Dear subscribers,
I am grateful for each of you. Thank you so much for reading.
I’m thrilled to announce that my first full-length book, because God loves the wasp, is now available for pre-orders (it officially comes out in August)!
It’s a memoir in poetry about the years I spent within the abusive “troubled teen” industry in the late 1990s. Poet Rae Armantrout was kind enough to write the following about my book:
Elisabeth Blair writes as a survivor of a sadistic and dehumanizing facility for “troubled teens”—or perhaps the word is “camp.” It certainly reminds us of the other, more famous camps, gulags, and re-education centers we’re aware of. Because Blair is also a brilliant poet, she can take us into the perceptions of the shattered person or, in this case, child. The child understands only the contours of coercion: “the storm wants specific things.” In fact, she no longer identifies as human, and, at times, that seems like a good thing: “You tell them you’re a slice of grass where a shadow falls—/your greens seem burnt/but they’re not.//They don’t believe you.” Blair’s language is barbed, destabilizing, and very much alive. This is an important book.
~ Rae Armantrout
If you’re interested, you can pre-order from Unsolicited Press directly, get it from Indiebound or Amazon, or put in an order with your local bookstore. My sincere thanks for your support of my writing.
Revolution & Transmutation
Like me, you’ve probably experienced someone speaking at you in a one-way monologue. They left no physical or cognitive space for you – instead filling it entirely with their voice, energy, stories, ideas, and opinions. You likely felt erased, bored, impatient, and you looked for a way to escape.
I think that a reader of a poem may respond in the same way if they’re treated like they’re a microphone for the poet to speak into. They’ll feel it if the poem is erasing them. They’ll feel bored, impatient, and they’ll try to escape by putting the book down or daydreaming at the poetry reading.
Poet, essayist, and feminist Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) writes1 that a “revolutionary” poet (which I’ll define here as one who wishes to use poetry to draw attention to injustice and to effect change) must do more than “self-disclose” or “photograph”.
That is, they can’t simply speak at the reader, whether about themselves or about their topic. She suggests that revolutionary poets must go a step further and transmute; must ask “what if,” must envision how a harm should be addressed, or healed, or how a structure, community, or society should or could be different.
Science-fiction often does this too, looks ahead and tries to solve or predict problems, and imagines how the world could be better or worse.
Not all of us self-identify as revolutionary poets. And if we do, we may not limit ourselves to writing only revolutionary poetry. Yet I think Rich’s point can guide any poet whose goal is to engage their reader. Simply put, we must do more than just talk at our reader. We must treat the poem as a conversation, and let the reader contribute to it.
The Toolbox
Drawing on my background of working within several different art forms, I’ve put together a set of go-to tools which may help a poem be more inviting and engaging for the reader. I list them below, plus I made the above handy PDF chart if you are more of a visual learner.
Tools drawn from poetry—
Reach out in addition to reaching in. Instead of accessing only your own knowledge and experience, reach out to other kinds of knowledge and experience:
Research, read, interview, survey, listen.
Quote or reference other artworks or poems.
Ask questions. Instead of only stating/describing/declaring, pose questions.
Hypothetical, rhetorical, philosophical, any kind of question, directed at the subject, yourself, the reader, anyone.
Provide an answer—or don’t.
Question by Mae Swenson
Aubade with Insomnia by Joshua Bennett
Questionnaire by Charles Bernstein
Use dialogue.
Literal dialogue—multiple voices engaging with each other. Subtler dialogue—conflicting ideas, traded vantage points.
Ilya Kaminsky’s book, Deaf Republic.
It Was the Animals by Natalie Diaz
excerpt from series of poems about Millie & Christine McCoy by Tyehimba Jess, from the book OLIO
Allow space for the reader—to breathe, think, digest, imagine, sympathize, experience. Though these activities may be silent and private, they’re still part of the conversation you create by writing and sharing a poem.
Conceptual space: for the reader to experience tangential associations, memories—to connect what they’ve just read with their own experiences.
Physical space: When reading a poem (or anything) aloud, we are often advised to go slowly, to allow the audience to digest what they’re hearing. Considerations should be similar with reading silently to one’s self.
