Unwoven Interview #3: Kelly Porter

Transcript

Steve

You know, I published a book of poetry in September 2024, Unwoven: Poetry of Form and Release. It’s a collection of poetry on learning on aging, on uncertainty. But most of all, it’s an investigation into the meaningful impact of poetic structure, with poems paired across the book in both formal and free verse. I explore the tanka, ode, forms of sonnet, the ghazal, sestina, cinquain, pastoral, ballad, and others. Find that book now in print, eBook and audio, along with hundreds of pages of educational supplements at WaywordsStudio.com. There’s a link in the show notes.

But at that book launch, I offered quick snippets of interviews on poetry, reading and writing. Here is the third and final of these interviews in full, scholar and poet Kelly Porter. Kelly is a PhD candidate in American history at Tulane University. She’s the head archivist for Preservation Hall, a historic jazz venue in New Orleans. She’s a community organizer, public historian, and civil rights activist. And she’s one of my own former students from literally another century. Here’s our talk.

Kelly

So you and I had a little discussion previously about your book, which I actually got to read cover to cover this past week. And one of the first sort of points about writing that a collection like this brings to mind is this notion: Voicing and re voicing a poem that you get to write and rewrite a poem, not just in the normal iteration of an editing process. Right, but literally to create a new object from an old. So I wanted to talk a little about that. And first of all, just kind of, were you always going in the same order, such as you know you write the formal poem 1st and then the free verse or vice versa? Tell me a little bit about that process.

Steve

It’s interesting that you bring it up because, yes, first answer your last question first. Yes, in almost every case I began with the more traditional form and then followed it with the free verse and. That I’m not sure why, except I thought I thought the first one was going to be more challenging and. The free verse would be easier. It did not turn out to be the case. In every situation. But in the case of. The elegy which is he lifts his finger to the world. I went the other direction because this goes to your voicing question. That’s the oldest work in here is the free verse version of the elegy. And from that I went backwards to the formal. And changed it into something that’s more formal.

I think the reason was happenstance initially, but there is something interesting about this revoicing. So just to give the history of it. That poem began as a response to three pieces of literature. Then I put that I created that poem and. Music. That and then I extricated that poem. For another poem. Which is a larger work and it’s set alone as the last piece of a larger work, which I then discovered. ‘Cause, I don’t know that I consciously understood it when I first started writing, it was itself an elegy, a poem of mourning. I didn’t recognize it when I wrote it that way. This speaker is concerned about his garden, but. I didn’t see the larger piece of it. Until I started putting it all together, I said. My gosh, look what I’m writing. So then I thought, OK, let’s take that and then use it as the favorite elegy here. So it was already kind of created, so yeah. There’s a lot of relaying and reproduction and recreation going on.

Kelly

It’s interesting that the very first one was the only one that kind of broke the Rule or your normal. For the rest of the of the collection. So not now knowing that most of it was you going from sort of assigning yourself a formal verse. And then you. Me to get the woven on. It starts woven, apparently, and then gets on woven in the second iteration usually.

Steve

That’s right.

Kelly

What did you learn? Maybe. Your free verse and some of those formal poems or those forms that you were using by that process, and picking them apart and revoicing them or reverse.

Steve

One of the things I found exciting, I really wrestled with this idea in order to focus on the structure, which was really my goal. Wanted to put the structure. At the front, at the. And that’s what the facing poems were intended to do. Do but then I asked the other questions. So am I just going to use the exact same words and one of them is going to be in you know meter and the other one is not? Is it going to look that way? And I didn’t think that was fair. To either form. So for. If I if. Created a villanelle. Its form is pretty much there for me to work with. And so I created the villanelle. But now if I just. Did the free verse without like the rap. What am I accomplishing? So what I needed to do is understand that open form poetry of which free verses is one type. Open form poetry is itself structured. Does itself have rules and possibilities and spaces? I would do open form an injustice if I didn’t explore its spaces.

Kelly

OK.

