[Gary Wassner]

I write quite a bit of poetry into my books, simply because I love to write poetry. I know it's not for everyone, and I am sure that many people skip right over it. But I am such a lover of 'lines', meaningful and beautiful lines full of emotional impact, foreboding, wonder and drama. But I also believe that verse can transcend the storyline and help to clarify issues that are broader and greater in scope than the plot itself. Matt Stover once mentioned to me that just about everything in epic fantasy can be viewed metaphorically. That was a powerful comment, though I am not certain he realized just how powerful it was at the time that he made it. I couldn't agree more.

So what am I getting at here? Would most people read this poem metaphorically or would they see it as strictly tied to characters and action?
I wrote it last week at the end of a chapter in the book I am in the middle of now. The last line in this poem is the title of the book.



Of the lost and the found,
who will remain?
Of the free and the bound,
who dares stake a claim?
Of the cat and the hound,
who dreads most the sound
Of the silence that beckons,
from the darkness unbound?
Assay it you must, for the choices are clear,
Think not that its absence leaves nothing to fear.
When you hunger the least, your need is most dear,
Pay heed to the voices that so few can hear.
Seek ye those places you still can defend
When monsters call out the names of men.

[Sammie]

I would say metaphorical, although almost certainly a metaphor that apply to a specific situation/set of characters, if that makes sense.

As an aside - personally I always find it quite difficult to read a poem that breaks what I was alway taught was quite a strict rule- to start every new line with a capital letter. Is there a specific reason that you decided against this approach?

Sammie.

[Gary Wassner]

I write a lot of poetry and sometimes I struggle with the punctuation as well. I read the poem aloud over and over, and then I punctuate according to how I hope it will be read by others. If i want one thought to flow into the next, I won't capitalize the following line. I also hate periods in poetry. They always seem so final to me and they make the lyric so 'stacato' in feel. But sometimes you need them. I play fast and loose with punctuation in verse, but I hope that it better conveys my intent.

[Dawnstorm]

Different poems, different readings...

What makes a poem a poem to me is the rhythm of the language, and the internal structure of the "lines" (sometimes parallelisms, inter-line rhymes etc. create structures at odds with the line-structure). Poems tend to have more recurring structures, repetitions and crossreferences within the structure of the text than prose, but it's a continuum, and I've seen prose texts you could have disguised as poetry by breaking the type-set into stanzas and lines instead of paragraphs.

As to metaphorical readings: (1) not only poetry is prone to that, and (2) not all poetry is prone to that, so that contentwise I don't approach poems differently from prose.

On second thought, that's not true. The sounds and rhythm of language being foregrounded in my perception of poetry, the content is less evident to me while I read, so the words sneak in through the back door. In prose, the flow of language aids the content (literal or metaphoric) of the words, whereas in poetry non takes precedence. Or differently put, the question "what does the poem mean?" is not a priority for me.

In short, a poem - to me - is a kind of tapestry of sound and meaning, something to experience not understand (although understanding may be part of the experience, if the poetry's distinguishing feature is wit or word play).

(This is why I'm not the best reader of committed poetry; poems that deliberately make a point.)

Now, a poem in a work of fiction is embedded in a context that has me try to understand what's going on. So if I encounter a poem in a work of fiction the initial perception is skewed towards understanding: the poet, if he's a character; the setting if it's part of a ritual etc.; the plot if it's something like a sphinxian riddle... In other words, the poem isn't only a poem, but also a piece of "pseudo empirical evidence" that helps with understanding the story (novel, short story, whatever).

So, I'm willing to bet that reading this story here in your thread has a different effect on me, than reading it in your novel would have had.

I quite enjoyed reading the poem. It's got a dynamic structure, disciplined enough but not killed by rigid meter. While reading I didn't really pay separate attention to the meaning, but the progression through the poem coupled with the word choices did set a mood (a sort of urgent contemplativeness, if that makes sense to you...).

There are things in there that I didn't consciously notice, but that kept me quite active throughout the piece:

For example:
The first eight lines can be broken down into couplets, each of which starts with "of". This sets up a pattern of expectation that you both keep up and disrupt with final "of". It's an "of", but it refers backwards instead of forwads (not "out of what follows" but "sound/of"). This maintains the beauty of a certain regularity on the surface, while preventing you from falling asleep from too much repetition.
This "of"-effect has been prepared, though: The first four lines set an a-b-a-b' rhyme pattern, but that isn't followed up. Instead, reading on I got an immediate rhyme, which I didn't expect and which has the effect of "speeding up" the poem, helping with the new line-transcending "of". And since that line's the first one so far that ends on an unstressed syllable the poem drove me on with the same speed. By the time I read the "from" in the last line (of the first eight which form a unit) I no longer thought of the original structure (the one set by the first 4 lines).
That you concluded on the "-ound" sound was a nice closure to the first part of the poem.

