Ruby Street

Just a few ideas, well questions really, about energy or movement in a poem. Certainly that can be directed through syntactical choices - paratactic, discontinuous, or hypotactic, continuous. It may be how tense is used. Can simple present tense lead to a kind of flattening of the poem’s energy? Possibly, though I presume that may well be mitigated by other factors, including syntax. What place is there for speculation in the poem via tense (subjunctive?), or mood (not grammatical mood so much as atmospherics), or aspect? There is also the force of the prepositional, the way prepositions place and direct. Does the poem rely more on monosyllabic (or close to) words or prefer the polysyllabic and depending on which, how the stresses then operate. Do polysyllabics clutter, or do monosyllabics become boring rhythmically? Again, other factors, such as syntax, enjambment, stanza will change these effects. Then there is the way the poem might move between the cont...

These days, especially it seems, reviewers, panels/judges, constructors of ‘canons’, etc, seem to want a singular style or approach, a kind of unified body of poetry at least for each book if not overall, something they can theorise about or judge or slot-in easily. In other words, there has to be a focus, a centre, if you will. A poet is not allowed to wander where she/they will or may, not always constrained by the ‘signs’ of category. OK, ‘allowed’ to do so but as a consequence not taken seriously, or neglected, because she/they can’t be pinned down. I’m aware of that working in my own case – it’s been said to me more than once – and I suspect it is so for others. I take my work seriously (and sometimes not so seriously, because you just have to let all that go as well). As Gertrude Stein once wrote in T ender Buttons : “Act so there is no use in a center.”. Forms, procedures, styles or themes don’t need to be centralised, rounded-up. If I approach composition as making, f...