VOLUME 1 — NUMBER 2.5

MASTHEAD | SUBMISSIONS | PRESS | MEDIA KIT | LINKS | MISSION | CONTACT

Fire and Blood of Poetry

by Wendy Fulton Steginsky

PUTTING SPRING INTO POETRY

As spring starts to stir and new life bursts forth everywhere around me, I wonder, What brings poetry to life? How do we, as poets, make our poetry fresh and full of richness?

Rainer Maria Rilke said, “You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born...” Images are born from sensory experience. They help us to feel and to connect our readers to us on a deep, human level. Lucille Clifton clarifies, “People are beginning to understand that, especially in poetry, feeling transcends boundaries of race, culture, class, economics. They are also beginning to understand that intellect does not do that.”

Images offer us direct experience. They can show themselves to us through any of the senses. In J.C. Todd’s poem “Her Garden,” from her collection of poems entitled Nightshade, she evokes the original image of an Indian temple in moonlight and invites us to experience all its reverence and sacred beauty:

The far corner
of the tiny garden
looks like India in moonlight,
sweet pea all filigree
like the carved lintel
of a temple.

Many of J.C. Todd’s poems are available in the “Poetry” section of this issue. I interviewed her recently (“The Quiet Maverick: An Interview with J.C. Todd”) and fell in love with her work. I refer to it frequently in this column as it reveals the broad sweep of a compassionate heart, the workings of a deeply inquiring mind, and the elegant, compressed language of an accomplished poet.

Walt Whitman wrote, “A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” Perhaps Whitman is more satisfied by the morning glory because it is real and alive. It communicated something to him about reality that is particular, clear, and unmistakable. Seeing and smelling — a sense of touch even — give us the raw material to create an image that can move our readers to deep feeling. We throw new light on mundane experiences when we begin to take notice of the myriad images that constantly surround us.

Images express very specific perceptions and emotions. They hold energy and they reveal our voice. Out of a simple image, a deep voice may be speaking. In J.C. Todd’s Nightshade, she addresses what couldn’t be spoken of in her childhood: the death of her twin sister. In the poem “Nightshade” Todd speaks of this loss as something present and palpable:

I keep tending
the light-furled
bud of their loss
its delicate
night-blooming aroma
its bitter, narcotic root.

In “Mock Orange on Wash Day” Todd describes laundry day, an everyday event in her childhood. However, there is a powerful emotional undercurrent woven through which rings with the transience of life, pointing again to the painful loss her family suffered:

to weight it, bow it low
as the clothesline
where shirts, shorts,
underthings she’s hung
shimmer like spirits of children,
releasing damp to noonday heat
in a haze, a halo ascending,
disappearing,
fragile as the airy scent
of mock orange blossoms,
scent that disassembles
as she names it, gone
like that.

J.C. Todd speaks the truth of her remembered experience in a graceful style and in a strong, clear voice. What you lose never really goes away. What Todd has done is to transform this childhood experience by entering that severed place that explanations and reason cannot touch. She has transformed unspeakable pain into a work of art that is intensely personal and beautiful.

Charles Olson in “These Days” said,

Whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle
and the dirt
just to make clear
where they came from.

Olson is encouraging us to speak from that deep place within us. He suggests we take a trowel, dig for those places to get to the roots, and then to examine them and their sources. By digging up the dark earth we allow air to go through and rain and sun to penetrate. We encourage something new to flourish through this process. A poem can act as the container for that transformation. It can allow a story to condense and hold years of telling and deep feeling. It can let the story live and put the poet in the flow of the present moment, fusing past events with spirit.

“In writing poetry all one’s attention is focused on some inner voice,” Li-Young Lee writes. Our inner voice is the mouthpiece of our spirit. To be in touch with our inner voice is to be in touch with the whole spirit. By giving voice to this place we bring richness and wisdom to our poetry, revealing our essential character and the original nature of who we are. This puts the touch of authenticity in our work.

J.C. Todd gives her fullest energy to the experience of perceiving nature. This energy makes her poems passionate and meaningful. “Under Language,” in a collection of her poems called What Space This Body, is a great example of a small poem whose carefully chosen images and metaphors not only encourage us to see the beauty in nature but also surprise us with the heft underneath the words:

That rush of air in
your head is heron

opening wings of
cloudy blue. Things have

a sound pool under
their silence, timbre

or tone disappearing
too fast for conscious proof,
an unattended thunder.

Natural places can be sources of inspiration for our spirit and they speak of our profound relationship to the earth. J.C. Todd is drawn to the hugeness of nature on many levels. Her poems explore that theme and invite us to discover connections. In her poem “Green,” Todd allows her images to reveal these connections:

The silence Latif’s last tone
comes from and becomes. The everywhere cries,
whether my own or world’s. Or are we one?
...Pines
filtering breeze, a sparrow’s chitter, raven’s crake
merge into groundbass, emerge as line,
mapping the wood’s proportions,
depth and drape.

In the following poem by Langston Hughes, he speaks to us through nature, and his rich, sensory images make the whole dusty landscape come alive. His images also serve as a metaphor, beckoning him to return to the vitality of writing poetry.

The land wants me to come back
To a handful of dust in autumn,
To a raindrop
In the palm of my hand
In spring.
The land wants me to come back
To a broken song in October,
To a snowbird on the wing.
The land wants me to come back.

— Langston Hughes
Dust Bowl

Writing poetry is an evolving process. J.C. Todd says it starts for her with a flickering film or a lantern show in her brain. Gary Snyder explains it this way: “I never find words right away. Poems for me always begin with images and rhythms, shapes, feelings, forms, dances in the back of my mind.” Staying in touch with our senses as poets and focusing on our images will give our poetry energy. Listening for the voice of the images and expressing the feelings connected with them will infuse them with power. Speaking from the center of our own experiences will give our poems authenticity and make them come alive.

Wendy Steginsky

Bio: Wendy Fulton Steginsky was born and raised in Bermuda. She found her way to the U.S. via Europe in the late seventies. She was a special education teacher for many years and worked most recently as program director at the Writers Room of Bucks County. She is currently Managing Editor of the Wild River Review. Poetry is her passion and she writes the column, “Fire and Blood of Poetry”. In September 2006 two of her poems will be appearing in Bermuda’s First Anthology of Poetry.