Steve

One of the easiest ones to see that way is with the Shakespearean the Shakespearean sonnet is obviously a Condensed little sucker that has its own you know, belts and ropes on it that says this is what you must live in. And so we did. But now if I just simply took that and, for instance took that closing couplet and left it as a couplet in the free verse, am I really giving free verse its due? I can open that up, can’t I? And so I did. And so that there’s room to do it and I think. Was. To say to me that was kind of interesting to do that and that would that became the case with all of the poems. That. Started to recognize, let’s go back and look. These. And give them the space that I can’t do in some cases. And for instance, I think in the pantomime and some other cases. The reveal that was created from the structure that was gradually uncovered from the structure is ruined. In the open form, and I say wound in that the structure offered. There’s no prejudice per se, except to say that something the structure was able to do for me that. Couldn’t. The same way in the open form. So since that reveal. Couldn’t open up slowly. I had to throw it up in front so they began to reverse, says. Here’s the reveal. Now. I’ve done it in four lines. The rest of this poem going to do.

Kelly

Right.

Steve

And it went to explore other things. So I think. Are opportunities and there’s meaningful differences in each poem. One of the things I’ve discovered when you talk about revoicing is that some people look at the two and they say which one do you like better?

Kelly

Right.

Steve

But then they or they look at the two and say, oh, I didn’t understand what this line was. But now that I. It over here. It makes more sense.

Kelly

And.

Steve

Right. And that really wasn’t my intention and I can understand the gesture, the weird readerly gesture that does that because they’re right there to, to talk to each other.

Kelly

Decode the other or something.

Steve

So great. I wasn’t really writing them with the notion that they were the same. Poem, precisely because of those differences of opening up and revealing in the elegy that we were talking about just a moment ago. The differences are. Dark, dark, dark, dark.

Kelly

Yeah, some are definitely more different than. Some feel very close and then some feel the. That’s definitely one of the ones that’s on the latter part of the spectrum.

Steve

Yeah, it really. I mean, not just because I did a point of view change but I think the very nature of it, it revealed itself in the formal poem in a way that I didn’t have in the free verse poem. Then it goes to are these simply different versions of the same poem. And the answer is they can’t be, right. Every structure, every incarnation, every rereading makes a different poem.

Kelly

Right. This just got textual.

Steve

But it does. It does. I. I will say even in my own reading of these poems, which I’ve done in a few public venues already, they become. Different poems in each reading, because I’m finding other ways to emphasize something or other ways to move around something or another. Intonation, to give to something. So I think it’s interesting that a single. Poetic idea becomes multiple different poems and multiple different meanings based upon form. Its installation as it were.

Kelly

Well, that that actually leads nicely is one of my next questions, which was about the history of some of these forms. ‘Cause we use a wide variety of forms. Each of them has their You know individual. So in a way, by choosing the forms that you choose, you’re  also choosing to put yourself in conversation with certain authors that are known for those particular forms, and even, you know, kind of the places in the time periods from which they emerge, which for many. Of them are very different. Than you know, 21st century suburban Michigan, right?

I wanted to ask you a little bit about and actually your last question about reciting your poetry and how it comes out differently every time, even you. It I think really lends itself to this notion of who I am. Function the original function of many of these. Particularly. Like regular meter. Lines things just to make them. They come from an oral history tradition of poetry. When? You know, most people, including you know, the poets who would be reciting. Or the very least, they were relying primarily on memories so that regular cadence that regular scheme you know helps you, you know, as a mnemonic. So curious if any readers you find it easier to read aloud or to kind of literally to voice those poems in front of an audience in the formal conceptions. Or if even just having that formal conception, there informs the way that you’re reading aloud or reciting the fruits.

Steve

Interesting question. Because yes to give an initial response. Yes, I’m always hearing my poetry out loud as I compose it, and when I work to revise, I’m reading it out loud to hear it differently. Then to repackage it, that’s just part of my writing process. So I think you’re right that there’s definitely an oral component, which for me is primary. And it’s not to say it’s exclusively that way, because there are some poems even in here, which by their nature are written textual. They’re poems that appear on a page and they appear in a particular way because the page lends itself to that, that thing and part of that part of that spacing. You know, part of that is, you know, stanza. Part of it is, you know, that kind of thing and then part of it is also just. The nature of the shape.

If you look at the cinquain As for instance, if you hear this cinquain out loud. It’s fine. I mean it’s a short little. That’s fine, but you can’t visualize the opening and closing of it, which is almost concrete on the page as one. For instance, I think the same is true of the ghazal. But if you don’t read the couplets separate. You have. Harder time understanding them as couplets which exist both dependent upon an independent from each other. So the page gives some air to that I think, and certainly true in one of the first poems. The Frost versus Wallace Stevens Is It’s such a simple little thing, but there are several places where I use space and in the free verse especially I make great use of space because I’m allowed. And to not, yeah, to not use. It seemed to me to be cheating.

