The Practice of Poetry

We all have a sense of the necessity and beauty of language in writing poetry, but we only come slowly to the realization that language is also an obstacle, almost the enemy.

BREAKING THE SENTENCE; OR, NO SENTENCES BUT IN THINGS

I often assign this exercise to poets whose minds seem, at the time, overdetermined by the sentence and all its rules and proprieties

Write a poem that is simply a list of things.

think this exercise came out of my early delight with “Show and Tell” in grade school.

t is also a collaborative effor

I’ve found in my own writing workshops that this exercise is an excellent way to get acquainted, as people reveal themselves in unexpected ways through the objects they choose to describe and display

“An Irish tin whistle is cheap, I got it in the Indian Chesos Mountains,
It takes on marks, tone changes,” says
“This horseshoe nail necklace is a surrogate for 4 Corners-Indian-squash-necklace,” says
“I’m 28 I have a bird’s eye view,” says
“All the color washes out when you hold it to the light,” says

use the word “says” after every line, which is something one finds in American Indian ritual chants, to get across the “oral” nature of the exercise:

The example I include here I later incorporated into a piece entitled “Realm Which Includes an Eclipse, A Cave, & Some Amulets.”