The poem arrives in pieces, a line here, a word there. I write it quickly before it can escape, wake early and revise it, then revise again. It’s brilliant—surely my best work to date! Subtle! Smooth! Deceptively simple! And so on.

But let the poem rest a day or so and the brilliance fades. What I thought was clever is clumsy. What I thought creative is derivative. And so on. (This was the case with the poem about the fly posted earlier, about which enough said.)

Does this happen to you? What do you do when it does? Tear the poem up, keep revising it, or put it away with the hope that it will seem better a month from now? Tell us your story.

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No Guarantees

“… how can you ever be sure / that what you write is really / any good at all …”

That’s the question pacifist, environmentalist, Buddhist, and former poet laureate W. S. Merwin asks in “Berryman,” a poem about his early teacher John Berryman. The answer:

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

Strong words, but it helps to know that other poets, even the greats, live with uncertainty about their craft. Read the whole poem on The Writer’s Almanac.

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In the Cards

Ideas for poems are everywhere, but sometimes I feel surrounded by an anti-poetry force field that’s keeping the ideas out. In a 2008 interview in The Paris Review, poet Kay Ryan tells of finding inspiration in a deck of tarot cards. She wasn’t interested in telling fortunes, but she liked the pictures:

… in the morning I’d turn one card over and whatever that card was I would write a poem about it. The card might be Love, or it might be Death. My game, or project, was to write as many poems as there were cards in the deck. But since I couldn’t control which cards came up, I’d write some over and over again and some I’d never see. That gave me range.

Ryan says the tarot helped her see she could write about anything. You can read the interview here.

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The Missing Couplet

It’s exciting to have a piece accepted for publication, so I was delighted when Boston Literary Magazine published my poem “What I Know about Chemistry” in its Winter 2013-14 issue. But alas, the final couplet didn’t make it into print. Not their fault! Turns out it didn’t make it into my submission either. So, to correct the little chemical spill, here‘s the whole poem:

What I Know about Chemistry
Sally Zakariya

Grandfather was a chemist but the science
gene died with him in the Maine woods.

Hiker, archer, fisherman, consummate
outdoorsman, but still always a chemist

pursuing the central science. I see
him white coated with his test tubes

exploring the essential secrets
of the universe, matter’s mysteries

how atoms meet and dance and bond
in shapely mathematical precision.

I can’t fathom such formidable beauty
can’t grasp the fundamental knowledge

he held so easily. Did he see molecules
in dreams, devise arcane reactions as he

walked from home to lab, from lab to home?
Samuel Stockton Voorhees—I look in vain

for some suggestion of his sibilant name
in the periodic table. But never mind.

When he was young, I’m told, he saved a man
from drowning in the Johnstown Flood

no doubt analyzing the murky mixture
of flood water and debris as he dove in.

Lesson learned: when you cut and paste, double check!

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Kudos for Haiku Book

In the well-earned praise department, Sherry Weaver Smith's Land Shapes: Selected Haiku Poems has won an honorable mention in the prestigious R.H. Blyth Award for books of haiku in English. The award is presented annually by the World Haiku Club, based in Oxford, England, and was judged by esteemed Japanese poet and artist Susumu Takiguchi. Smith's haiku poems "are like the first scene of a drama, development of a story or change in the narrative," says the World Haiku Club's review of Land Shapes, "and how desperately we want to know the drama, story or narrative themselves!" The review is online at World Haiku Review.

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How to Appreciate a Poem

“Read it out loud. When you read a poem aloud, something amazing happens. It becomes a part of your physiology. Your body becomes actually involved in understanding and responding to it. You have more of a visceral reaction.”—Poet Richard Blanco, The New York Times Magazine, January 12, 2014

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‘Among the countless hollowed slopes …’

Eric Forsbergh’s new book, Imagine Morning: Poems of Companionship and Solitude, shows the range of his work, from longer, philosophical and narrative pieces to this brief but measured and precise description of a moment in time:

Meditation On Appalachia Among the countless hollowed slopes of Appalachia, the many tail-ends of valleys wending out from Knoxville, narrowing eventually to paths that vanish into curtained leaves, where, once inside, only dots of sunlight are permitted to speck the forest floor, or creep across the mounds of moss, as slow and imperceptible as deer whose breath is stilled upon the snapping of a branch, the shiny beetle crawls unhurriedly to find the pulpy log’s decay..