Kelly

What?

Steve

Form again. And I think it’s really difficult orally to package that.

Kelly

Thinking historically as well about, I mean you just address kind of the relationship to form and now I want to think about the relationship you’re putting yourself into with particular authors who are known for this. Who are you reading as, for instance, you’re deciding to write a song and who you know? Like, what are you looking to as your examples for some of these? And did you find yourself ever either in really close conversation with a particular author or particular poem in working? In all these many forms.

Or. I guess the corollary question to that were there some that were just really difficult to work into because you feel like there are so few examples of, you know, it’s just done beautifully? Or even it’s just from such a different time and place that. You know, it’s hard for us in. Right. To work out what it might be.

Steve

There’s, there’s definitely a humbling history that is there that right. Always get nervous. Dare you write a Shakespearean? How dare you and in my own history of the last several decades, I’ve written. Several Shakespeare sonnets, all of them complete disasters. Know it’s like. Why am I trying this? It’s just a mystery and those will not see the light. Day so. I think there is something about that which is a little humbling and off putting. Say I don’t dare. Don’t dare. But then, of course there’s the TS Eliot. Do I dare? I dare. So I have. I have to step into that at some level.

As far as poets, then I’ll just mention that in the supplements that are that go with this, I have no less than 20 different authors for almost every. That are listed. There are several there amongst the list that you say. Yeah. Did you look at, you know, Wordsworth? Were you reading Keats when you did this? Well, yes, I was, because I chose Keith’s version of the ode. There are so many models out there and I said which ones? How do you decide which ode to do? Pindar?. I mean, I could. Back, but no, I figured Keats is good enough ever. And he’s got a really he very to me a very natural and I use that word in terms of nature is very natural sort of structure to his stances. I I look to him, but those are choices. Made a unique choices for tanka. Make choice for haiku. Is it Basho or somebody else that you’re going to imitate? Because once you start getting into the history, there’s a ton of it. And it’s just like I don’t know what. Do it and it can be paralyzing.

So yeah, there are some folks there, but I had to give myself the freedom to make choices in those forms as they get incarnated for the 21st century. A couple. One example I can think of, in particular blank verse. When it was created, was one of the most natural forms of poetry in in terms of imitating human speech when it was created in the hands of Pope and others. But today? If you’re using blank force, that’s not common speech. It can’t be seen that way. It doesn’t feel that way. So it’s a different sort of. So now it’s over the course of time, the tonal implications of these. Storms have changed and I had to be responsive to that. Dad.

Kelly

Yeah, that was that is natural in the 18th century, but not seems very different now, obviously. Well, that you know that brings me around to this this question that we were discussing as we were thinking about this interview. And we kept coming back to this observation that all poetry has structure. We tend. We tend to think of formal poems, you know, these more constrained and specific and traditional historical styles as structured words we think of. In an open verse free verse as. You know. There’s no reason there’s the unweave right. And there’s this kind of, maybe almost like a false binary between something that is tight and restricted and difficult and formal. It feels like a lecture versus, you know, something that it has freedom right there. The title. Like something that is open and free and liberating in. And all the both you and I really thought this was sort of a false dichotomy, because all poetry has structure, right?

So the first question I had for you on that, that kind. Topic is. As you sought. Do all of this free verse right? Do. Did you discover within your own poetry that there are there is a structure common to your three verse that goes that is different from poem to poem, or that anything that returns all the way through down the line?

Steve

Yeah, because I have as to all writers, the opportunity to invent my own rules, right? And that’s what we. We invent our own spaces, our own rules, our own forms, because that’s that freedom that’s there, as you say, form structure our continuums. They are. More or less structure, but there isn’t a place of no structure unless you would call that incoherence. Non language at some. So the complete dissolution of communication would be. The anti structure. So but then we decide how tight we want to tie the tie is to use your metaphor and you’ll choke up on it, which I don’t know is an appropriate metaphor now that I’m thinking about, I don’t think we choke on silence but that. The concept is. You know, I just hang yourself with it, but I.

I did discover do discover and I constantly discover patterns in my. It happens more the more I read, the more poets I encounter, the more people I see what they’re doing with language. Changes the way what I can do with language which I think is exciting. Always the case. But I have definitely found, I think anyone who looks at any 3 or 4 free verse versions of poetry in here are going to see some common pieces. One single 1 is when I have a string of pairs or trios of images. Which I do. I list I list I list I list. Every time I do. There’s an indention, indention, indention and so I make a fair use of indenting to subordinate ideas. And.

