All right, here we go. I have been avoiding this post like the plague. It's because I don't feel like I know enough to write about. But hey, a history of A's in English classes (okay, some B+'s, a lot of A-'s) says otherwise, right?
As I have been considering my main poetic influences, I came to the conclusion that my poems have been impacted by two particular literary movements, Romanticism and the Modernism. A little focused reading on both of those movements led me to what now seems like the obvious realization that almost all contemporary American poetry was influenced by the Romantics and the Modernists. That made me want to write this post even less, because there is no way I will say anything new or anything comprehensive. But, my point here is to write this all out for myself, and also for all my readers, who are kind to read it but mostly just want a picture of Amelia.
Here is one with Micah, at Easter.
We put ears on them.
Okay, focus. So I decided to tackle the Romantics first. Let's begin with
The Question Air Guide to the Romantics in 100 Words or Less:
Romanticism was an artistic movement, not just a literary one, that flourished from the late 1700s to the early or mid 1800’s, although the exact dates are hard to pin down. The English poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly and Keats are generally credited with beginning or least advancing the movement in literature; Walt Whitman is the poster-poet for American Romanticism. In a break with poetry of the past, Romantics poets declared themselves as individuals and created works that featured a great deal of personal history, personal viewpoints and personal meditation. Romantic poetry also often focuses attention on both the natural world and the supernatural.
That's actually 103 words, but I felt it was important to repeat "personal" several times. If you want to read more, here is a short guide to Romanticism, and here is another really nice summary of the movement, a little longer but more informative than the first.
I will go out on a limb and say that almost all contemporary American poetry is influenced to some degree by the tenets of the Romantic Movement. Even the experimental poets like LANGUAGE poets are reacting against it (here is another interesting example of experimental poetry); even the more political poets are probably using a somewhat personal lens. In my case, more contemporary poems were models for me than poems by the Romantics, but those contemporary poems were in some way influenced by the Romantics, or were influenced by poems that were.
(I always thought an interesting project would be to create a web of poets. I would pick a poet I like and try to figure out what past writers might have influenced her. For example, a web of Mary Oliver would have to include Walt Whitman. Also probably Thoreau. This is another huge project. I will put it on my list.)
But Romanticism has more than just a tangential influence on my writing. My own poems actually feature some of what the CUNY website I linked above calls the three "major precepts" of Romanticism: imagination, nature, and symbolism and myth. I am definitely interested in those three things.
For example, the poem that begins my manuscript in its current form is called "The Fortune Telling Book of Dreams." I actually got that title from a book I saw in a shop with my friend Laura. I didn't look much at the book, but the title fascinated me. I thought it would fun to write a poem that could be an exceprt from the book. It was the first poem I totally made up, if that makes sense. In other words, I wasn't trying to record a particular expereince or capture a memory, as I do in a lot of other poems. I was just making up my own dream symbols. The poems begins
A dream containing dogwood blossoms means
you are questioning your religion. A dream
in which you drive a Volkswagon Jetta up a river...
I had a lot of fun writing that poem. It felt very free. I did actually dream once about driving a VW Jetta (which was my first car) up a river. But must dreams, and their "meanings," I just made up.
As for nature and "symbolism and myth," one of the most interesting things for me as a writer is finding ways to combine the two. I think that was true of some Romantics as well. I wrote a long poem called "Antler" that alternated two stories in 6-line stanzas. One was the story of this walk I took with my mom where we came across all these dead, decaying cows in a field. The other was about a trip to an art museum in DC. It featured this piece of art.
I was actually writing two poems, one about each experience, and I realized that two somehow were similar. I thought that putting them together would let the natural objects from the walk resonate against the made objects from the museum in interesting ways.
You know what? I generally don't put my own poems on my blog, because I am sending them out to journals to be published and some journals view any kind of web publication as "previous publication." So to keep everything simple I just don't put poems here. But this poem has been rejected by exactly seven literary journals, and it's not out anywhere now, so I am putting it up. I will leave it for a little while and then take it down. Consider it a sneak peak. Beware, it's kind of long.
[poem deleted Aug. 9 2011]
Is this a hard poem to read? Some people who have read it seem to find it confusing. It was a hard poem to write but also very fun. I was very excited when the two stories came together in the middle. It was not something I planned. That's one of the best things about writing, how even when you set out to write something in particular you don't know what's going to happen.
Anyway, there you have it. I don't want to analyze my own poem, but maybe you can see the Romantic influences. If you are an literature person and reading this, I would love to hear comments. I feel a bit at a loss writing about this stuff, but it something I want to tackle more often.
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