AF: Poetry Minilesson

I am sorry these short poetry mini-lessons are coming so late in the writing process.

I love messing around with poetry, reading poetry and writing poetry with young people.  With AP English Language and Expository Writing classes,  I only get to work in poetry some summers when I am teaching at Young Writer's Camp.

Let me offer three quick lessons that are fun and yield good results.

Remember, a poet is in love with language, and seeks the music and the rhythm of language.  For every word that ends up in the poem itself, several must have already been cut.  You want to work with the barest and strongest words that yield the most honest and direct impact.

The Photograph Poem
How to do it:  Hold a photograph in your hand, either real or imagined.  Then using your eyes as the camera, go over the photo and then with your language, describe what you see.  Comment on the content of the photo only minimally.  Let the image and your words do the work of communicating, and trust your reader to see what you see.  Your job as a writer is to be faithful to the image and the feeling that you wish to convey WITHOUT telling anybody how they should feel.

Watch Sandra Cisneros do it:

My Wicked Wicked Ways

This is my father.
See? He is young.
He looks like Errol Flynn.
He is wearing a hat
that tips over one eye,
a suit that fits him good,
and baggy pants.
He is also wearing
those awful shoes,
the two-toned ones
my mother hates.
Here is my mother.
She is not crying.
She cannot look into the lens
because the sun is bright.
The woman,
the one my father knows,
is not here.
She does not come till later.

My mother will get very mad.
Her face will turn red
and she will throw a shoe.
My father will say nothing.
After a while everyone
will forget it.
Years and years will pass.
My mother will stop mentioning it.

This is me she is carrying.
I am a baby.
She does not know
I will turn out bad.
        --Sandra Cisneros

Cisneros steps out of the photo for a moment to tell a quick little story, and then returns to the photo for its surprising concluding lines.  I love how this poem suggests that underneath the banal family photo burbles another very different story -- unfortunately also banal and ordinary -- that is nevertheless unexpected precisely because it squirms out from the photo.

I have had good success with students writing poems about photographs.  It somehow opens up possibilities, and frees up the writer.