Kelly

OK.

Steve

I’ve noted that as I’ve gone through this. I don’t. I think what I’m doing is revealing a relationship between one line and the. By that subordination that there’s some nature of subordination in the free verse haiku, though that indenting really isn’t. It’s actually almost two columns of verse. Is that pride to weave together and fail and try to weave and fail and depend upon which culture you’re in? And can they come together to find a coherent experience so that use of space both by subordination and by the creation of space? I make much more use of it than I think I would.

Steve

I don’t have a comparison. I make I make much use of them and that’s  a rule that I’m. I’ve been following, yeah.

Kelly

Well, you talked a little bit. Mean the neck tile metaphor notwithstanding. This notion of like strictness and looseness within form, you know, is it really a solid if one couple it is a slightly was it really, you know, the sort of all again, a very binary, very all or nothing approach to formalism where it has to follow exactly. The particular structure or particular poets you know, example and use of that form, and there are some places where you do that in this collection where you would hear very closely to a very prescribed form and then there are some where. Taking a few of your liberties.

And yeah, I. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that of just like, you know, if it’s 75% of Villanelle, is it still a villanelle, you know, that sort of approach to it and maybe how we can kind of like? Take some of that, that strictness, that tightness out of formalism when you do realize, as you just said, you know, you make your own rules. You can decide where to make and work with structure.

Steve

And I think historically. That has always been the case. None of these forms as they originated, which is to say the earliest version of them that we have that’s in writing, has remained static across history. It’s always changed as it moves from country to country as it moves from the highest court to the rule. Of village wherever they were used, they changed and so I would say this about form to your question of is it a villanelle if I, you know vary the repetition and that sort of. Thing, it’s where structure varies from tradition that the poem is in dialogue with that tradition. I’m thinking of two cases.

The first one is very particular. 1 is that even Shakespeare as a, for instance, violated his own sonnet rules over and over and over and over again? Has 15 lines on it. What? Well but he. He did it. Right, but why? Why does he change his eyebrow pentameter? And. Why did he use a slant rim or an off rhyme when he could have been more on point? And that has everything to do with drawing our attention to a structure. A structure shift. A tunnel shift, a weakness or a flaw in the ability of the poem to communicate. A breaking of the speaker tone. 1000 reasons why poets break. Structure rules and so the first thing we do is. Say I know what the tradition says, but it didn’t happen there. Why? And in you go to figure out why this poet decided that. This wasn’t going to play the way of history. So the beauty of the form is disruptive in some way.

Kelly

Sure.

Steve

One of the things I suggest about structure is that the structure is either in complementary relation to its content or in some tensionAs a literary term, I often use this in place of "conflict" ... More to its content, or somewhere in between some relationship and understand that relationship is important. So that’s the first reason for variation.

The second one I think is far more interesting and we see that in almost every. Non. White, non Western poet who looks at these structures and of course varies them because that is a direct, sometimes post colonial sometimes. Racial. To the institutional structure that has been laid out for them. And then it’s the acquisition of that structure, the turn of it, making it the poets own, which is fascinating. So many fascinating poets out there that are doing. I’m thinking of Kathy Park Hong in particular, as in my head right now, but there are so many that are doing great work with that. It’s at a point where if I decided to write A7 syllable. Poem and called it sonnet. Am I wrong? Who used to tell me I’m wrong, right? But even calling it that demands something of the reader. That’s to say, signal to the entire tradition. Now deal with this and put the poem in front of you.

Kelly

Yeah.

Steve

So I think that’s there’s a lot of excellent dialogue to be had in poetry now based upon that question you’re asking. Once that role. Structured well, we’re always in dialogue with. History.

Kelly

Sure. I mean, you’re playing with your leaders expectations at that point as well because you have a form to break, you can easily draw attention anywhere you want simply by making the break. No, that’s a tremendous thought. You’d spoken about the elegy, the elegy in particular. But to some extent, poetry in general in the public performance of a very private act or a very private. You know, in the case of the elegy, grief, but I mean poetry in and of itself, regardless of the formalism of it, structure is a place where it’s one of the most vulnerable, you know, forms of human writing, I think. Not always in every instance, but we tend to allow more of that there than we would sometimes even in an essay.