See how much I can speak about just the structure, whith little reference to content? Of course, this is a post reading analysis of the memory of my first reading; and it's dealing only with part of that, I'm sure. I could go on about metaphor, too, because no doubt that was part of the experience, but this should give you some idea where my immediate response preferences with poetry lie.

[And I haven't said anything about epic poems, ballads and such... How can such an innocent question turn out to be so complicated?
Ah, yes, I tried to give an answer... :cool: ]

Anyway, nice poem.

[Gary Wassner]

Thanks, thanks, and thanks. That was a wonderful passage to read. You are incredibly astute as a reader of poetry, not only because you understand it technically, but you characterized so succinctly what I was trying to express in your phrase, 'urgent contemplativeness'! That mood pervades all of my books as well, and it grows stronger as the books progress. It is not loud and brassy, it is not violent and bloody, but it is powerful. I could not have described it better myself if I tried to.

I write prose quickly and I write poetry quickly. I don't analyze the meter or plan it. I write it from a mood and to a mood. I enjoy rhyme but I am not committed to it in sing song way. If the word is not exactly right, I will change the entire poem. One poor choice of a word ruins the entire thing for me. If it sounds forced or unclear, I can't live with it.

One thing that I must admit though, I need a strong ending to a poem. I must walk away from my reading having been stirred emotionally. The words should flow smoothly and yet they should have impact and body to them. It's funny though that imagery is not as important to me in poetry as it is in prose. I am more concerned with emotion and sentiment.

[alison]

Hi Gary - I think that fantasies are all metaphors. (I think I think all fictions are metaphors, whether they're fantasy or not). Maybe I think all stories are poems, even if all poems are not stories...

Like Dawnstorm, poetry for me is language where sound, rhythm, form and so on are foregrounded and become meaning. And there are a million ways of doing this. I love all sorts of poetry.

(MOD EDIT)

To address your question: isn't placing a poem into a text a signal that the writing is stepping aside from the immediate plot/action/characters to some extent? That is, one of the effects is to broaden and deepen the metaphors that are already in the story. Especially if this poem echoes the title of the story, it will immediately have a hugely significant resonance beyond what's immediately happening in the story.

I will always read a poem metaphorically, but where it's placed in the story will also affect its reading. For example, if it's a lament or elegy for a character who has just died, it will be read specifically as being about that character and what has just happened.

I do a lot of poems in my books as well. It's greatly enjoyable. Mainly, I think, I use poems to give the feeling of a depth of history and tradition, and to suggest cultural complexities, without having to recount endless tales, &c. If you use different forms, you can suggest a variety of different cultures: I muck about with ballad forms, strict metrics, blank verse, haiku, ghazals, blank verse and free verse. Most often what appears in the books are fragments, which kind of suggests that the longer poem exists somewhere, though the truth is I haven't written it yet. I've written one long poem in entirety (here (http://www.alisoncroggon.com/fantasy/ardina.html) if anyone's interested - keen minds will notice I pinched the rhyming pattern and theme from Tolkien; and maybe I persisted because writing it was so damn difficult). But other fragments are, ahem, what Clive James called the "iceberg on a raft" effect: what you see is what there is, but hopefully it gives the impression of going way way below the surface.... Is that cheating?

[Gary Wassner]

We all write based upon what sounds and feels correct in our heads. I repeat things often for emphasis, and in a way, to lure the reader into the rhythm. Then I change the pace and the image. It's a prefereance of mine when I read poetry as well. The voice in each of our heads speaks to our emotions differently. Pace, a select word, an image or a sound all contribute to create the mood that we want to invoke. I don't often think of my poems as standing alone, outside of the context of the book they were written for. But I started this thread to understand how someone else might read outside of that context (and within it). When I find what feels right for me, what clarifies the moment in the book that it was written for, I don't analyze it any longer - i would never stop editing otherwise.


I appreciate your comments, though I must admit there is a part of me that wants to go and edit them out of this thread. I was not particularly looking for a critique here, but more to initiate a general discussion on poetry in fantasy. But, editors will be editors, I suppose.

