"Thin Slicing"

I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's very fine book BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING,




and much of what he says about the idea that sometimes a decision made in the blink of an eye--some might call it a knee-jerk reaction--is often better than a more studied, calculated, and time-intensive, reasoned approach. This idea in relation to poetry is worthy of its own posting, which I'll get to later (once I've finished the book and have thought about it some more, or maybe I'll finish the book and just blink before I respond).

What made me want to blog today is this--in his book, he talks about Insight Puzzles. You know what they are. Little verbal conundrums that you have to think creatively to solve. It's the type of assignments and break-out-of-the-mold thinking that I teach in my creativity workshops. It gets you out of functional fixedness. It gets you think differently of words, of relationships.

Here's one, for example:

A father and son are in a terrible car accident. The father dies. The son is rushed to the hospital, then taken into the ER room where a doctor looks upon the boy and says, "I can't operate on him. He's my son!" Who is the doctor?

Many of you might've heard that more famous one. But what about this:

A huge steel pyramid is inverted so it stands on its point. Any movement of any kind will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $1,000 bill. How do you remove the bill without toppling the pyramid?

Answers anyone?

It's exactly this type of sideways thinking (my term) that poets use to intuit, to feel, to surprise their way into linguistic and imagistic brilliance. I'm thinking of Yusef Komunyakaa, Kay Ryan, Li-Young Lee, to name just a few. They find ways to get at something from unexpected angles and impress us with their ingenuity. For that, we, as readers, are glad.

Poem Prompts

Poems are everywhere. Or rather, the impetus for creating a poem is. I just returned from Atlanta where I was giving a writing workshop, and I had a two-hour time-wasting opportunity in the C terminal of Hartsfield International Airport. Instead of zoning out on my iPod or watching CNN belabor the Obama/Clinton debate, I kept my eyes open and watched. Nearly six women in the chairs around me held pink carnations, perhaps the cheapest flower known to man. Were this women in cahoots in some way? Did the same person give them each a flower? If so, why? And if not, what did that mean about the universe's laws of attraction (like attracting like)?

As I jotted down some lines for a poem about this super-studly, super-thrifty Don Juan (the solution that pleased me most regarding the unexpected flower abundance), I noticed that beneath the chair next to me was someone's boarding pass. A normal person would've left it there because (a) Americans only pick up their own trash (and even that, only rarely), (b) Americans are litigious, and picking up someone else's boarding pass might mean time to call in Johnny Cochran, and (c) who the hell cares about a boarding pass if it's not yours anyway?

Naturally, I picked it up. The name on the pass? John Daly. I'm sure it was probably John Daly the dentist from St. Petersburg instead of John Daly the infamous alcoholic, gambling, womanizing golfer who hit a ball so hard in his drives that it didn't regain its shape for two seconds. My interest was piqued. What was John Daly doing here at the airport? And why was he flying to DC like me? And where was he? In the john, puking up some Jim Beam? In the TGIF, scarfing down hot wings? He never showed up, precipitating a poem entitled, "Where the Hell is John Daly?"

And on the plane, I couldn't help but notice the cabin smelled like ass. I mean poorly-wiped butt-crack ass. Locker room stuff. So instead of pinching my nose shut and cursing God beneath my filtered breath for 90 minutes, I jotted down a fun poem about that incredibly bad odor which is a bit like the adult (poetry) version of the kid's book, THE GAS WE PASS. So three poems in three hours, and I passed over a dozen other rich possibilities that might've worked for other poets.

Poems are everywhere. They stalk us. They yearn for us. They want us to find them, to bring them to life. Tell me about your own strangest impulses to write poetry. Or better yet, write a poem about it.

Reading Poetry Aloud

It's been happening all semester, but I really never paid attention to it until today. Every time a student reads a poem aloud--their own or someone else's--they launch right into line one without mentioning the title. The title is part of the poem. When you read a poem, one should say the title, pause for a moment, then start reading the poem.

It's hard to say why this omission of titles happens. Because my classes are fast-paced and involve a lot of energy from both myself and the students, there isn't that old shut-up-and-learn mentality some teachers might call a lack of discipline. Perhaps this loose-and-free philosophy carries over into how one reads a poem. Maybe it's that most student poets don't think much about titles and their relationship to poems. It might also be that they've never heard professional readings of poetry before to model their own reading after.

You don't start with, "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary." You say, "The Raven . . . by Edgar Allen Poe." Then you launch into Poe's classic about an unnamed narrator and his lost love, Lenore. (If it's your own poem, you can dispense with naming the author--an audience will assume it's you if you don't say).

Since we're on the subject of reading poems aloud, here are a few general ideas to keep in mind (beyond actually saying the title of the work prior to reading the poem, as we now know) that might help improve your poetry reading performance :

1) Read slowly. Whether it's from nervousness or excitement, the tendency is to read too fast. Poetry is high-powered language. Fire words at the audience like bullets from an M-60, and most will be hard-pressed to follow you no matter the quality of your work. Read slower than you think you should. For most, the proper speed for reading poetry might feel almost painfully slow to you, the reader. That's okay. Your audience will appreciate it.

2) Use your this-is-important voice. Be proud of your work. Stand tall and let air actually fill your diaphragm from bottom to top. Don't speak into the book or piece of paper you're reading from--it muffles your voice. Enunciate clearly and speak directly into the microphone (if there is one). Though if you are using a mic, don't get so close as to cause that irritating PPFFFTT noise with your letter Ps or, God forbid, summon that screech-owl feedback. Above all, believe in your work. Read pieces you are genuinely proud of.

3) Pause between your pieces. If you're reading more than one poem, don't just shimmy-shake-thank-you-Yeats from one to the next without a breath. Most experienced readers will chat the audience up a bit between pieces, the way the singer from Limp Bizkit (or Styx or Good Charlotte) leans out into the audience and hollers, "How you feeling tonight, Dallas?" And the crowd roars with delight. (Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to just talk about what inspired the poem, if that suits your personality more than the Fred Durst work-the-crowd plan.)

4) Test your poems aloud prior to the official public reading. Make sure that if you have a time frame to work within, you can manage it. Nothing is worse than knowing you're over time and you've still got a few stanza (or a few pages) left, which will make you want to read faster.

For another take on how to read poetry aloud, check out what Billy Collins writes on the subject in his Poetry 180 website. Who better to add to our discussion than a former U.S. poet laureate who is one of the most famous practitioners of poetry alive today? This site also includes a short audio clip from Billy (about 1:30) where he explains how to read a poem, then models his method by reading a Sharon Olds poem, "My Son the Man."

Getting the Blog Underway

I've been giving workshops to poets and teachers of writing for years, so I finally decided to start up a blog to discuss and share some of my teaching and poetry-writing ideas. I'll also include some book reviews, interviews, craft discussions, and other poetry-related things as they interest me.

I intend to blog at least twice a week, and I hope to soon include podcasts of up-and-coming as well as well-known poets reading some of their own work. Wish me luck!

I welcome your comments and feedback.