So yeah, I was kinda curious about what it meant for you to explore some of these things in this motion of like the public performance. You know, in the case of geology, personal grief, but just more broadly, the public performance of, you know, your own inferiority, your own faults, especially the teacher. I was going to say that’s not something that you usually get to share with your students, right?

Steve

Yeah, I guess that’s. And I made a point, a small point of this earlier in the evening too, about not all. Poetry is confessional poetry. So, but I think there’s an expectation in a lot of contemporary poetry that this is the poet putting their heart on the table and ask everyone carve it up. You know, there it is. But there is a truth that’s being spoken, and though the experiences are there. I specifically. Created speakers for the poems, who were often folks very different from me. Or at least somewhat different from me in the election. In particular, you’ve got two different speakers there, he and an I, and in neither case, if I lost a spouse. So to suggest that I’m writing an elegy, that’s the truth of my own autobiography. That’s a misreading. But I. A lot of people jump to that. This must be about.

But to your point. Putting the truth out there, the internal thought. You know? Yeah, that that remains true. There, there. Real Russians that we have with age and memory and significance and potency and these sorts of things which are always hanging out there. And when my podcast, I call it legacy, what does it mean? You know that word that we’re creating for ourselves. So we lay it out to that end, I think. You’re right, as a as a teacher, there’s always been that formality, a creation of a person. That. Appears. Rightfully appears trustworthy. Honest, you know, compassionate, that kind of thing. And yet still holds back because. You’re in a public persona space. The teacher is never quite the whole human. I think that’s true of most writers as well. They even the confessionals because at some point putting on the page, putting that in in front of a microphone, it is a performance. And it’s this acts.

Kelly

Mm.

Steve

Bravery and courage for people who bear all. But we can’t forget it is a performance. And the performance adds a, let’s say a compromising facet to the heartfelt truth that’s being put out there. No, I think it’s obviously true here as I as I put them on the page, I understand that I am performing. I have a instructional. I have an experimental task of poems side by side. I have other agendas. In my head, I also have a time constraint since I want to get it done in a particular amount of time. You know there’s all kinds of other pieces which qualify my ability to be the heart on the countertop. Know that’s there.

And I need To encourage those and that I think that’s really true as you mentioned at the beginning. Of the elegy, I’ve had people push back some of. Earlier. Push back on that and said no, you can just read the poems as a poem of grief. Be fine. I don’t disagree. You can read an elegy as a poem of grief and get a great deal out of it. But that is not the full story of the elegy. Not. It’s not the complete reading of it. Not that there is anything called complete to pretend that I’m going to take the worst emotion, grief and. Say OK, I’m throwing it out into the world. Usually it would reveal itself as sobbing agony. You know, a hair pulling whatever you want to whatever you want to do. But no, you’ve asked me to. Cautionarily put it into a prescribed tradition of form. Which has three distinct pieces to it. I must show my agony in Part 1. I must idealize this subject, who I’m grieving over in Part 2. I must come to some reconciliation and. Moving forward. And if I don’t do that, I haven’t created a traditional elegy suitable for the historical public. We’d we’re truly. Misunderstanding elegy. If we forget that that separation is there. Is not the heart on the. This is the heart of the counter top, packaged in a very nice bow that’s presentable and. Not too. I’ll mannered. Right. For the people who are reading it. Time.

Kelly

Well, I think you’re talking about the performance of authenticity on. Level. You know, how do you perform authenticity on some level I was really interested by what you said.

You know, kind of prior to this this question about kind of inventing different characters, different persona from which to write different points of view and perspectives that are neither the self nor necessarily a particular Other and. There are, you know, first and second person voices that may or may not be you as well. You talk a little bit about. Why that switching? Like particularly that nursing and wanting to create a voice for poem that is explicitly not yours?

Steve

My first response is why would I ever write a novel with characters? That they’re not all me.

Kelly

Thank you.

Steve

They might be facets of me, so why would I limit the genre of poetry? Why would I tie my hands behind my back and not give myself the opportunity to explore different perspectives through 1st that I wouldn’t prose? That’s my first. You know, kind of cheeky response to. Is that?