You can read more poems from the book here.

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50 Birds for Each of Us

“On any given day,” according to author Thor Hanson in his book Feathers, “up to four hundred billion individual birds may be found flying, soaring, swimming, hopping, or otherwise flitting about the earth. That's more than fifty birds for every human being.”

What will you do with your 50 birds? Perhaps write a poem for each one.—S.Z.

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First Bad Poem of the Day

This exercise, suggested by a creative writing professor, assumes that (a) you will write at least one poem every day and (b) some or all of the poems you write that day will be bad. It’s the first bad one that matters, though, the first unformed idea, the first limping lines, the first ragged image. That’s the one you write down as soon as you wake up. When you’ve collected a notebook full of first bad poems, look back for the few gems that gleam out of the dross and see what you can make of them.

It’s a dismal undertaking but a good discipline. Try it, you’ll see. Here, just to make you feel better about your own first bad poems, is one of mine:

Things are true until they’re not
day after day the same until it’s not

The cleaver comes down
and sunders what’s past
from what’s to come

A sliver of now trembles
at the blow—S.Z. 

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What’s A Poem For?

There’s no right answer—that is, any one of a hundred answers can be right. But I like what poet Sebastian Matthews said in an interview for Spartanburg Magazine. Unfortunately, the interview is no longer available online, but here’s Matthews’ answer to the double-barreled question, What must a poem do? How does it work on the reader?

It must have sufficient energy to allow the reader to move through it; ample music and imagery to get him to return to the page and read it aloud; and enough wisdom or insight to make her ponder it as she heads back out into the day. I want him to be ensnared by the poem so that he can't help but bring it with him to the next thing. Ideally, she would end up at a party of like-minded souls and read the poem to her friends, who will read poems to her in return. Or he'll post it on his blog, or type it out in an e-mail to a friend, or send it by post as a card or a letter. Or write out a few lines in her notebook, or use a line in a painting or a collage. Maybe he'll write a poem as a reply, which as Geoff Dyer once said, is the real critical response: a lineage of readers and writers communicating through this dialogue. 

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Eavesdropping

A snatch of conversation … a message scrawled on a rest room wall … found words can be good poem starters. Examples:

• Reclaim yourself.
• The world is so broken, so broken.
• Sometimes the best husband is an ex-husband.
• I used to know where wild strawberries grow.
• Art won’t hurt you.
• Life is a war against chaos.ove to see them.

Overhearing stuff like this is why it’s good to keep a little notebook handy.—S.Z.,

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Six Legs

Spoiler alert: If you’re squeamish about bugs, you might want to skip this item. But if you’ve ever been curious about busy bees, flighty butterflies, or even industrious ants, Sally Zakariya’s new book Insectomania might be just what you’re looking for. Her wry yet sensitive poems are enhanced with notable quotes and illustrations, most of them 19th-century naturalists’ engravings. Who wouldn’t want to find such a book in a Christmas stocking? Just click on the cover image to read more about Insectomania and see sample pages.

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Advertisements for Yourself

Poets tend to be modest souls, so marketing your work can seem an onerous task. Not so with our fellow blogger Kevin Taylor, who’s come up with a really clever way to let people know who he is and what he does—and to make his marketing plan pay for itself.

Here’s how Kevin describes his scheme:

I tell almost everyone that I am a poet because I want them to think "poet" when they see or think of me. Or "Kevin" when they think of poetry. That takes a lot of promotion, and I got to thinking about getting the prospective audience member to pay for the promo. Here is what I came up with.

