tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post113847991808315934..comments2024-01-23T18:21:17.066+00:00Comments on Surroundings: How (not) to Write a Poem: Part 2Robhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17046788730174617923noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post-1138664744022715702006-01-30T23:45:00.000+00:002006-01-30T23:45:00.000+00:00'My most “successful” poems, I think anyway, are t...'My most “successful” poems, I think anyway, are those where I have a driving passion almost to “use” an idea.' - the other Rob.<BR/><BR/>I'm with you there. These poems always seem to work out better for me too.<BR/><BR/>It's been interesting to hear how other people go about writing. It's probably unsurprising that there are as many different approaches as there are styles of writing.Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17046788730174617923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post-1138568741628918412006-01-29T21:05:00.000+00:002006-01-29T21:05:00.000+00:00MIf by "re-writing in his head" you mean "thinking...M<BR/><BR/>If by "re-writing in his head" you mean "thinking an awful lot before writing anything down" you are probably right. I've been looking back at my notebooks and worksheets and find that each poem develops out of a mess of scrawled fragments, crossings out of usually one or two words and lots of re-ordering arrows. However I practically never seem to have written an entire poem and then revised large chunks of it, which was the main difference I was highlighting between Rob's approach and mine.<BR/><BR/>RAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post-1138537744008717792006-01-29T12:29:00.000+00:002006-01-29T12:29:00.000+00:00What a fascinating contrast the two Rob approaches...What a fascinating contrast the two Rob approaches make! But then, your poetry styles are very different as well, aren't they?<BR/><BR/>I'm not entirely sure though that you really use different methods - I suspect that L'autre Rob just does more re-writing in his head than he puts on paper. I've been taking a look at my measly experience so far and find that I seem to be a mixture of the two - some poems I revise again and again on paper and some I only have 2 or 3 versions of, but I recall spending as much time and effort on them as the ones that made it to double figures.Messalinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15973149790071270448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16166950.post-1138534269972610032006-01-29T11:31:00.000+00:002006-01-29T11:31:00.000+00:00Well Rob at least I now recognise it for definite ...Well Rob at least I now recognise it for definite as “The Man Who Filled ...”. I was pretty sure after the second draft as I couldn’t see much else in “The Clown” that it could be.<BR/><BR/>This (and the previous post) is all fascinating stuff. I’ve often wondered how other people struggle through, and I’m glad to see I’m not alone with difficulty. Still, if this is representative of the rigmarole you usually go through with every “finished” poem then I’d say that you compose quite differently to me. In essence you seem to get a “completed” draft down on paper quite early in the process. It may be utterly crap and bear little, if any, resemblance to the final version, but it IS a poem. Furthermore new drafts follow the first and each has the potential it seems to be VERY different from the preceding ones. This indicates that you have the capability to ditch large chunks of a poem, clinging onto maybe only one or two ideas or images, and then effectively rewrite.<BR/><BR/>I, by contrast , don’t seem to be easily able to do this. In fact reading your analysis has made me really think about what I DO do, and I’m rapidly concluding that I am limited and rigid in my approach, and, more alarmingly, this may lead to limited and rigid poems. My poems tend to spring form a specific event or observation, generally with metaphoric potential, which event or observation often forms the basis of some kind of conclusion. Accordingly, more often than not I have an ending (and frequently the precise wording), long before I have any clue as to how I’m going to get there. Similarly, sometimes the event or observation will trigger an opening line or two, and more rarely still I’ll think of a line apparently from a vacuum, which I’ll then try and build on. If the latter happens I’ve found I very rarely complete anything worthwhile for some reason.<BR/><BR/>My most “successful” poems, I think anyway, are those where I have a driving passion almost to “use” an idea. For instance, I was walking part of an upland footpath with my sister over Christmas and she suddenly announced that the stone flags we were treading were in fact re-cycled gravestones turned face down into the peat. I can’t get the various ideas that sprung from that comment out of my head - and I know I won’t get much peace from them till I’ve finished a poem. <BR/><BR/>I hardly ever rewrite poems to any great degree. My writing tends to develop either as a related but “unsorted” collection of phrases (if I am distracted by “real life”or else as a fairly structured sequence of sentences (if I manage to get a few hours in a single run). In either case though the phrases or sentences change little once I have written them (which is fairly labourious; an hour per noun is not uncommon). I may significantly reorder them or cut some completely, but I would never finish a draft and then go back and change large parts of it. I think this is why I rarely workshop poems. I seem to have an inertia when I “finish” a poem, which is probably a grave weakness, but which suggests to me that I would be unlikely to go to the trouble of incorporating workshop suggestions, and I don’t like wasting people’s time. Sheer laziness probably. <BR/><BR/>As to the rigidity, I am wondering now whether all my poems don’t tend towards a rather formulaic: “premise, argument, conclusion” format. I shall have to think about that.<BR/><BR/>Anyway I seem to have rabbited on about me - I shall follow the next installment with more fascination, and envy!<BR/><BR/>L'autre RobAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com