Personal Narrative V. Lyrical

Recently I've been thinking about the differences between, for lack of better terms, the personal narrative poem and the lyrical poem. What I mean by personal narrative and lyrical is: poems that surface from personal experience/events and poems that do not surface from personal experience/events, respectively (which leads me to ask, Isn't every poem personal to the poet, but now I really am rambling).

Though I've mostly written the personal narrative, I've had an underlying desire to move away from the narrative to the lyrical, and in the last few months my poems have moved in this direction. The question that follows is, Why? Why do I think this shift might lead to better poems? Why do I mistrust the personal narrative? Why has my work shifted in this direction, because I'm willing it or because it's a natural progression?

Some initial thoughts:

• Sometimes I have a hard time believing my personal narrative could be universal. As with all artists, poets are trying to speak to a wide audience, to connect with them, to transform their personal ideas and experiences into something that resonates with a multitude of readers/listeners. A tiny voice sometimes chips its way into my head, suggesting no one is interested in reading about my experience dealing with my mother's cancer. Still, it is frequently the personal narrative poetry of other poets that I'm drawn to.
  
• I'm often labeled a women's poet, for good or for ill. A woman's personal narrative is sometimes discounted. (I realize this is a very general statement that is likely to incite intense emotions, thus my reason for not expanding on it. It is too unwieldy for me to deal with at this time, but it is a thought I've had so I wanted to record it.)
  
• The personal narrative, rising from real life experience, does something to the memory of that real life experience. In writing experience down, attempting to bring some permanence or insight, the writer inevitably changes the memory of the experience. Of course, even without writing, memory is never the same as the actual experience. But the process of writing, purposefully revisiting and reshaping, further alters the memory. I find it comparable to taking a photograph. In one sense it helps preserve the experience. On the other hand, as the memory/writing gains energy and power, the actual experience loses that energy/power.
  

Prompt

Raised Catholic, I continue to be intrigued by the tradition and ritual of the Catholic church, its saints and sacraments, its popes and Purgatory, and on and on. The imagery of this tradition frequently appears in my creative writing. So here's a writing prompt--good for writers of all genres--that rises from this intrigue.

Write a confession. It might be a first-person narrative or dramatic monologue. It might be heavy or humorous. It might be a long-kept secret or widely known fact. It might be directed to someone specific or the world at large. It might be none of these things. The goal, as with any prompt, is to play, to follow whatever trails the writing leads us to.

Black Swan Pas de Deux

For my senior-year performance, I danced the role of Odile in the Black Swan pas de deux of Swan Lake. Recently I've been thinking about the role and the ballet once again as I've been working on a poem off and on for some months about Odile. She's a tricky character to get right, both on the stage and in this poem. Perhaps watching the dance repeatedly will generate new sparks.

Added: American Ballet Theatre
Gillian Murphy as Odile, with Angel Corella
Marcello Gomes as Von Rothbart

World-Wonder

While hiking in the Red River Gorge this weekend, I surprised myself with my world-wonder. Everything seemed new. Everything seemed camera-worthy. I probably frustrated S. with my frequent stops to snap a picture of some mushroom or tree or river rock.

Hiking this year has been markedly different from last year. Last year we had an extreme drought and consistently hot, humid days. This year the weather has been lovely, the best summer the area has had since we moved here. Though precipitation is still below normal, it has not been as drastically low as last summer.

Following a stream into the forest, crisscrossing the little creek several times, we hiked a trail that was new to us. The trail smelled of damp forest floor and smoky, smoldering campfires from the night before. At the top of a bluff, we stopped and lounged on a rock, our hunger fed by granola bars, our thirst quenched by water, our restlessness quieted by the peace of the place. The breeze rippling through the trees sounded so much like the water running through the stream below.

During the first half of the hike, we crossed paths a couple times with a man from Lexington. I'm guessing he was in his seventies. Bravo! I thought as some of the terrain was quite steep and challenging.

At a certain point we knew we'd have to turn around and backtrack out since continuing forward would be far too long for us, given the time, food, and water we had remaining. I was despondent. I wanted to see new parts of the trail, new mushrooms and trees and rocks. However, I was also fatigued and famished by this point. The second granola bar and more water would have to do, and my thoughts returned to the man in his seventies, driving his walking stick into the ground before him, moving forward. When the energy kicked in, I realized I was still moving forward too, one foot in front of the other, and to my delight, the return trip was new. How did I miss that yellow flower growing out of the stream edge the first time through? How did I miss those water skimmers clipping across the water's surface? How did I miss that particular music of our boots shifting the river rocks as we crisscrossed the creek? How could I think my world-wonder would leave me?