Literature offers opportunities and just because in this very, very brief period of history, we have made almost like. Last 80 years or so, we’ve made all poetry confessional in nature. That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t that we haven’t done other things with. And I think what happens now and I’m talking about it in one of the podcasts on Andrew Marvel, we go back and we look at Andrew Marvel’s poetry and said. He’s a sexist pig. He’s  an. Look what he’s doing and. Slow down. We don’t know if. Marvel’s a sexist pig, but we do know his speaker is. Now you have to ask yourself, is Andrew Marvell so ignorant as to misunderstand the character he’s created and to his client mistress, knowing that there’s a long tradition of that sort of lecherous behavior going on? And if he isn’t the speaker, then what is he up to? But it’s very easy to condemn Marvel because. Make that sloppy reading to suggest that the speaker is there, so I guess I’m going to build then on that notion of. The performance in qualifying context of that utterance is different from the authenticity, as you say, as you’re suggesting. And because it is, I’m going to mark that difference. And I think in this particular case, most of the poems in this book are marking the difference so that we can recognize that there are other ways to read this.

There is a teacher in the blank verse poem. I think this teacher has something important to say. But. This teacher is. Pompous, self absorbed. Monopolizing doesn’t let the student get a word. Edgewise is dismissive and condescending. All those sorts of things I’d like to think I wasn’t that at least all the time. But I have an opportunity to create that.

Kelly

Psychological question, did you create characters that you feared? Maybe?

Steve

Right. So we haven’t gotten, we haven’t gone into the psychological readings of these poems, which I think would I I leave that to the readers out there. Ahead and do your Freudian and. Yeah, I’m sure Freud has a lot to say about it, and that’s fine. Yeah, writers don’t have control over how they’re going to be read, necessarily. And someone wants to read something in to a poem or discover something about my unconscious that I didn’t consciously put in there. That’s possible. And I can just shrug it and say OK. Maybe I did. Don’t know. So we’ll leave it there.

Kelly

Yeah, it goes to mind. The notion of poetry is a form of fiction. Which I think you’re. You know modern or modernist poetry. Onward we assume it to be part of the author’s psychology, part of their interiority, their private experience of looking out upon the world regardless of whatever fictive forms they used to create or convert. And yeah, I think you’re, you know, you’re kind of saying, well, I would love to be able to play characters. I would love all the same liberties that a fiction writer would have within this, the scope of the mission of poetry. Do you? Could you also write fiction? Do you feel that there is a different form of liberty or freedom between those two those two genres when you write? You know, close fiction versus poetry.

Steve

I think there’s more of a difference between them than there perhaps should be.

Kelly

What do you mean by that?

Steve

The crafting of language is the crafting of language, and if you’re going to create an image then create the image. If you’re going to create attention and create the tensionAs a literary term, I often use this in place of "conflict" ... More. If you’re going to pursue a theme, pursue a theme. And all that’s left to decide is the structure under which it falls. Structure is best. To deliver that theme so I can choose a haiku. I can choose. Villanelle I can choose a. Micro fiction piece, a prose poem, a hybrid between. To a dialogue

The most recent short story I wrote was actually in the form of a questionnaire that I got from a magazine that said, as a writer answer these profile questions for us. Like. Your favorite movies are and things like that said. OK. And so it became a short story. But the structure we choose. Conditions the delivery of that meaning. So if I’m a thoughtful writer, I am choosing a structure or working with a structure, and that highlights and emphasizes that what I’m trying to communicate. Some ideas have to be communicated in an 800 page novel. None that I have right now, but someone’s do and Thomas Mann’s do you? What I mean? He needs room to breathe and he does.

Speaker

But others.

Steve

Know Basho needed just this much space, you know. So let him write that much space.

Kelly

Mm.

Steve

So I think that’s  how I see the difference. There’s other differences between verse and prose. Obviously, but I know that sounds like a three college courses to pursue it.

Kelly

Well, I’m thinking more specifically in relation to your poetry. I guess.

I’ll kind of wind up with. It’s just kind of a little bit of a, you know, how do you sampled all these different forms? Is there a particular form that you feel is underused under credited? It’s a bad rap. But maybe that maybe you would encourage, you know, through your own efforts to reckon with it. That little people gave it a try.

Steve

I think there’s several of them for different reasons.

Kelly

So if you want to pick like 1. Two to keep it short.

Steve

I had to pick one or two. I’m going to say. First of all, poetry in translation from other cultures. So let’s be grabbing tanka, haiku, and ghazal all at once and saying.

Kelly

OK.

