Saturday, February 20, 2010

Ethereal Gremlins

It's one sort of annoyance when friends cannot receive an email about where to meet for lunch. It's quite another when editors' comments, rejections, and acceptances land in the spam box; or the submission lands in a spam box. All of these have happened over the past few weeks. It may be a conspiracy by those who believe that poets and poems have no business clogging up the ether, but I doubt we draw that much attention from the sort of geeks and techies who know how to put a hex on us. Now I just check that spam thing every day.

The weirdest result of all this on-line kerfuffle was this: recently by mail--snail version--I received a copy of a publication to which I had not too long ago submitted poems. I hadn't heard back, but given the leaky vessel of my computer, I wasn't surprised. I was pleased because one only gets free copies by having work appear in the lit mag. Sure enough, there I was, listed among the contributors. However, I could not find my poem, despite squinting until my eyelids hurt, running my finger repeatedly down the contents page, and finally paging through the whole issue. Nope, nothing, nada, squat. So I emailed the editor. Well, he had sent an acceptance--long lost by this time--but somehow the poem got chewed by a dog, stolen by aliens, was written in slowly disappearing ink, or just melted in the rain. The good news is that he does intend publishing the piece, once he finds it, in his next issue. However, since I've already been in the contributor's column, I will be invisible in the subseqent one. I think he's joking, but it's hard to hear tone of voice from the bottom of a digital well.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Slow Poems or Fast

Those of you not interested much in the craft of making poems might want to go out for a bagel at this point. It's apt to get technical in here. But if you like lurking over the shoulder of a writer at work, pull up a chair and pour another cup of coffee. Here's my issue: in a writing group last week, I heard two equally intelligent poets make opposing statements about the effect of line length on the speed with which they read the poem. One said that the long lines in Poem A slowed it down; the other said that short lines in Poem B slowed it down. Can we have it both ways? Making a poem is not like ordering a chili dog where you get to choose from six different garnishes. Well, bad analogy--I like poems with lots of spice and chili dogs with just sharp cheese and mild chili so I can still taste the dog, and while there are not infinite ways of using the language, there is a bewildering variety of effect. (I think I'm giving myself a headache.)

Since that evening, I've tried tuning in to statements about the length of lines and their effect on the pace of the poem. The most interesting idea came from The Poet's Companion by Laux and Addonizio. These two admit, "We read somewhere that short lines speed up the pace of a poem, but we feel the opposite; we experience a poem in short lines as a more gradual movement" (112). I want to suggest that the pace is more susceptible to the length of the syllables, the presence or absence of enjambment, the rhythm within the line, whether or not the line ends as stressed or unstressed, and the white space around the poem. If the line walks along in primarily iambs, those most familiar feet by which we make progress through the piece, and the words are fairly short, the line either end stopped or at least finished with a noun, I see the pace as moderate. If the rhythm is in triple feet (dactyls or anapests) or in the thudding of spondee boots, it runs ahead like a pup off leash. The eye takes more time to cross the blank desert of a stanza break or open field design, thus letting the line linger a micro-second longer in the reader's brain.

Then there's the question of rhyme, not a matter I have any legitimate business talking about, but that's never stopped me before. My writing partner, Larry, is fond of rhyme and we often tangle about the ways it draws attention to itself and impedes the progress of the poem (my position, his differs). But here's the cute thing that popped up Saturday morning, when we ended up agreeing on an idea about rhyme. Rhyme both retards and rushes the line, we decided. Once the rhyme scheme is established, we rush forward to find the next rhyme, but at the same time we are pushed back to recall the previous rhyme. No wonder I freeze in the company of heavy, exact rhymes. It's like riding a Push-me Pull-you from Dr. Doolittle. So I suppose it's a bit of a wash in its effect on the speed of any given line, but the influence is there for us to care about. I welcome help on this question. Once one of you has negotiated peace in the Middle East, cured cancer, and fed the whole hungry world, let me know what to think here.