Something Worth Saving—a Call and Response with Nebraska Poet Laureate Matt Mason
February 27, 2024
What is poetry?
I love Bill Kloefkorn's definition that "Poetry is an attitude looking for something solid to sit on." That is, poetry is something we feel in our body, that we find the right details and examples to put into words so that someone else can both understand it intellectually and also feel in their body. Ideally, a poem doesn't just tell someone else that the poet "feels sad," a poem nudges a reader or listener to feel the poet's particular form of sadness, be that weepy or mopey or tinged with anger. I want a poem to transmit actual feeling, and anyone who's tried to write a note expressing their love for someone knows how hard this can be to get the words precisely right, to get across that exact, individual feeling rather than some vague mush.
What makes a poem a good poem? Is it dependent structure, rhythm and grammar or is it how an audience perceives it?
Okay, this has a many-faceted answer. I guess the best kind of poem (as a writer) is one that I feel electric about as I'm writing--that ideas are hitting right, that I'm surprising myself with ideas or insights--and that, when I look at it a week later continues to ring like a bell to me, it captures the feeling and voice I first felt and takes me back to it like a time capsule, and THEN gets picked up by an editor at a literary magazine AND gets a loud response at a reading. That's the home run of poems, I guess.
But all I want is a single, a poem with that first bit where ideas are hitting right and I'm surprising myself some as I write it and look at it. All the rest is a bonus as what I'm writing for is usually personal, to figure something out or to just find the right words for a feeling I have inside me.
And a good poem (as a reader) is one that makes me feel something that the author wants me to feel, where they found the right words and the right structure to physically take me into someone else's experience. I think that's maybe the best thing about poetry, when it helps me understand things about other people and about the world, when it opens my eyes. And, yes, structure, rhythm and grammar are all part of this, but I judge it less intellectually and more emotionally (I mean, not ALL emotionally, let's call it a 40/60 split!).
| I'm not asking a poem to save my soul, but sometimes I want poems to remind me I've got something worth saving and maybe point me a way to start. |
My question to you is, How do you just let go? I'm not a creative writer by all means, but I'd like to think I am a creative thinker. When I write, I attempt to do so with structure and overthinking thoughts.
For me, letting go takes practice. I've found that if I start with an idea and just run with it, exhaust my thoughts on it by writing everything down and following the trail it digs (instead of trying to force it in a set direction), I get the results which surprise me the most and seem the most true. So, for me, it helps to start with one small thing, maybe two, not a grander idea yet.
And this first draft? It'll be flawed. THAT is when I let myself overthink and tinker. I'm not a great creative writer, those first drafts tend to be just okay. But I AM a great creative editor, I let myself play with what I first put down and work to change and improve it.
| Photo credit: Ben Semisch | Photo credit: Minden Courier |
of our better days, we who sit in Honda Civics,
in apartment houses, in coffee shops
or office jobs, our earth grey, our water filtered, our air conditioned.
Remember Yosemite?
Yellowstone, Glacier, Joshua Tree, Wind Cave,
Blue Ridge, Smoky Mountain, Zion, Bryce,
Grand Canyon, Carlsbad, Niobrara?
You who have climbed to the top of the falls,
stood startled at the sight of droppings on the hiking path
which were clearly a cougar’s, you who have rolled
down dunes of white sand, who have looked
over the edge into the earth itself, been reminded
by the very trees of your smallness, of your majesty:
you haven’t been
in years.
You seat yourself in a small chapel
where they sing sadly
and bow to small crosses hung on brown walls.
You almost forget
what it’s like
to share a bagel with Christ on mountain ridges,
say goodnight to God’s face and then zip your tent shut,
the sounds of Creation outside: cicada, bullfrog, the million
string-bowing insects, the gruff crunches and shambles
you stay still for, eyes trying to somehow see
past canvas and lack of light, these
hymns of your universe, the call
of God’s small voice. You
have not been to church
for so long.
That is why,
these last three mornings,
you’ve woken in your house,
looked out your window
and seen deer standing on your lawn.
They have come
for you,
to call you back.
Listen to them
before God
sends bears.
The sky is gravel roading
the tires or the wings, you
are not an on-edge flyer but,
today, each pothole-ish bump, each swivel,
and you have to concentrate
on how bored the stewardess looks
to tell yourself to calm,
tune in to the drone of businessman conversation
unhiccupped by the lurch, the sway,
but your face still twitches, hands
grip into armrest, notebook,
your daughter turned nine yesterday,
wife forty the day before,
all beauty and joy
on the earth several horizons behind you and,
Jesus,
you’ve lived long enough and all, but,
Jehovah,
what is it in the air or the machinery that does that, and,
Buddha,
what the hell was that;
and you don’t understand the science
of a building with wings heaved through the atmosphere,
the logic is lost on what you comprehend of gravitational force
who could never make a paper airplane stay up more than three rollercoaster
seconds of twist and twist and
smack.
And the woman seated next to you,
you haven’t spoken,
but you’re pretty sure she’s been stealing looks
at this poem
and is a little freaked out.
There is no physics here, you realize,
this is only faith, baby,
you’re asked to accept this Superman of sausage casing
as a thing that is plausible under the laws of nature,
told to accept whatever miracle,
not because it makes a wisp of sense
but because it just keeps happening, so, hey, accept
this water to wine,
this Lazarus
who, sure, he got up,
the lepers,
fine,
no prob,
this thing
will make it to Phoenix,
these waves in your stomach
are not about the end,
the plummet, the supernova of every brain cell, skin cell, bone, blood, squizzled pop
of spine making up this you,
so let it be written,
so let it be done,
amen.