Rhyme

 

Greetings cheerful versifiers, dedicated declaimers, potential bards  and midnight confessors. Here are the next three in the series about making poetry, written after the style of Wislawa Szymborska, most notably in her book translated from the Polish, ‘How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice to Authors.’ (New Directions, 2021). 

Question 16: Is poetry translatable? Yes, every day readers of English poetry are translating English poetry into English. The same is true for any poetry; we are engaged in translating not just the one meaning but the many meanings of any one poem in the original. This multiplicity of meanings is given as one reason why poetry is not translatable into other languages. Translators know from the start they are trying to convey sounds, internal rhymes, assonances, analogies, references, traditions, sayings and jokes that resist translation into another language, each with its own attributes. But they try and it’s helpful. 

Question 17: Why rhyme? Chime, crime, mime, pantomime, prime, the sublime, and time are just seven reasons why we rhyme. Essentially, it’s a memory game, memory itself. It’s about remembering a song, an expression, a link. Our very memory is a rhyme to the actual that is already past. Rhyme makes connections, because the mind is rhyming night and day, what to say. Natural rhymes work better than rhymes where we force it, oft unable to turn off the faucet. Still, rhyme has its limits, there are limited sets of rhymes for any word. We want more, leaving rhyme behind. 

Question 18: Is a thesaurus appropriate? Do you mean is it suitable, proper, pertinent, apt? Applicable, congruous, opportune, germane? Relevant, befitting, rightful, appurtenant? Maybe. As with rhyme, there is a school that says your own vocabulary is reliable and more convincing, that thesaurus words stick out like a sore pollex. Another school opines that all words are valuable and expansion of your vocabulary likewise. Thesauri are indifferent to subtlety, cannot distinguish magenta from lavender, mauve, plum, periwinkle or amethyst. Your violet verse could turn into purple prosody. They encourage herd unity, keeping sheep with goats. Of use, but user beware.

Nose

 

The Nose, by Niko ‘Naso’ Google. Part I. This was not what the barber Jones was used to. Indeed it was what the morning newspapers call a once-in-a-lifetime event. Inside the freshly baked loaf of bread his wife made for breakfast was a nose. This wouldn’t happen with Baker’s Delight. Furthermore, he recognised the nose. It was the nose of Smith, distinctly, the wannabe CEO part-time head kicker. Jones’s wife did “not want that nose in the house one more minute.” He understood. Taking the nose with him to work he threw it off Princes Bridge, only to be spotted by a policeman. The officer refused Jones’s bribe, saying he was getting enough bribes already. Soon after this exchange heavy rain enveloped the scene leaving the whole city, as they say in fiction, “shrouded in mystery.” Part II. It was unpleasant for Smith to look in the mirror that morning to find his nose was missing. The only thing for it was to find the first fitted facemask to hand and go report this disappearance to the police chief. Where had it got to? He mingled in with the crowd of fitted masks, but imagine his alarm while passing nearby the Cathedral, to see his nose being chauffeur-driven in the latest model BMW business-like along Collins Street, replete in woollen suit and silken tie, stylish attire of the accomplished CEO. Accosting it, Smith demanded the nose get back on his face. The nose declined, the nose refused, the nose eluded. Oddly, the police chief was not in, so Smith sent lost notices to the newspapers. The Guardian took a sniff, but the others refused outright as too scandalous, a threat to CEO culture, mask mandates, personal identity. Not in the public interest. Indulging his habit of flirting with young women Smith realised, they might be masked but he was noseless. Arriving home humiliated he met a policeman who had just returned his nose. The nose however played funny buggers and wouldn’t comply with his face. His doctor thought it a hopeless case. A poison pen correspondence ensued with Mrs Eleven when Smith decided she made his nose fall off after he refused her daughter’s hand in marriage. Eventually he saw the light, judging this to be a false assumption. Sea rain started falling all over town loudly and incessantly for what seemed like days. Part III. In the time-honoured tradition of happy endings, Smith woke up one morning to find his nose was back on his face. The rain had cleared, it was a cool but sunny day with seven hot air balloons floating over the Yarra. Wearing of masks was optional while anti-vaxxers protested that their freedoms had been stolen, cancelled, or otherwise denied. It was the world’s most liveable city. Happy to be alive, Smith visited Jones for a haircut and shave. The barber was surprised to see Smith with his nose, but quietly got on with the job. Later in the morning Smith was his old self again, practising shopping therapy at major department stores and flirting with the young women.

  

 Photograph: selfie at Ivanhoe Station in April 2022. Today I read Osip Mandelstam’s novella ‘The Egyptian Stamp’ (1928) set in Petrograd, i.e. St Petersburg, in the summer of 1917. The story is told in a unique poetic way, but draws on certain haunting works of Russian literature, one of them being that absurdist enigma ‘The Nose’ by Nicolai Gogol (1836). Anyway, these two stories inspired this one, so make of it what you will.

Drafting

 

Last October I posted answers to enquiries about poetry on this device, Questions 1-12 of which were subsequently published in the magazine. As stated at the time, my private messager keeps sending questions, so in coming days I will post Questions 13-24. Here are the next three in the series about making poetry. 

Question 13: How many drafts is enough? Drafting follows splurge. Splurge is sometimes sufficient, your words an exact expression of your thought. Effect, however, can take time. Afterthoughts can become central effects. Your words wish to enact their meaning. Such enactment requires a level of stagecraft that simple stage directions cannot carry off. Drafting may become so exhaustive, the poem goes into a drawer forever to keep it out of the draft. Avoidance of closure vies with desire to deliver. There is no set figure for drafts because saying what you wish to say is more important than clockwork process. 

Question 14: Is poetry made to be rejected? Ostensibly, poetry is made to be read and listened to. In the majority of cases there seems also to be some interest in being understood, though this is not universal by any means. That said, it is surprising there are not more works entitled ‘Rejection: An Ode’. Every poet experiences it, some making multi-coloured collections of rejection slips they pin to their wall. Editors stand by their judgements, often based on mysterious criteria they have yet to recover from. It invites circumspection, reflection, redirection - is therefore part of the creative act. 

 Question 15: How is the best way to end a poem? Whether with bang or whimper, best to make it feel like a genuine bang or whimper. Peter Porter advises poets to remove the last verse and see if it makes any difference. If you’ve said what needs saying, why summarise at the end? Some say the best way to end is to learn when to stop. Profusion has its place, until it leads to confusion and exhaustion. Concision gives a frisson, but words pleasurably have a life of their own. Paul Valéry believes a poem’s never finished, merely abandoned.