Entering Poetry: Stepping Outside of Our Boxes
Diana M. Raab -- June 22, 2006
Ever since I was a little girl, poetry seemed daunting. I didn't enjoy reading it and I certainly would not tackle writing it. I suppose the turn-off had to do with how poetry was taught to me in school. All I remember was "Beowolf" and I never understood what all the excitement was about. In later years, the English teachers introduced us to Shakespeare, which for a young adult, was equally boring.
Yet, as a teenager in the 1960s I discovered a Rod McKuen's book of poems, Listen to the Warm, which, until this day, remains on my bookshelf. I read that book over and over again. Poetry is like that, though. We all have our favorites.
Poetry was asleep in my life for many years. While completing an MFA in Writing, I read some poetry anthologies which left a small impact on me, but I really got turned on to poetry when I attended my first reading by Billy Collins. Billy's poems were accessible to me. They made me laugh and cry and made reference to tangible subjects which I could relate to, like my two favorites, "Insomnia," and "Forgetfulness".
The next reading I attended was by another great contemporary poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. The poems themselves weren't overly complex, his voice was calm and mesmerizing, and his reading style captivated me. Two poems that particularly stand out in my mind are "Songs of My Father," about his father and "Missing In Action," about Vietnam, two subjects he has written a great deal about.
After both of those readings, I rushed out and bought all their books. Around the same time I attended a writer's group at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida where I lived at the time. The group was run by my now friend and colleague, a writer who teaches at the college, Philip F. Deaver, and we met for four hours once each month. We had the opportunity to critique his new poems, some of which made their way into his first book of poetry, How Men Pray. In a recent email, he wrote, "I've written poetry since 1967, but never imagined publishing in this form. William Matthews is who mentored me into it. Story writers have much in common with poets and are always working in both forms. Well, not all, or always, but many are a lot of the time."
Unbeknownst to me, most of the participants in Deaver's group were poets, except me and a handful of others. For the first few months, I arrived with a short essay, others with short stories, but the majority of participants shared poems. I listened intently and after a few weeks I became inspired to write my first poem and present it to the group. That poem is called, "A Longer Tongue Would Be Nice," and is now published.
On my first read to the group I felt quite nervous but after the wave of giggles and kudos died down, I was already hooked on the genre. After reading the poem, a friend in the group turned to me and whispered, "I think there's a poet in you." I smiled and looked up at Deaver who said to the group, "Can you believe this is Diana's first poem?" The encouragements pushed me into my new mid-life passion, writing autobiographical and confessional poetry.
Poetry kept seeping into my life because I let it. On my bedside table, I kept the collections of Billy Collins, Steven Dunn, Pablo Neruda, Denise Duhamel, Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. My poetry writing became more intense during the holiday season a few years ago when I was simply too busy to partake in my daily prose writing ritual. I turned to poetry to satiate my daily writing need when time was a hindering factor. Sometimes we just crave instant gratification and poetry can do just that.
To further my study of poetry, I joined Molly Fisk's online poetry workshop. Poetry Book Camp (http://www.poetrybootcamp.com). For six days we wrote a poem a day which we shared with the rest of the group, but our poems were critiqued only by one other poet, other than Molly. My poetry grew tremendously under Molly's supportive and encouraging direction. Molly and I have become good friends and this was an added bonus to stepping outside of my literary box.
Another poetic turning point in my life was attending a workshop led by Sharon Olds at Esalen this past March. Sharon's poetic prowess and creativity was extremely contagious. It was particularly neat to hear her poems read in their own raw form, ones that she'd created right there during the workshop.
I find myself growing more and more excited about writing poetry, as it brings a perpetual smile to my face. For me, writing poetry is a side step from the essay and memoir prose world which I live in on most days. I also have a new perspective on why I love to write poetry, as expressed by Olds during her workshop, "I want to know what's going on in my mind, but I really don't want to know what I'm thinking."