Step 1 was to get plain black and white business cards made up with “Kevin J. Taylor, Poet” on one side and contact info on the other, followed by a line that says "I can help," or "Readings—Coaching—Inquiries." Everyone gets that card. Everyone.

Next I chose about a dozen haiku (it could be anything) and made a small booklet at Staples with one haiku on each page. The cover is yellow card stock with my name on the front and the info from my business card on the back. Plus a price: $1. The inside front cover has a line or two promoting my books and where you can find them. I bind the booklet with a piece of red embroidery thread tied in the middle page and trimmed. I cut a tiny slit in the top and bottom of the center fold so that the thread is secure and won't slip off. The whole thing looks neat and tidy and is small enough to fit in a shirt pocket or a purse.

When I meet somebody, I say, “Hi!” and hand them a card. They look at it and see my name plus the word “poet.”

Next I pull a couple of booklets out of my pocket and say, "I am getting my name out there, and I made these little booklets with some haiku I wrote, like this one, "The hungry poet / greets each silence—Waiting / for his supper—Ha!.”

Then I close the booklet and hand it over, saying, "They're hand made for a dollar or whatever you can afford. The person is flabbergasted and hands me a dollar—really, it’s true. Then I give the person two booklets and say, "One for you and one for you to give to someone you think will like it."

When I follow this routine with people, they are happy. I am happy. I get paid for poetry, and the people who have my booklets will promote me to someone else with the second copy. Very cool. They will contribute to my success and have someone else to talk to about my poetry.

When I do a reading I also read from the little booklet briefly and tell them it’s a buck or whatever they'd like to pay, and then I give them two. I calculate my out-of-pocket expenses at about thirty cents for each booklet.

Believe me, if you do this, or something like it, people will love it and you will become their poet. They will never forget you.  

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At the Lumberyard

Waiting in the car while my husband ran in to ask a couple of questions, I jotted a few lines that later turned into this:

Dead Wood
By Sally Zakariya

In the parking lot behind the lumber yard
the buzz saw’s whining diva
sings its swooping song
cut wood bleeds sawdust
a sharp smell

 I list the living trees that rim the lot
tulip poplar . . . locust . . . beech
brash bamboo crowding in
its blade leaves shining green

Inside you talk about board feet
and rot resistance
and do you deliver
while somewhere trees are cut
down for us

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Op-Ed Poetry?

You read that right. When the Los Angeles Times asked for some of the above, the editors heard from 1,500 poets and would-be poets. Read the resulting “Rhyme and Reason” here. Washington Post, New York Times, are you listening?

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Conversation with a Poet

In response to our last post, Canadian poet Kevin Taylor writes that when he tells anyone he’s a poet—“which I do every day”—the conversation goes something like this:

Q. What are your poems about?
A: Life. From a spirit’s point of view.
Q: Do they rhyme?
A: About half and half. Something for everyone.
Q: I used to write poems when I was a teenager.
A: Great! I'd love to see them.

And then, Taylor says, people usually get interested, and the conversation continues. “What kind of poems do you write?” they ask. Kevin’s answer: “Well, what do you like?” And then he quotes one of his poems that he thinks matches their preference. (You can see some of Kevin’s poetry here.) 

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About our Name

Ever notice how the conversation stutters when you tell someone you’re a poet? Members of the Poetry Society of America report these common responses:

• What are your poems about?
• Do they rhyme?
• I used to write poems when I was a teenager

(Source: Job Jibber Jabber by Ben Schott, New York Times, August 4, 2013)

My own answers to these comments, in order:

• Love, death—you know, the usual.
• Mostly not—it’s really hard to rhyme well.
• Why did you stop?

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A Little Night Music

Alan Meyrowitz, a friend from the Northern Virginia Poetry Salon, sent us this poignant short poem that captures a life in a few lines.

Night Lilies
By Alan Meyrowitz

Shy by day, tightly furled,
heeding nightly call to bloom.

How much the same,
my love demure till waning light.
So joy is sown in garden’s bed
as well our own.

Yet passion’s not by season bound—
lilies will be gone by fall.