Back to Poetry

In the interests of revision being vital to learning, I'm looking back through my old creative writing handbook, also known by some  as 'The Big Red Book', or more succinctly and sadly without a trace of affection, the 'BRB.' My motivation for doing this is that I have always believed that the major benefit from the reading experience comes from the revisit. I don't know why this is but it's probably to do with the brain's capacity to learn in chunks rather than in grand totals. If this is true perhaps the first read through scatters the hard new brain cells with raw material, then once those ideas germinate it softens the brain up to allow for a greater receptivity to the finer details missed the first time around.  Something like that anyway.

Easily the most talked about and in some cases reviled chapter in the BRB, was the one on poetry by the hapless (in A215 course terms) W N Herbert. I seem to remember I really enjoyed it - seeing in Herbert's style an unexpected refusal to take things too seriously which I really liked, though many seemed to hate it. The debate about WNH went on and on. I can't really remember what all the fuss was about except there was a sense felt by some that he didn't really explain what constituted a poem. Now having completed the course I'm not surprised that he didn't - it wasn't really in his interests.  His brief was to introduce poetry to those who had hardly even read never mind written a poem in their lives. I think he did it rather well. 

I wasn't alone, some talked about his accessibility. One female actually confessed something of a crush on him. But many, many CR students, when getting to the poetry section sought refuge in Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Traveled'. Fry's book was actually tougher to get through than the BRB in my view, and was written by someone who wasn't a poet but merely wanted to spout, perhaps even grandstand about the mechanics of poetry rather than discussing how ideas are formed.  Herbert's was a gentle prod on how you might tip your toes ever so gently into the poetic pool and see if there's room for them to splash around a bit.

Fry's approach (I love Stephen Fry by the way) is great for starting to write formal poetry, but what about the deeper definitions of poetry? the articulation of something that almost defies words, and how that might be done by rethinking the use of language and its concepts, to disrupt ordinary forms of expression to achieve ultimately a greater understanding of something? Fry comes across as a reluctant obsessive who perhaps because of his lack of credentials and being  fearful of accusations about not being a poet, never quite gets the tone right. It's slightly ironic that Fry the comedian is the serious, buttoned up guy here; don't let the little strained for jokes fool you he's not that comfortable. Herbert however is the chilled-out bohemian, sucking on a joint and chatting about postcards and photographs long before he starts on about iambics and metre which in any case seem to be, to him - a published poet - a little bit of 'here are the rules now go and break them.'  This contrasts with Fry's constant refrains throughout his book about the artificiality and wrongheadedness of free verse.  

Anyway, I'm going to go through the chapter again - maybe even do some of the exercises. I'm pretty sure that it's Herbert's chapter rather than Fry's book or for that matter the poetry chapters in the Big Blue (Oh yes, the BBB's spawned a sequel) that will get me writing poetry again. Then and only then will I look elsewhere.