tbm
05-15-2001, 02:55 PM
By most traditional standards of poetry, the brief advice I am about to give you regarding writing craft is very misleading. That is, most novice authors should invest the least amount of their early time improving clarity in their work. I have found in my teaching of poetry that many new authors misconstrue the concept of clarity as an inhibition of metaphor and sound (though it is not), and thus their writing becomes bland and suffers.
As a novice author, if you are interested in a template for improving the clarity of your work quickly and effectively, I offer the following three steps:
1. Print a copy of your poem with enough marginal space to insert written interpretation.
2. In this space, next to or between each line, record exactly what it is in literal terms that your writing is communicating (if you yourself do not know, this is a good time to take stock of what you actually have). Limit your comments to the base events and facts of each thought.
3. Compare this base analysis to the figurative interpretation you have presented your reader. You can now identify if and where the full poem does not measure up to the original idea and make adjustments accordingly.
* Generally, clarity will come in and of itself as you read and write more poetry. This, of course, means that much of your early work will probably not be up to the standards of notable publication in terms of clarity, but the more time you save with this reverse method, the more time you can concentrate on improving other, equally important areas of your writing, such as sonics and symbolism, which do not come as easily to most new authors.
bates
As a novice author, if you are interested in a template for improving the clarity of your work quickly and effectively, I offer the following three steps:
1. Print a copy of your poem with enough marginal space to insert written interpretation.
2. In this space, next to or between each line, record exactly what it is in literal terms that your writing is communicating (if you yourself do not know, this is a good time to take stock of what you actually have). Limit your comments to the base events and facts of each thought.
3. Compare this base analysis to the figurative interpretation you have presented your reader. You can now identify if and where the full poem does not measure up to the original idea and make adjustments accordingly.
* Generally, clarity will come in and of itself as you read and write more poetry. This, of course, means that much of your early work will probably not be up to the standards of notable publication in terms of clarity, but the more time you save with this reverse method, the more time you can concentrate on improving other, equally important areas of your writing, such as sonics and symbolism, which do not come as easily to most new authors.
bates