Steve

They have a particular challenge to them that. It’s important. Especially as. The white Western male writer to really approach them with a degree of humility and respect to find out what they are and to. Honor that as best I’m able to, and as I learned more and more about them, I found myself in awe of these forms. What they’re doing in their traditional history that we often fail when we translate them to English. So I think those forms are stunningly fascinating, and there’s more that we need to look at with those. That’s one.

Kelly

The other.

Steve

The other I might say is. Some. Well, I don’t want to go cliche, do. But I will. There is something about the sonnet form. Anderson came with it and others. These poems of extreme condensation. These poems that are compact that are. Little gems. That again, historically, if you understand why they were then we recognize that they are meant as condensed.

Kelly

Mm.

Steve

Arguments or utterances that are to open up. And I think again, if we’re casual writers and readers of these of these films. And then we just say I’m counting syllables to make sure I get it right and we get so caught up in the rules of the structure, we forget the beauty of what they’re about. So, and they recognize that those two things should match. The sonnet structure should reveal. Its beauty like a box that opens, and if we don’t write it with the idea that every line, every syllable, every image, is in itself conversation with the other lines. That is itself referencing a history and a dialogue with its history. We are missing the opportunities of those forms. Because we. So caught up in well, I got 14 lines. I win.

Kelly

I was gonna say, well, perhaps the function gets lost by, you know, the attention that it requires even to accomplish a solid. The larger purpose of that structure might be lost financially.

Steve

Yeah. And I think that’s true of all forms in some level, but those, those two categories, the very small poem and then the poem from a different culture, strike me as being the most relevant to that.

Kelly

Well, that’s honestly all I have for you. Unless you. You felt like we missed. I asked a few extras just based on what you.

Steve

Yeah, no, this has been.

Kelly

Yeah, I think.

Steve

And you got me thinking about some things that I really hadn’t thought, you know, at length about. That was kind of fun.

Kelly

But what were those things? Well, how did you thought about before?

Steve

I did think in the conversation process about my distance from the literary.

Kelly

Yeah.

Steve

Literary distance between authenticity and performance. But I don’t know that I pursued it more than acknowledged in my head. You know, because I was so busy. Writing them and working with them that I didn’t really. I just didn’t take time to slow down and say, what is this about now? Am I doing? And I think I’ve discovered some things along the way. You know, in writing that that was, that was part of that. And the same was true when. You asked about is there structure or is there structure in the free verse? And of course there is. Is and I knew that I was wrestling with the composition of the free verse, but I don’t know that I have yet articulated my decision making process. For the book in the free verse, I don’t know that I had a defined process. Though these all were written. Fairly close to each other, you know, across a season of time. So I was kind of in the same mind as I went through them. Hmm.

Kelly

Yeah, I guess I can have a different how long it takes you to get from the one version to the other if it’s. Like you said, kind of tight. You can be expected to remember the kind of I don’t know, like the mood, the situation, whatever. You’re in that. Want in? Versus you know, if you picked it up even six months later or something, it might have been very different.

Steve

Absolutely. Well, you know. I mean, we get in the head space. You get in a certain head space, and when you’re writing and it’s hard to recapture that once you’ve left it.

Kelly

Sure. Yeah, she pops whole and he and he might not get it again. Yeah, it was fun for me to read. I consider that much.

Steve

Well, thank you.

Kelly

And it was, yeah, it was interesting to see, like for me. How? Some of the formss could be like how little could be changed and then how much could be changed because I think you. Good examples. There’s somewhere there are just a few. And they’re highlighted all the more for those, you know, just being a small difference.

Steve

Mm.

Kelly

Versus a complete perspective or you know a shift of view or secondary person. No it. It is interesting to think about. About how poems get voiced to.

I’m notorious for like editing things like news. After I was written. I keep all the versions. Yeah, you’re. But it’s like it’s a later year trying to go. On earlier. And like, fuss around with something else, you know.

Steve

Yeah.

Kelly

You should just write a new poem.

Steve

That’s. Yeah. Just start over. The prose poem was interesting because it was anti structure. So when I went to the free verse version, I was adding structure back.

Kelly

Yeah, yeah, I like the point the font Size more. That’s funny too.

Steve

Yeah, technically a violation.

Kelly

I was gonna.

Steve

One of my earlier readers was really picky on following the traditional forms.

Kelly

Hmm.

Steve

You know, when I every time I break even the smallest rule, he. You know, you gotta do this this 6 * It has to do it this way otherwise. It’s really not in the Italian. I said. I know.

