How To (and How Not To) Write Poetry
Advice for blocked writers and aspiring poets from a Nobel Prize winner’s newspaper column.
To
Heliodor from Przemysl: “You write, ‘I know my poems have many faults,
but so what, I’m not going to stop and fix them.’ And why is that, oh
Heliodor? Perhaps because you hold poetry so sacred? Or maybe you
consider it insignificant? Both ways of treating poetry are mistaken,
and what’s worse, they free the novice poet from the necessity of
working on his verses…..”
To
Mr.K.K from Byton: “You treat free verse as a free-for –all. But poetry
(whatever we may say) is, was and will always be a game. And as every
child knows, all games haves rules. So why do grown-ups forget?”
To
Mr. Pal-Zet of Skarysko-Kam: “The poems you’ve sent suggest that you’ve
failed to perceive a key difference between poetry and prose. For
example, the poem entitled ‘Here’ is merely a modest prose description
of a room and the furniture it holds. In prose such description perform a
specific function: they set the stage for the action to come, In a
moment the doors will open, someone will entre, and something will take
place. In poetry the description itself must ‘take place’. Everything
becomes significant, meaningful: the choice of images, their placement,
the shape they take in words. The description of that room, and the
emotion contained by that description must be shared by the readers.
Otherwise, prose will stay prose, no matter how hard you work to break
your sentences
into lines of verse. Ans what’s worse, nothing happens afterwards.”
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