light of this basic
demystification of what poetry is. It may still feel like
strange terrain, but at least you'll see landscapes you’re
interested in exploring.
Information
is what the
Steps of this handbook are all about. They provide a walk
through the strange terrain of poetry by means of 8 basic
tools that I’m going to show you are already in your
backpack. The reason that poetry is, in fact, approachable
and effective (once you’re guided into its realm) is that
it employs these elements that are so—well—elemental to our
existence as humans here on Earth. While the poems you pass
through here may not all be easy, you will become familiar
with their landmarks—their shapes and words, their sounds
and images, their narrative techniques. And through guided
observation you will see, without being forced to analyze
anything or to submit to the question, “What does it mean?”
just how much meaning, emotion, and thought emerge from
these elements.
The most important of the three necessities for
appreciating poetry is the third, the one I call
Remystification. Let me get to it in a
round-about way, by talking a bit about teachers.
Amongst the many people who may shy away from poetry are,
of course, teachers—for the very obvious reason that they
too are regular, educated, literate people who themselves
had teachers of poetry who . . . etc. As a visiting
artist-in-the-schools, I often hear even those teachers who
do include poetry in their lessons, knowing it has value,
confess with some embarrassment their doubt or helplessness
in the face of it. Some have their students write poems,
some assign readings, others march right in, full of
technical information and blowing dust off manuals or texts
they seem to have dug out of a time capsule. And why not?
Poetry has been around a long, long time, hasn’t it? And
so, with good intentions, most ask kids to write poems
before they know what concrete things actually make up
poems, analyze poems for their “hidden meaning,” underline
examples of onomatopoeia and alliteration, and count and
label the rhyming scheme.
Two crucial aspects of understanding poetry are missing in
all of this, without which poetry can become alien and then
anathema: the demystification and the mystery.
Here are some of the things I wish teachers were doing
instead in opening their classrooms to poetry:
- Reading a poem and saying nothing at all about it while the sounds and sensations sift through the room, through the listeners’ beings, through the windows and out into the day.
- Expressing wonder at the amazing feelings, thoughts, rhythm, music, or mystery that a certain choice of words on a page can evoke.
- Talking with gratitude about how poetry opens our hearts and minds to our lives today.
- Bringing in local poets to talk about their lives and their writing process, and including in the discussion those students (at any age) who already identify themselves as writers.
- Bringing in contemporary literary journals and poetry books to be pawed through and pored over.
- Telling themselves and their wards in words and in silent attitudes this mind-changing secret about appreciating poetry: “It’s not about getting it.”
But it will not give you answers.
The mysterious nature of what poetry says—what often cannot be paraphrased—is its lifeblood. That doesn’t mean poetry must elude us; it means the meaning of life itself often eludes us. If you want to grapple with the value of this better, you can turn directly to “Step 8: Unknowing," because it explains in detail why poetry can’t be entirely explained. The only reason it comes last in the instruction process is because it is simultaneously the least definable and most defining of the Steps.
Keeping the need for “remystification” in mind throughout may help you as you proceed on this exciting journey towards a deepening relationship between you and poetry.