"Every songwriter knows you can sell form without substance.A reporter can produce quality prose in minutes before going on air to present the facts to a waiting population. Prose is timely.
Every prose writer knows you can sell substance without form.
You can't sell neither."
"Poetry isn't about what you say. It's about how you say it." - Gary Gamble (rec.arts.poems)
The poetic elements that we've discussed in this series usually take much longer to fashion refined verse. Each word must fit with all of the others, like sculpted stones in an ancient edifice. They may need to stand for ages.
What role does substance have in poetry?
Prose tends to be about information: answers and facts. It may be how many will find your verse (i.e. via web searches). Poetry tends to be about questions and comparisons (e.g. metaphors, similes, contrasts).
Metaphors and Similes
A simile is a direct comparison, typically signalled by the word "as" or "like".
"Like a hurricane" suggests the person or thing being described is tempestuous.
A metaphor is not just associating two similar things; it blurs any distinction between them. The first requirement is that it not be true.
"You are a rock star."
If you're saying this to Rod Stewart it's a literal. If to someone who isn't in the music business it's a metaphor. The tenor is the thing described: "You" in this case. The vehicle is the description--the thing to which the tenor is being compared: "rock star" in this example. Your metaphor should be somewhat fresh. "Rock star" might once have brought up thoughts of hard heavenly bodies but today it is little more than cliché.
Consider this expression about a condition, trepidation, and alternatives: escape or combat.
"In terror, flight or fight."
The different sounds help define the condition, "terror", independent of both actions, "fight" or "flight". Add some alliteration and the distinction between fear and fight/flight blurs:
"In fear, there's fight or flight."
Add rhyme and we mash together all three words...
"In fright, there's fight or flight."
...which may focus our attention on fright and flight because they have a consonant between the alliteration of "f" and the rhyme of "-ight".
Parenthetically, this is but one example of how
poetry--even the crudest commercial or political jingles--may have been humankind's
original form of propaganda.
Genres and Subjects
Consider your own posting habits. How often--or how rarely--do you pass along a poem on social media?
"Maybe once or twice. Funny ones, probably."
Like prose, poetry can be written on any topic and in any genre. No, poetry doesn't have to be emotional, profound, or anything else. In fact, the most popular genre is humor. Personalities and politics are also popular. The seven most memorable poems of this century were about a crazy 15th Century priest, beans, a warrior who died over 200 years ago, WWII nostalgia, sunflowers, non-necessities, and space junk. Not a single love poem came close and, of course, cryptocrap was never a consideration.
"Why not love poems? Are the best poets today not romantic?"
Good question. Let me turn it around, though. How many love poems written in the last sixty years can you recite?
"Uh...well...none. Lots of songs, though!"
Exactly. In this genre in particular, spoken verse cannot compete for attention with song lyrics. It's certainly not an issue of quality...
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." - Voltaire
...with music getting worse every day. It's just a matter of numbers. No matter how good your love poem is it will be drowned out by Top 40 hits on the radio. It follows that if you want anyone to hear your love poems you will need to set them to music. Or embed them.
"Embed them?"
Yes. Insert them into something else, such as a television series or a movie.
"How would that work?"
In the case of "The Paradox of Love", you'd write an entire movie script to serve as prologue to a final farewell poem.
Now, instead of seeking attention, you will be presenting something that a multi-million dollar film could be riding on.
"No pressure!"
Exactly.
"Okay, so if not lovey dovey stuff, what do we write about?"
Your listeners. Their interests, not yours. Their emotions, desires, curiosities, environments, and strengths.
"But I don't know their interests."
Look at social media. People will spend all day and night telling you what fascinates them. Write about those things. And humor. Nothing is more effective than making people smile or laugh.
"Okay, but specifically, what works best among the serious stuff?"
SOABs. Sympathetic Or Ambiguous Biographies. Glimpses into the lives of recognized figures. Actors, politicians, newsmakers, reporters, anyone people will recognize.
"Why not unsympathetic views?"
That can work as entertainment--humor--but less antagonistic views can survive both the author and the subject [if only as elegies].
"Can you give examples?"
