April 6, 2009
ENG 340 – Creative Writing
Dr. Shari Muench, EdD.
A pen and a piece of paper might technically be the only “tools” a poet requires, but there are many “literary” tools at his (or her) disposal as well. In addition to imagination and a little flirtation with the Muse, a poet uses many other elements of writing to craft his (or her) messages to the heart and soul. This paper looks at the works of three great poets, three extraordinary poems, and explores the imagery, metaphors, rhyme and structure that make them so great. Examples from William Shakespeare’s sonnet, “When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes” (Thiel, 2004, p.311), Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (Thiel, 2004, p.297), and Craig Raine’s, “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home” (Thiel, 2004, p.308) will be used to discuss the importance of figurative language in poetry and how it communicates to the reader.
What better place to start but with the undisputed master, William Shakespeare?
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
His writing truly achieves the status of Art and his attention to structure and detail is extraordinary. As a sonnet, “When, in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes” has a very solid structure using iambic pentameter to give the lines a steady rhythm to underscore the natural cadence of the words. There is also a clear rhyming pattern in two of the three blocks with two interleaving couplets and a final rhyming couplet that gives the conclusion its final oomph! In the first block, we have “eyes… state… cries… fate” (Thiel, 2004, p.311) and in the third, “despising… state… arising… gate…” (Thiel, 2004, p.311) but the second, while “hope” rhymes with “scope,” “friends possessed” is paired with “contented least” (Thiel, 2004, p.311) a sort of second cousin to a rhyme! The sounds are close enough that a slight modification of pronunciation is enough to make them the same.
As for imagery and metaphor, the sonnet offers us such gems as “bootless cries” and “sullen earth” (Thiel, 2004, p.311) in the third and twelfth lines. However, the quality of classical Elizabethan English as preserved in Shakespearean works, have an amazingly visual and aural beauty that is striking even when it is not phrased in metaphor. The word order and word choice is almost musical, full of emotive sounds as crisp and clear as notes, while in the other sense of the word, inspiring the reader to see everything so clearly. In the first quatrain, we find a man shunned and feeling sorry for himself, crying out to an unresponsive sky. In the next four lines, he longs for the fortune and gifts of other men while discounting his own strengths or accomplishments. In the third quatrain, he expresses his disgust with himself, remembering what gives meaning to his life, what he would give up for nothing. Or, as expressed in the final couplet, addressing his beloved, he values the memory of their love so highly, he would not trade places with a king.
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (Thiel, 2004, p.297) is an American Classic arranged in four verses with a consistent rhyming pattern and flowing pace. The first, third and fourth lines in each verse rhyme in counterpoint to the second and fifth lines, giving each verse a pleasing extra stride. Frost makes excellent use of descriptive words, eschewing any obvious metaphors, though describing a road as wanting wear comes close to being metaphoric. The true imagery of the poem is a product of the narrative story-telling quality, capturing a moment of decision between two very similar paths that tells more about the man making the choice. On inspection, the two paths were not different, though clearly one had seen more traffic. With a mild apprehension and a faint sense of loss, Frost admits he may not come back this way to explore the road not taken, and with a sigh for what might have been, he acknowledges the impact of the choice he made.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
It is a wonderful comment on life, and how our choices come to define us. It is a lesson in the metaphoric quality of life itself, capturing the manner in which the natural and mundane world speaks to us and gives us wisdom in ways we often cannot easily see. The interesting thing is that there is a third, implicit choice Frost could have made at any time, to quit the trail and blaze his own path. That he never mentions it confirms what is implicit in the second line, where “sorry I could not travel both” (Thiel, 2004, p.297) suggests that part of him would have liked to take the path most people followed—even when he favored the road less traveled—he followed an established path in the realm of human experience.
Craig Raine’s “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home” (Thiel, 2004, p.308) appears to be a poem in free-verse, with seventeen unrhymed couplets. If there is a pattern to the number of syllables, it is difficult to pick out, though there seems to be a pattern to the imagery the poem explores, devoting three couplets to each topic that is described though in such an alien manner as to make a complete mystery out of it.
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings –
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside –
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves –
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Among the mysteries, the first might be books, the second seems to be terrestrial weather, the third is an automobile (a Model T, which helps to clarify the period in which the poem is set), including its ignition, a rearview mirror, and perhaps a stopwatch. The fourth mystery item must be a telephone, and the imagery in this “verse” is simply fantastic! This manner of observing and describing an object without the conventional frame of reference is astonishing and insightful, and perhaps the only way a poem of the period could openly have addressed a fart! Possibly even a bowel movement! But even more wondrous, this alien observer can then turn its attention to the mystery of sleep and the wonder of dreams, including a comparative contrast between the monochrome light of night and the colorful imagery of our unconscious adventures.
Clearly, an imagination is the greatest of “tools” in an poet’s kit, but it takes an appreciable skill to capture such imagery, raising it above simple prose through the use of rhythmic and compositional structures, clever metaphors that surprise and illuminate people with their unusual symmetries, or lull the ear with the very sound of words, whether from meter, cadence, natural onomatopoeia or rhyme. It comes as no surprise that Shakespeare was a master of these poetic tools, and Robert Frost is well loved for his observations of man and nature, but Craig Raine, if you do not know him, is well represented by his work! The magic of poetry, as he ably demonstrates, is its ability to reveal the extraordinary that lies within everything ordinary.
References
Thiel, Diane. (October 6, 2004) Crossroads: Creative Writing in Four Genres. Longman.
eye of paradox - in the ashes of ideas hides the spark of understanding 