Focusing Your Poetry

A previous entry in this blog discussed using a thesis to focus an academic essay.   This entry concerns focusing poetry: keeping a poem on track, tied to an idea or image and making it accessible to a reader.

I had the good fortune of watching a poetry slam in New York City a couple of months ago, and I saw tremendous examples of the importance of focusing poetry as well.  These examples included poets who did so very well--most notably Will Evans, who is somehow a Columbus, Ohio poet whom I had to travel to New York to see.  Strange world.  It also included the other sort of examples: strange poems meandering through random images and themes to arrive someplace, a place generally indefinable but inevitably loud--or, more precisely, arriving at some penultimate, loud place followed by a whispered denouement that may or may not bear any relation to the bombastic climax.

Importantly, good poetry often concerns good thoughts, ideas, feelings, or experiences.  This does not mean, though, that poetry IS that good thought, idea, feeling, or experience.  Rather, it provides a verbal expression of the thought, idea, feeling, or experience, in a way that connects a reader to what it is expressing.  It provides a linguistic bridge that begins with the experience, and passes through the writer to the reader.  This matters; the poet's first words tend not to be his or her best, and by recognizing that the words are separate from the "heart," the "soul," or even the mind, the poet can focus on what counts: getting the expression clear, precise, and meaningful for the reader.

To build and strengthen this expression, the poem needs an anchor.  This may be an image built over the course of the poem, a central concept strengthened by metaphor(s), a place, or really anything, so long as the entire poem relates and ties into that idea.  Think of it as an unspoken thesis statement.  If one statement can't be tied to every line, every word in the poem, then the poem lacks cohesion.

Importantly, this does not mean a poem cannot hold a wide range within itself.  An example is "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, which covers pretty much the entire universe--but ties that entire universe to the poet's sense of self.  It remains cohesive despite its length and reach.

To ensure your poem does this, then, write down the central concept of the poem, and then try to connect every discrete image, every thought or nuance, to that central concept.  If you can do so, chances are your poem is cohesive.  While this does not in itself mean a poem is "good," it takes an important step toward allowing the poem to be so.