Ghost Forms

If you have about an hour and are interested in how traditional form influences free verse, listen to Katie Ford's talk "Ghost Forms: Using Traditional Form in Free Verse." You might have heard similar points made before (such as how the turn is essential to sonnets and nonce sonnets), but the contemporary examples Ford cites make the presentation original (at least for me). The title of her talk is borrowed from what Roethke had to say on the subject, which I think bears repeating:

Behind every free verse poem there is the ghost of a form.

Mammoth Cave

What is the attraction of a cave? S. and I went to Mammoth Cave and toured through part of the cave system open to visitors. Early guide Stephen Bishop called the cave a "grand, gloomy, and peculiar place," and that's about as good a description as any. On the four-mile, four and a half hour Grand Avenue tour, we walked through gypsum lined passages, narrow canyons, underground hills, large rooms, and areas with dripstone formations. We experienced dry caves and wet caves. We saw cave crickets and bats. We learned about the geology, ecology, and history of the cave system.

Long have humans been fascinated with the cave, given the names of past visitors on cave walls, those from the mid-nineteenth century that had been charred on the cave with candle smoke and those from more recent periods that had been etched in the limestone, as well as given the artifacts that have been found, including Native American tools and bones.

I think I would have enjoyed the cave more if we could have explored it on our own, although I understand the reasons the group tours are a necessity (cave preservation and visitor safety). I found it hard to appreciate the full effect of the cave in a group of 80. Two of my favorite moments on the tour were when the lights went out. The first time was accidental as we were walking through Cleaveland Avenue. The second time the rangers turned out the lights and requested silence for a moment while we were seated on benches in a large room (Aerobridge Canyon, I think). That is when I came closest to understanding the cave: in total darkness, enveloped by the earth, nearly 300 feet below the surface, with only the sound of my own blood rushing through my body.

Perhaps there is some connection to why I'm a writer. I get a similar thrill writing--entering darkness and solitude and silence, where I must rely on my imagination to reveal the light and the sounds of humanity.

Donald Hall

I finally got around to reading a Paris Review interview with Donald Hall, which I came across on the magazine's web site and bookmarked several months ago. The interview is from 1991 (so I'm further behind on my reading than I thought), but parts of the interview speak to what I've been pondering lately. I'm particularly interested in what Hall had to say about his process:

...I begin with a loose association of images, a scene, and a sense that somewhere in this material is something I don’t yet understand that wants to become a poem. I write out first drafts in prosaic language—flat, no excitement. Then very slowly, over hundreds of drafts, I begin to discover and exploit connections—between words, between images. Looking at the poem on the five-hundredth day, I will take out one word and put in another. Three days later I will discover that the new word connects with another word that joined the manuscript a year back.

Hall, a devoted reviser (hundreds of drafts!), also says:

First drafts of anything are difficult for me. I prefer revising, rewriting. I’m not the kind of writer like Richard Wilbur or Thomas Mann who finishes one segment before going on to another. Wilbur finishes the first line before he starts the second. I lack the ability to judge myself except over many drafts and usually over years. Revising, I go through a whole manuscript over and over and over. Some short prose pieces I’ve rewritten fifteen or twenty times; poems get up to two hundred fifty or three hundred drafts. I don’t recommend it, but for me it seems necessary. And I do more drafts as I get older.

And:

Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine. Why do I pick this scene or image? Within the action of kicking the leaves something was weighted, freighted, heavy with feeling—and because I kept writing, kept going back to the poem, eventually the under-feeling that unified the detail came forward in the poem. The process is discovering by revision, uncovering by persistence.

Yes! I sometimes think there's an overemphasis on creation and not enough attention to revision, which is just as magical, if not more so.

Hall also talked about the passage of time and its effect on him as a poet:

I’m more patient now. When I was in my twenties, I wanted to write many poems. I had goals; when I reached them, they turned out to be not worth reaching. When you begin, you think that if you could just publish a few poems, you’d reach your desire; then if you could publish in a good magazine; then if you could publish a book; then . . . When you’ve done these things you haven’t done anything. The desire must be, not to write another dozen poems, but to write something as good as the poems that originally brought you to love the art. It’s the only sensible reason for writing poems. You’ve got to keep your eye on what you care about: to write a poem that stands up with Walt Whitman or Andrew Marvell.

Okay, so I'm still impatient and I still desire publication of my book. However, there are moments of simplicity when the outside world (its charms and lures, its criticism and cold shoulder, its fleeting praise) falls away and I'm only concerned with the work at hand, with writing a poem that can stand up.