Alison, I went to your website the other day, but I could not find the link to your poetry. What was I doing wrong?

I posted a poem here a number of months ago, and someone pm'd me and told me that they wanted that poem read at their funeral. I replied with a question as to whether that was a compliment or not. He said it was, though I still wonder what that says about the poem. The poem was called Tomorrow.

Tomorrow's wind, a premonition,
through the trees it blows.
Upon its wings, fate doth travel
with the breezes, to and fro.

Must we join the fray so soon?
Must the sunlight fade to gloom?
Must the singers change their tune?
Must the darkness shroud this moon?

Those of you who bear the weight,
the disquiet that will not abate,
the memory of pain and hate,
an urgency that cannot wait,
with courage still to challenge fate,

Walk down the road that none dare tread,
the path of conscience, the single thread,
as you watch the darkness spread,
without the fear and burning dread,
of what it is that lies ahead,
but heed the words your father said,
should you alone survive the dead.

GemQuest, Book III, The Shards

[alison]

Gary, just take my post down if you wish. I got enthusiastic and intrigued, and as I said, it's there for you to ignore. I quite understand how annoying that can be.

Poetry for me is an endless art and the most difficult writing: there have been poems that have taken me ten years to finish (though obviously I didn't work on them all the time). There's a French poet, Paul Valery, who famously said that "a poem is never finished, only abandoned", so you see where I am coming from. For many years I worked with a Jesuit who was an excellent (and very tough) editor, and who taught me alot about prosody, which was basically what I was talking about in my comments. I've found prosody and metrics fascinating since I was a kid: the first poem I ever remember writing was a Shakespearean sonnet, because I read something in an encyclopaedia about how the rhyming scheme worked and wondered if I could do it.

If someone wants a poem read at their funeral, it's the highest compliment! It might sound morbid, but it means that it means deeply to them.

Not sure what was wrong on the page. If you go to the index page of alisoncroggon.com you'll find links to poetry and fantasy and there are some online poems under Writing in the sidebar. A warning: my poetry is for the most part not fantasy poetry.

Here's one you might like: it's by a character in my series called Dernhil, who is a poet. My heroine reads this poem at a particularly important point in The Riddle. It's not a ghazal (a form of Persian poetry that works on repetition) but kind of riffs on the form:

The breath of heaven teases my lips
With a single petal dislodged from the sky:
My love you are that single petal.

The gazelle looks up from the pool
Blinded by one spark of Light’s radiance:
My love you are that single spark.

The peacock cries in the empty garden
For the memory of a tear outshining him:
My love you are that single tear.

O petal that is my garden of delight!
O spark that is my heart’s conflagration!
O tear that is my swelling ocean of sorrow!

[Gary Wassner]

I enjoyed your poem. It was soft and beautiful. The pace of it was laconic yet full of imagery. It was very visual and the visual aspects translated into meaning and emotion. I write very differently than you do here. My poems are rarely visual, though I don't think I ever realized that until now.

I just edited out that one section of youre previous post and copied it to a clipboard for my own reading. It just didn't seem to be the appropriate thing to have here on this thread. I apologize for that, but my intent here in this thread was different than that post may have conveyed, and I want to keep the thread as much on topic as I can.


In any case, I agree that when you insert a poem in the text you are changing the way you expect the reader to respond. I was just wondering how many readers seriously read poems when they appear this way. I have been told many times before that many simply skip over them because they are not accustomed to reading verse or because they assume they will not enjoy it. Learning to read poetry is a process. It reads so differently than prose. Think about how perfectly some lyricists can create an entire personality and story rife with tragedy, love, anger, joy etc so vividly and so clearly, in just a few short groups of sentences. Look at a song like Amelia by Joni Mitchell or Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen - brilliant, moody, moving stories that you walk away from knowing the people and yearning to know them better. They are like musical vignettes, yet they are so powerful.

[alison]

No worries, Gary. I'll restrain myself in future!

I know that some people skip over the poem bits, but others don't. Readers are chaotic and anarchic creatures and they do what they like, including throwing the book away; but there's something I kind of like about that. I always read the poems, of course, given my predelictions. When I first read the LOTR, around ten or so, I learned the entire poem about Earendil (Earendil was a mariner / who tarried in Avernion) off by heart. I still remember huge wodges of it. What was I thinking?!