Kelly

Question. He talks about actually sort of building up at some point, but just like that notion of formality often comes from the fact that the way that we are at least as writers usually introduced to these forms is like, you get a sign to do it by some profess. Desire. And I think that that is a big part of. It’s like, but what if you chose to start? If some people, at least for me, it’s like hard to even get to that point because it’s. Why would? They’ve only ever been forced upon me like this sort of bitter. In your mouth, but.

Steve

Yeah.

Kelly

It’s a good part to. Maybe someday I should just make a. Just use the point and see what happens because.

Steve

I said it’s fun and seeing what other poets have been recently doing with these forms has been fascinating for me to say, wow, you’re calling that a villanelle? That’s what the villanelle become now, huh?

Kelly

Yeah.

Steve

Know and that’s and okay. And we don’t think of Lucille Clifton as. A formal poet. But she is writing often in response to a lot of these traditions as well. And you until you think about. And look at some of these forms and you look at her. You say, are you? That really is, isn’t it? And so she’s obviously, of course, well versed in traditional structure and then watching her sees it and do something different with it. It’s been fascinating.

Kelly

Yeah. No, that, that no sort of how formal is formal is it’s going. It’s going to be sitting in my mind for a while.

Steve

Good.

Kelly

I also envy you the time poetry, because I don’t have so many of it right now.

Steve

I did have to do 40 years of drudgery to get here.

Kelly

Also, the only the only bookshelf in my bedroom area that I keep close to, like where I you know where I sleep is the poetry book club. All of the other, you know, the other books for, you know, in my office and in my living room. But the. The only one that’s like not in a like sentence important.

Steve

That’s cool.

Kelly

That was the other thing we should have talked about, like electronic reading versus book reading.

Steve

Yeah.

Kelly

That is a. That is a real question in poetry that. That is not often enough. And then I talked to my own students about it too, just for, like, you know, I start crosswating assignment meeting, and now a lot of them love the notion that it’s like, oh, you don’t have to buy it. Like, it’s free. You’re. An electronic copy. That like endless scrolling that that, you know, the fact that you can’t remember. It’s about a third of the way. Just. The physical objects itself makes it so much different even than like white space on a page like you don’t necessarily know how a poem is going to render electronically.

Steve

Yeah, it’s been a real challenge.

Kelly

Uncharted territory did you have?

Steve

Absolutely.

Kelly

Did you have to? Do the electronic versions with the E. Because I presume there’s like a Kindle, or, you know, there’s some way you can download the book. Like, did you record?

Steve

The epub version is really persnickety for poetry. That’s what Kindle and libraries. And it’s, I mean the PDF version is easy. Locked in. But the one that where the. You just. Double finger and the font starts to. Trying to keep that roped in is really hard. It’s doable, but I’ve been fighting that for more time than I should be. To make it work and I. I got it, but I don’t know that I did. Waiting for that. And then, of course, the audio book is its own animal.

Kelly

That’s why you’re gonna need it. Well, we’ll definitely let you know when that pops up to all the criteria as well. Well, as I thank you. Congratulations. You wrote a book.

Steve

Yeah, somehow or other happened.

Kelly

Good.

Steve

So thank you and thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it, Kelly.

===

Steve

Thank you, Kelly, for a wonderful discussion that touched upon forms and theory. The process of writing. Hopefully we can have you on the podcast later to chat about your own work and writing. I will always be a fan of your work.

If you are iInterested in getting a copy of Unwoven or any of the supplements, head on over to waywordsstudio.com and drop an order, but in the meantime, go read something.

Steve

Right around the corner, a little podcast returns with a new name. The Waywords Podcast becomes Literary Nomads.

Why literary? Because we’ll be talking about all things reading and how to think about them. That’s books and poems, of course, but also nonfiction, graphic works, digital and audio tales, and anything else we run into. Because reading is reading and thinking is thinking.

Why nomads? Well, I suspect we’ll be traveling a bit into unknown territories, even settling down for a while, making connections that we may not have expected and making use of them for a bit. And then we move on. Always, because change is change, and change is necessary.

So explore with me, Steve Chisnell, a teacher, writer and voracious eater of books for almost forty years. I promise every episode will offer you something you weren’t imagining before. That’s Literary Nomads, Wanderings on Literature and Language.  Wander with me. I think they call that, follow the podcast now.