From an early age, most of us have the rules of spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure imprinted indelibly on our brains.
But now that we’re grown-up poets, we don’t have to abide by all those rules. Let’s wander through a small selection of writers who, for a variety of reasons, did not and/or do not abide.
Omission
The study of psychoacoustics looks at how the brain perceives sound. Sometimes in a piece of music, we hear notes that aren’t physically there. The context of the music surrounding the supposed note, or the blending of different frequencies, can make it seem like a missing note is really there.
Similarly, in poetry, the use of obfuscation—such as might happen from leaving out words, being indirect, talking around things, or even leaving a subject out entirely—can be a way to convey an idea or emotion that’s never actually named.
Some of the most compelling erasure (also called blackout, whiteout, or redactive) poems part ways with supply-and-demand: What the reader expects to find is often not there. The poems instead access power partly from what isn’t there.
This might be achieved, as I’ve said, through leaving out important elements, or it might be through leaving out more of the less important elements, like connective words and all the grammar that can clutter an idea.
Erasure poems generally start with a pre-written text or document. This could be a newspaper article, a government document, a letter, a textbook, anything. To make one, you simply go through and remove or cross out words (with a black marker, white-out, paint, erasure, etc).
The words left over after at the end comprise the poem. Some extraordinary poets who’ve used erasure powerfully and meaningfully include Reginald Dwayne Betts, Tracy K. Smith, and M. NourbeSe Philip (those links lead to examples).
Challenge:
Create an erasure/blackout poem from a pre-existing text.
Don’t worry about finding all the words you need to make a “sensible” sentence or phrase. Focus on impact, suggestion, and context, rather than grammar. Lean into gaps, spaces, missing pieces, yawning chasms.
“Fine Writing”
Last summer, I ran into a small, plain-looking, faded 1985 volume of poems called Eternity Smith and other poems, by a poet named Juanita Casey. I was charmed by her refreshing, vivid writing.
I ordered another of her books, 1978’s The Circus, which is a poetry novel about childhood, from a child’s point of view. The book recreates the logic and imagination of a child.
Casey’s metaphors are strange, abstract, colorful. Most surprising to me were her similes, which are themselves sometimes encased in similes—a bold gilding of the lily which works so well. I feel a strange familiarity—I can remember thinking in such nested similes, nested logics, & nested tangents when I was very young:
And Mother collapses in leaning, green tents of love, like burying flies in the sugar-bowl. Let one foot come out and half a wing, he struggles and humps like a mole in a sugar field.
The book is probably semi-autobiographical; born to Irish Travellers, Casey was adopted by English parents. The Circus describes the difficulty its child character has feeling love for her adoptive parents:
You cannot love Mother, ready to sit on you with a spreading octopus, like watching them cut out a cow's stomach all over you. [...] I want to truly love, galloping, but it only foxes among my trees, and my yellow eyes see it like a run-over frog and don't touch. They are important and want me to love them like Jesus so loved the world. But I cannot. I try in heart's grunts, but except for Thank You for my birthday, I am grey with salt all around me like an old post in the sea.
The metaphors and similes she uses here are visceral (“heart’s grunts” and “watching them cut out a cow’s stomach”) as well as wretchedly lonely, parched for connection: “I am grey with salt all around me”.
The writing is lush. It’s lovely. And it works. It’s inspired me to stop being afraid of extravagance when it comes to similes and metaphors.
Challenge:
Write a new poem that includes the following:
At least one instance of a nested metaphor or simile (a metaphor within a metaphor; a simile within a simile)
“Too many” metaphors or similes. Push yourself to do just one more than you’re comfortable with.
There’s a time and place for everything, and you may or may not like your finished product. But the practice of opening to this kind of lushness could prepare you to be similarly open when it’s needed in a future poem.
Spelling & Vocab
I recently ran into a powerful and clever book of poems by an author new to me: Feeld by Jos Charles. Here are the last lines from the first poem in her book:
alarum is mye nayme / unkempt & handeld i am hors / i am sadeld / i am a brokn hors
The language is like Middle English medieval works (for example, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) in its spelling, some of its constructions, its punning, its playfulness. The poems look at some contemporary issues of identity, including being American and being transgender (Charles is both).
Jos Charles bends language, via willful spelling, to a place where it must be parsed slowly, struggled through, read not so much with the brain as the mouth. Language becomes a felt thing, a terrain to be crossed.
— Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate
“The Supposed Productions of a Priest of Bristol”
At a surface level, Charles’ book calls to mind an early poetic interest of mine; the creations of tragic young Thomas Chatterton, who committed suicide at age 17 in 1770 after quite a teenaged career of “discovering” and publishing the writings of a supposed 15th-century priest, Thomas Rowley (AKA Chatterton himself). He wrote with glorious pseudo-15th century spelling, and with enough skill that some in the publishing world were fooled.
Creole
English being the language of a brutal and long-lasting empire, many English-based creole languages have developed in places affected by British colonization or the Atlantic slave trade. A creole is developed from mixing various languages into one new language.
Jamaican-born, British-based Reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson’s work combines musical traditions, Jamaican Creole, and oral verse. Some of his poems employ “proper” (emphasis on the scare quotes there) English; some employ Jamaican Creole and other linguistic influences. Here are the first few verses of his poem, “Inglan is a Bitch”:
A poet should not employ accents, dialects, or languages that aren’t theirs. But if your own lived experience and identity includes the use of variations on “proper” English (including things as simple as slang), or the use of 2nd or 3rd languages, incorporating these variations and differences and vocabulary into your poems can bring new layers of depth to your work.
If you want to clarify the lexicon for readers, you can – through explanations or obvious contexts within the poem, footnotes, endnotes, epigraphs, glossaries, or other devices. However, it’s also not your responsibility; a reader can (especially these days) educate themselves and look up anything they need to. Poetry does not need to be labor-free for the reader.
Challenge:
Every decade has its own unique slang, whether you were born in the 2000s or the 1930s.
Create a poem that incorporates slang from your own childhood (and from within your own family/cultural identity).
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