Rooted and Winged by Luanne Castle - Guest Post.
READING AND WRITING SLANT
When you read a poem, do you ever wonder how the poet tackled the subject—or why she did it the way she did?
Most poetry takes advantage of Emily Dickinson’s advice in the following poem:
“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--”
Tell all the truth. Don’t hide from even disturbing truths. But tell it slant. Don’t come at the subject straight on, but circuitously so that readers arrive at a truth slowly enough that they can accept it.
Ever notice a glaring mistake made by someone close to you? Then you directly point it out, thinking they will see what you see. But it doesn’t work that way most times. Instead, your friend or relative is blind to their error even as it stares them in the face.
So what do you do? You come at the subject from a position a bit off to the side, start the conversation rolling toward your goal, and eventually, the loved one may come to the problem themselves. You might even think of it as not talking at someone, but with them.
That’s how it is with poetry. There is no poem without the reader in dialogue with the poet. When you read a poem, your share of the conversation is that voice in your head. It might say, “Oh, yeah, I can relate to bobcats and hawks in Luanne’s backyard. I get deer and once I saw an eagle in the tree way out back.” Or this, “Why don’t I go back and drive past the house I grew up in and see what it looks like now?” Or, “I have special memories of my grandparents, too.” This internal dialogue is why every reading of every poem is idiosyncratic—your reading will never be the same as your friend’s or mine or the guy down the street. We will bring different experiences and knowledge to our reading.
When writing a poem, I come up with different ways to write slant. One of those is to come up with complicating factors. If I want to write about a natural disaster, I might tell myself that I have to add a Greek myth, scientific data, or both.
Another way to write slant is to impose a writing prompt on the image or subject you have in mind. Writing prompts are shared on many blogs, as well as in craft books such as those by Diane Lockward.
A third way to write slant is to write a very direct poem, then cut apart the lines or even phrases and re-arrange on the table or desk or even the floor. Arrange them randomly and see what fun you can have by moving them around. Sometimes you will need to find connective tissue which means generating new images and thoughts, but it might simply be that the poem needs to be told backwards.
Thank you to Author for this most excellent post.
About the author:
Luanne Castle’s new poetry collection is Rooted and Winged (Finishing Line Press). Kin Types (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God (Aldrich), won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Poetry. Luanne’s Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, American Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, Tipton Poetry Review, River Teeth, TAB, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Saranac Review, Grist, and other
journals.
The poems of Rooted and Winged explore the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. They are of the earth, the place of fertile origins, and of the dream world we observe and imagine when we look upward. Golems and ghosts that emerge from the ground, as well as the birds and angels that live above us, inhabit the collection. We will always be striving for flight, even as we feel most comfortable closest to the earth.
Thank you for letting me be a part of this tour to Serena at Poetic Book Tours
The poems of Rooted and Winged explore the emotional and physical movement of flight and falling. They are of the earth, the place of fertile origins, and of the dream world we observe and imagine when we look upward. Golems and ghosts that emerge from the ground, as well as the birds and angels that live above us, inhabit the collection. We will always be striving for flight, even as we feel most comfortable closest to the earth.
Blog Tour Schedule:
Sept. 15: Review Tales by Jeyran Main (interview)
Sept. 22: The Bookish Elf (interview)
Sept. 28: the bookworm (guest post)
Oct. 4: Author Anthony Avina’s Blog (interview)
Oct. 11: The Book Connection (interview)
Oct. 19: CelticLady’s Reviews (guest post)
Oct. 25: The Soapy Violinist (guest post)
Follow the blog tour with the hashtag #rootedandwinged @writersitetweet #LuanneCastl
