On Lines of Images

Nearing three weeks into the semester, the reality of poetry casts a long sharp shadow. Poets grapple with lines of images and writing them well is like tuning a guitar, turning the knobs, listening, waiting, turning again, until the sounds ring true.

As workshop enlightens, it shrouds. As it clarifies, it blurs. This dual nature is the basis of the relationship between image and line. Thus poets are juggling bowling pins and balancing plates with as much grace as they can muster, but how do they perfect their act? Why do some deserve to be read and others dismissed?

Enter a simple, refutable opinion: practice, patience, and time spent alone go hand-in-hand with writing poetry or perfecting an act. Poets must be willing to deprive themselves, they must bore themselves with their own company, but remain focused. While tuning a guitar is not playing, it must be done before one begins to play if they want to sound any good. But without instruments to tune, how do poets prepare themselves to write?

They tune their instruments: vocabulary, ear, environment, mind, image, line. And most importantly, they remain patient and write one word at a time. This final point is often overlooked as cliché advice, but if a poet sits and writes one word, and waits, and one word, and waits, they will probably have a much better idea of what they are trying to say, and they will do a much better job of saying it.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.