My Sister Says White Supremacy is Turning Her Crazy by Morgan Parker
Include emotions. Be unafraid of sticking strong ones in by altering things like tone of voice, font, capitals, italics, or graphic placement/presentation.
Tools drawn from conceptual art—
Use an imperative or instructive voice. This can involve the reader in the creation of the artwork/poem itself.
Grapefruit (1964, Yoko Ono) is a small book with sets of instructions for the reader to follow. The reader’s actions “complete” the artworks.
TUNAFISH SANDWICH PIECE
Imagine one thousand suns in the
sky at the same time.
Let them shine for one hour.
Then, let them gradually melt
into the sky.
Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.
— 1964 Spring (from Grapefruit by Yoko Ono)
Recombine. Take two tropes/ideas/things that are likely to be familiar to your reader, and combine them to make a third, wholly new thing, to spark interest and form new neural pathways.
How Does a Girl Like You Get to Be a Girl Like You? (1995, Yinka Shonibare). Shonibare’s piece marries colonial western garments with traditional African fabrics (which, he has noted somewhat wryly, were themselves made in China).
Recontextualize the familiar. Use the banal/quotidian/something extremely familiar to the reader as a gateway to something new, or as a meta-commentary or extended metaphor.
The Artist is Present — 2010, Marina Abramović. “Seated silently at a wooden table across from an empty chair, she waited as people took turns sitting in the chair and locking eyes with her. Over the course of nearly three months, for eight hours a day, she met the gaze of 1,000 strangers, many of whom were moved to tears.”
Challenge:
Write a poem using either commands/imperative form or questions/interrogative form. Make a conscious effort to allow space (such as visual, aural, physical, emotional, conceptual) for the reader to digest or think about the content of the poem.
Tools drawn from visual art—
Consciously use the negative space.
Visually—the spaces where there is no text.
Content-wise—the things that are NOT being said, which are present by omission. Think here about the inclusion of hints, subtexts, unfinished statements, mysteries, cut-off sentences, em-dashes—, conversations that end abruptly, questions that go unanswered.
Create a layered depth—foreground, middle ground, background. Include not just the subject but the ideas, people, land, history, future, and relations in front of, around, and behind the subject—whether chronologically, physically on the page, or conceptually (tangential ideas erupting every few verses, for example).
Check the flow and the eyelines. Comics artists check their work for the visual path of the gaze, or the eyeline. Does your eye naturally follow a set of markers down or across the page? How might you re-set the poem on the page to help the reader access and engage with the meaning?
Tools drawn from composition/songwriting/performing—
Use intros & outros. Usher or guide the reader into and out of the poem.
Use humor. Stage banter is a vital tool—laughter is an intimate exchange, and highly effective at holding attention.
Build toward arrivals. Arrange places in the poem that are arrival spots—resolutions, questions, new moods, tempos, themes, ideas. A volta or turn in the poem is a common arrival place, as is the end of the poem, but anywhere can be made into an arrival by using emotions like anticipation or dread, and incorporating techniques like foreshadowing.
Use extrapoetic devices for all they’re worth—titles, subtitles, quotes, introductions, footnotes, endnotes, illustrations, etc. They help the reader to contextualize and navigate a poem.
Challenge:
Choose one (or try all three):
A: Write a poem which takes some of its power from what it omits.
B: Write a poem which incorporates either anticipation or dread, and an arrival place where these feelings culminate. Perhaps suspense followed by revelations, or hope followed by gratification. Note that this can be done with the story or narrative of the poem, but it can also be done more subtly, with tone, hints, sonic devices, graphic arrangement on the page, voices, dialogue, and so on.
C. Create a poem which employs one or more of the following: footnotes, endnotes, illustrations.
If you choose to do any of the challenges in this or any of my newsletters, and you’re willing to share, I’d love to read your poem(s) or hear about your experience! You can comment below or email me at ecblair@gmail.com.
Happy June!
from essay “What If?” by Adrienne Rich, in What Is Found There, 1993