Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 5: Building Worlds

Hello Friends and Fiends--

To further celebrate the release of Writing Poetry in the Dark, I wanted to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most architectural of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Albert Wendland and Jessica McHugh. I decided to showcase these two poets together because, in a lot of ways, they both talk about the same thing in their respective essays: world-building. Wendland talks about it from a creation perspective, more akin to what we would see in fantastical fiction (but applied to the poem), whereas McHugh tackles it visually as she pulls images from various words and lines in books and not only creates a picture but a new piece of poetry as well. All hail the blackout poem!

I hope you'll enjoy our conversations and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.

Best,

Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

AW: I once took a course in “The Augustan Age” (18th century British Literature), and though that sounds dry as hell, the course was quite interesting because the professor made us write, each week, in the style of whatever author we were reading. So we had to focus intensely on the voice and structure of each writer, and this included poets. You learn quite a lot when forced to write, for example, rhymed iambic-pentameter couplets in the style of Dryden or Pope. So I highly recommend the exercise: picking some of your most admired and respected poets and trying to write in their exact style. It’s challenging and rewarding, needing to pay very close attention to an author’s meter, emphasis, line length, etc. Poetry isn’t just prose where the typist hits “return” more often. It’s organized line-by-line auditory expression. So an exercise of close imitation can become a revelation of tools of the trade.

JM: That I belong here. Poetry was my first creative love, and reading it has always comforted me in a way prose has never quite matched; yet, I’ve spent most of my writing career focusing on novels and short stories. Even after having poetry published, I hesitated to call myself a poet. Maybe because I put it on a pedestal for so long and treated it so preciously. I will continue to do that, of course, but now I’m

embracing myself as part of the tribe. If this sounds like you, there’s a very good chance you’re a poet that’s been selling themselves short as well. And if so, cut it out and own your poetic radtacularity!

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

AW: Though it’s a collection of mainly white, male, ivy-league poets, and long out-of-print, an anthology called The Distinctive Voice impressed me immensely when I was an undergraduate. It made me want to write poetry.

Another work, a favorite among poetry instructors, students, and practicing poets—indeed, a classic—is How Does a Poem Mean, by John Ciardi. Note that it’s not “What” a poem means, but “How”—and that’s the whole point. The book is about how poems work, how they communicate in their own special fashion, and not just about what they say. Highly recommended.

Also, I get as much inspiration (and maybe even more) for writing speculative poetry from SF novelists who write with a poetic style. The science fiction prose of Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, Samuel Delany, and Dan Simmons have long influenced me. And more recent hybrid or fantasy novels like Radiance by Catherynne Valente and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern are almost long poems in themselves and thus very inspiring.

JM: It’s probably a cliché answer, but I don’t care. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman is everything to me. Whenever I feel like I need a recharge, I turn to Song of Myself and let it fill me with its musical truth.

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

AW: Poetry requires a different mindset from telling a story. It’s more like sculpture, an attempt to capture—in a highly organized word “object”—a moment, an impression, a look, an idea, a thought. You thus make that moment or notion permanent so readers can always be reminded of it. A poem is a frozen slice of passing time. And the wonderful thing about speculative poetry is you don’t have to freeze just personal time (as so much poetry does), you also get to capture historical, social, interplanetary, galactic, and cosmic time. Now that’s a challenge!

JM: Guidelines matter, but technical precision means nothing without true emotion guiding each line.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.