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ing ways. The writer's journey is both inward and outward. The
poems we record along the way are the traces we leave, the tracks laid
down for others to follow.
IDEAS FOR WRITING
1. How does growing up or living near the ocean, in the desert, in a
small town or a large city influence your writing? Is life sparse or
abundant, brilliant with color or subtly shaded? Is the animal life
around you tame or wild? Is there an obvious change of seasons?
Is the population large or small, working class or wealthy? Do
you live near a factory, a river, a shopping mall, a nightclub, a
school, or a graveyard? What's next door, down the street, around
the corner? Write a poem about where you live as if you're writ-
ing to someone who's never been there. Use place names and
street names, the names of neighborhoods, neighbors, and
friends. Be detailed and specific.
2. In "The Palms," Smith begins with a sort of cinematic overview.
Write a poem about some journey you took in the past a road
trip, hike, business trip, family vacation. Describe the particular
place where you stopped off, broke down, or visited. Try to make
the scene evocative of whatever your mood was at the time. At
the end of the poem, see if you can do what Smith does zoom
in for a closeup.
80 THE POET'S COMPANION
3. Read C. K. Williams's poem "From My Window" in Tar or in his
Selected Poems, and write your own poem describing a scene out-
side your own window. Do this even if your window faces a brick
wall or a boring landscape; use your imagination to make it inter-
esting.
4. Joyce Carol Oates has a short story titled, "Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been?" Make a list of all the places you've trav-
eled to that you can remember with any vividness; make a sec-
ond list of places where you'd like to go. Now brainstorm
images remembered or imagined for these places. (Your
images for Paris might include snow on iron benches in the
Tuilleries, cats in the cemetery at Pere Lachaise, croissants piled
in a basket on a cafe table.) Write a poem that includes some of
the places you've been, and at least one place you haven't. Find
a common thread to connect the past and future: an emotion, a
desire, a particular person.
5. Describe the house/apartment/trailer/condo/orphanage you spent
time in as a child. If you lived in many places, pick the one that
feels most alive with memories, images, emotions. In your poem,
try to explain what that place meant to you at that time of your
life; what were the discoveries you made there, what difficulties
did you encounter?
6. Most of us, as children, had a secret hiding place or a favorite
spot to get away from our families and our ordinary lives. It might
have been a spot in the woods, a fort in the yard or basement, or
the roof of the house. Write about your place and, if possible, a
particular event/incident you recall that made you seek it out.
7. Take a two-hour field trip to someplace nearby, and stay there
with your notebook recording images and impressions. Some
possibilities: a hotel lobby; a cafe or restaurant; a woods; a laun-
dromat; the beach. Make it someplace you haven't seen before,
or at least haven't seen from the particular vantage point you
choose. In a poem, recreate that place for someone else. Read
Poetry of Place 81
Galway Kinnell's poem "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of
Christ Into the New World," about Avenue C in New York City,
reprinted in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Selected Poems.
8. Brainstorm a list of words you identify with the city: skyscraper,
crosswalk, asphalt, balcony, dumpster. Then make another list of
words that are often used to describe the natural world: clouds,
columbine, riverbed, granite. Write a descriptive poem about the
city using words from your natural world word list, or a poem
about the country using your city word list. Remember the
poems by Winner and Young. Mixing things up like this will
often spark fresh ideas and interesting language.
Images
Images haunt. There is a whole mythology built on this fact:
Cezanne painting till his eyes bled, Wordsworth wandering the
Lake Country hills in an impassioned daze. Blake describes it very
well, and so did a colleague of Tu Fu who said to him, "It is like
being alive twice." Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than
that, with less implications outside themselves. And they are not
myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to
pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is
that, they say this is.
Robert Hass,
Twentieth Century Pleasures
We are all haunted by images, both light and dark. You might
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