The three greatest poems of this century have been accounts of historical figures: "Studying Savonarola", "Beans" (about Salvador Allende), and "Tecumseh". If someone were to film a documentary or feature film on any of those they would find that poem online and ask the author for permission to use it in their production.
Because fewer people are interested in history than current events, our biographies will focus on our contemporaries.
Cliché is boring. It won't enter our memory because it can't be distinguished from what is already there. Cryptocrap is an extreme reaction to triteness that ends up being every bit as dull. It reads like rot-13 gibberish:
Zvffvat lbh ntnva,
V rzoenpr funyybj tenirf.
Cnyr snprf, qbhtuyvxr oernfgf
uryc zr sbetrg.
...and has less than zero performance value. That is, it actually drives audiences away.
The truly great poems, lines, and phrases stop us in our tracks not because they are different/original but because they are better than everything else we've heard recently. "Hookers" by Marco Morales will reside in the memory of anyone who encounters it:
Missing you again,
I embrace shallow graves.
Pale faces, doughlike breasts
help me forget.
N.B.: The second line is startling not because you don't know what it means; it is startling because you do. It is like an explosion of understanding.
The frequency and support for these astounding lines is a style issue. Morales used the "killer and filler" approach with the other lines feeding into "I embrace shallow graves".
In "Studying Savonarola" Margaret Griffiths adopts the standard approach, building to a climax with the cretic "unconsumed".
Say you die, scorched into ashes, say
you pass from here to there, with your marigold
eyes, the garden darker for lack of one golden flower,
would bees mourn, would crickets keen, drawing long
blue chords on their thighs like cellists?
Say you disperse like petals on the wind,
the bright stem of you still a living stroke
in memory, still green, still spring, still the tint
and the tang of you in my throat, unconsumed.
DPK attacks relentlessly, each line dripping with ambiguity to excite both halves of her polarized audience, pausing only to consider each euphemism carefully:
September came like winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.
To be successful, you need to master the techniques and produce stunning lines. Quality over quantity. You need to be optimistic, starting with the state of the art. Yes, poetry is dead and you'll need several miracles to resuscitate it but that just means the competition, as numerous as it is, isn't particularly strong.
There is a famous joke about Chicago Bears Running Backs Walter Payton and Matt Suhey camping in the Arctic. A breathless Walter Payton comes into their tent and begins changing from mukluks to sneakers.
"What are you doing?" wonders Suhey.
"There's a polar bear coming!"
Suhey laughs and points out: "You can't outrun a polar bear!"
"I don't need to outrun the bear," Payton retorts. "I just need to outrun you!"
Your listeners want to hear "good stories well told" in 21st century language. You don't need to write better than Shakespeare or Eliot. You might not need to write better than DPK or Maz, who haven't been seen for more than a decade [and weren't well known then].
You just need to outwrite everyone else producing today, virtually none of whom are household names. To recap, these are the 10 commandments for poetry promotion:
1. No diaries. Write about everyone and everything except yourself.
2. Speak. Poetry is a mode of speech, not writing.
3. Forget copyright infringement. Encourage others to perform your work.
4. Form! No one has ever been interested in memorizing prose with linebreaks.
5. Network. Make contact with poets, actors, and producers.
6. Humor. Make poems out of jokes.
7. Concision. Less is more.
8. Repeat sounds: rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, anaphora, etc.
9. Sonics: Use harsh sounds to create tension, soft sounds to relax.
10. Be humble and helpful. And optimistic.
The Outerview Series
The Outerview Series: Part I - What is poetry?The Outerview Series: Part II - Where is poetry?
The Outerview Series: Part III - What is Rhythm?
The Outerview Series: Part IV - Scan Poems Backward
The Outerview Series: Part V - Rhyming is Fun
The Outerview Series: Part VI - Super Sonics
The Outerview Series: Part VII - Production
The Outerview Series: Part VIII - Manufacturing an Audience
The Outerview Series: Part IX - Crafting Drafts
The Outerview Series: Part X - Production
The Outerview Series: Part XI - Attracting and Impressing
The Outerview Series: Part XII - The Meaning of Meaning
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