Keyless Prison

The secret hope we bury

makes us brave in beautiful ways.

The moment you met me,

I exploded into a million fragments.

You stole my speech--

let it vanish, like smoke exhaled.

A keyless prison

of air between our skin.

Some things will never leave me

when the fog rolls in. 

Reviews

[JayG]

• In order to improve, just keep on writing.

Does that work with engineering? Medicine? Math? Is there any profession that you can think of where you can simply say, “I’m going to do it, and without taking any steps toward learning the skills of the profession practice it into perfection?

They offer degrees in both fiction and poetry. Surely some of what’s taught to those hard working students is necessary.

In our school days they train us in skills that our future employers will prize. That’s the purpose of public education. And in the area of writing, employers need us to write reports, papers, analysis, and letters. So what kind of writing are we assigned in school? Other then an occasional story, reports and essays. Their goal is to provide the reader with an informational experience. As such the methodology is fact-based and author-centric, as is the writing of your poems. You, the author, talk TO the reader, reporting and explaining. But poetry’s goal is to provide an emotional experience. We don’t tell the reader we cried at the funeral, our goal is to make the reader weep.

E. L. Doctorow was focused on fiction, but his words apply to poetry as well: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

How much time did your teachers spend on that? And how much on prosody, and skills of writing poetry? None, right? We literally leave our school years as qualified to write fiction and poetry as to successfully perform an appendectomy—though pretty much all of us are unaware of that when we graduate, and assume that if we say something deeply meaningful that’s poetry. And make the mistake that david Sedaris's student did: “The returning student had recently come through a difficult divorce, and because her pain was significant, she wrongly insisted her writing was significant as well.”

We forget that when we read our own work we have two things the reader lacks: Context and intent. So when we write, we'll too often leave out things that seem obvious to us. Then, as we read, we “fill in the blanks,” never realizing that we’re doing it.

It’s not a matter of talent, or how well we write. And since we’ll never try to fix the problem we don’t see as being one, so, I thought you'd want to know why you’re not getting more comments on your work, after all the work you put into it.

Step one is to be certain that when you edit you’re viewing the poem as a reader, one who has no context you don’t provide or evoke, because unless the reader has context as-they-read a line, it’s meaningless. And there can be no second first-impression

Next, look at the places where you, the author, are talking to the reader as if they know both you and what motivated you to write the words. When you say, "Let's share a meal, you & I", in Purgatory, what can it mean to the reader? Dinner at a local bar? In the kitchen? When you add, “One last embrace, one last kiss,” it’s obvious that you’re talking to someone, but who, and why is unknown, so for the reader there can be no emotional content or involvement.

In that poem, someone unknown appears to be suicidal for unknown reasons, and is blaming their feelings on someone not introduced, for unknown reasons. Unless you make them know the person and the situation, why should the reader care?

But...as the author, and having both context and intent, you put on the proper emotional state as you read, and will feel exactly the emotion you chose to have the reader feel. But who else in the entire world can do that?

In this piece you say, “The secret hope we bury makes us brave in beautiful ways.” Perfectly meaningful to you. But to the reader? What secret hope? And how in the pluperfect hells does giving up hope make us brave? You know, of course, because the line acts as a pointer to the necessary emotion, memories, and intent, all waiting in your mind.

The reader? The line acts as a pointer to the necessary emotion, memories, and intent, all waiting in *YOUR* mind. And without you there to explain as it’s read…

So…I truly wish I had better news, but you’re writing exactly as you were trained to write, and it works for you, so it’s not your fault. But still, addressing it will make a huge difference. Consciously asking, for each line, “Does the reader have context to give this the meaning I intend?" will help. A book or two on poetic technique will also make a difference. You don’t write structured poetry, but still an eye on prosody, and the strength that attention paid to the flow of stressed/unstressed syllables can give the words makes reading the excerpt from Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less traveled, on Amazon, a good idea.

But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[Coyote Poetry]

A wonderful poem shared my friend.
"The moment you met me,
I exploded into a million fragments.
You stole my speech--"
The above lines. So good. When someone steal my voice, they stole my heart. Thank you for sharing the outstanding poetry. I liked this one.
Coyote