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Personal Poetics

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Big topic, where to begin: Vocabulary, reading list, criticism exploration, elocution, bad habits cast off or evolved from, cliche manipulation, the topical as necessary. Big. Development of a firm understanding of word relationship possibilities is the act of writing in total. If you have read or seen a play, you have dramatic appeal under your poetic belt. I've read Shakespeare and Chaucer - to no other use than expansion of ideologies, major historical world themes, and to pass the exam. But reading what has gone before is mandatory, in canvas at least. This posit is brought to you by a classical liberal arts educational.

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When I hear of a new writer, I Goggle it immediately (being retired I have that luxury of time). Recently, a poet wrote the word Mississippi and I remembered Langston Hughes: A Negro Speaks of Rivers, called it up and felt that old buzz of genius and place and relationships of words to historical settings and another "place" in poetics. Langston was a product of his era "Negro" and I forgive him - the NAACP buried ritualistically the N word and I rejoiced - until rap happened and all bets were off. The comedians use is across racial spectrums and the "new" acceptance is both painful and advancement - a word stripped of old connotations is an interesting development. Better than a burial, to literarily and etiologically (study of causes and orgins~borrowed for literary criticism from medicine’s study of origins and causes of diseases) destroy the root and replace it - now that's what I call death of a word.

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I curse in poetry now. Before Postpoems (& SSmoothie) I did not. It was a rule. I thought certain words were too non acceptable for young readers or some such - young readers today can curse better than the proverbial fleet of sailors. Sooooo shit, fuck (in all its permutations and articulations) damn, hell, and all the others as appropriate, are now scattered in both my verse and prose. Okay. So I came late to the contemporary table. I admit my outlook was neo-Victorian for decades. Too many romantic novels. Too much Arthur Conan Doyle, Bronte(s), other people's classics, shaped my early work - and reading some of it is less a condemnation of those poems for their sterility as they are bad news due to lack of knowledge and a limited use of vocabulary (metaphorical, personal, and rhetorical, dramatic, historical, and literal definitions as denotations).

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Inside this general construct of a poetic philosophy of writing, lives a germ of where originality emerges. Originally, teen to early twenties, it was about my ideal concept of poetry, the more esoteric and vague, the more musical, the purer (as in empty of ideas actually) I believed it a higher form of writing. Okay, then inter Black Literature - a new discovery: I Am The Darker Brother, my first in love with anthology read over and over. Enter Broadside Press and Don L. Lee, Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight - to radicalize the poet sufficiently to go exploring for black images. That quest still continues. Whenever I encounter a new image for black or blackness, I am mesmerized and fall in love with the poet who made it. Many other forms of expression were learned and explored - university English had me inside the Surrealists painters and poets. I read the Surrealists Manifesto in French (oh the good ole days) and Breton's in English Surrealism. Most of it before I began to lose myself in the dream world concepts and the period's revolution against established ideas that created war, and began an examination of racial modems, expressions, and relationships past/present/future. Kill two decades.

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After a slew of slave narratives and black autobiographies, a survey of Afram literature convinced me that the form was still in evolution. That's harsh - there are exceptions, but few: insert Malcolm X's biography and the works of Langston Hughes, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Don Lee (Haki Madhubuti), and The Souls of Black Folks.  I read the Invisible Man by Ellison and decided Sci-Fi was far more an amalgamation of science, history, humanism, and projection of systems of thought from scholars from a wider realm of perspectives. Sci-fi writers like Clark, Asimov, Delaney, Heinlein, and Frank Herbert's family, and the following generations of excellent writers that were mentored and inspired by these "greats" to give us the evolution of the movie into real time and very life-like hard science fiction and fantasy, have each earned the right to fame and repeat reading. Combine science, sociology, religion, philosophy, psychology, the arts, architecture, and ship systems designs with accompanying technology - dropped in the 24th century or beyond and I was home. I still read it predominantly. It's a life choice.

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The science fiction/fantasy poetry in Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney nailed my surrealism into a system of image relationships like no other series of work. To be right on top of the word in relation to the intent and connotation possibilities, to be as exact and obscure in one image or phrase was the influence that shaped my coda for poetry. Cross form contamination is mandatory; sci-fi to enhance or advance a poetry style or preference is remarkably important. Read read read. Everything. What sci-fi taught is that nothing is sacred - no subject untappable. Lay on the poetic devices of prosody in total and add the melody and rhythms learned from nursery rhymes to glee club and choir and stage performances to tie the knot on the philosophy of poetics and its evolution a la Crews.

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Now, no discussion of my poetology would be complete without the emersion directed studies in Motown lyrics and rhythms. But not exclusive. Add 50's tunes and lyrics, now that U-Tube has all the old music available for free (see my list of favorite songs) I realize those lyrics also evolved over time to give us really blah zay blah zay lyrics out there now and creative only periodically. I loved the Beatles and (once) knew all the lyrics of the fab four when they were in heyday popularity mode. From Jr. High School to College, they dominated next to jazz (modern to miles) then I graduated to Hendrix and rock music (insert Simon and Garfunkle and Cat Stevens) - it was the words that captured and held me enraptured and still do.

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I seldom listen to contemporary music, can't handle the lyrics - really bad most of it. Classic music is easy listening to write to. Now I can write, as now, with Robin Thicke crooning in my Roger Ramjet earphones. I have a remote speaker system received this 65th birthday, but haven't hooked it to my music lists on my Dell yet. Still, the entirety is a lifetime of taking in the expression and ethos and genres of the youngest generations that formed my modes of saying. I keep thinking over writing a list of favorite poets and poems, but that would take a year probably. From literary giants from Sanskrit and other religious verse through the Medieval writers to Dumas to Robert Heinlein - I've been exposed raw and innocent to a fair winds large library of written words in verse and prose.

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Poets who do not read are often defined as "new" because they have not yet explored sufficient literature (art/science/math) to have the vocabulary and understanding of word relationships (or possess a system of dedicated word to thought ratios) to be classified as "veteran" or "established". Published independently is also a criteria that serves to define a poet's development, if the anthologies and lit mags are recognized and historically aged and significant for it's coterie of editors. I know, lots of debate on that one, but it is process. To write without publishing (books or professional journals) as a university professor meant inevitable perishment. Not everyone can do this, but they must try lest they wish to remain obscure. Not a goal, usually, for "new" poets.

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Publications: At first I published in school yearbooks and newsletters. Wayne State University - Junior year I stopped by the campus paper's office and dropped off about ten poems. No notice, nothing, all ten with artwork across two full pages caught the attention of my Shakespeare Prof who shared it in class. Ha - the school entire read my stuff. The South End was the paper, the chit chat among pros in the English Dept. got me on the radar. You never know who is reading you. When money was available for grants for readings, I was often called and paid to read. When I applied for a grant (Master/Apprentice Grant) from the State of Michigan - I got it. (Other anthologies Michigan Hot Apples, Broadside Annual, Adam of Ife, and other reading programs supported by the Michigan Council for the Arts, Detroit Council For The Arts) put me on the literary map for Michigan.

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The poetry readings (I shared a flyer with Alice Walker in the Michigan/ National Poetry Series at The Detroit Institute of Arts) had all kinds of public relations outcomes. Go figure. I had folks advocating for me that I did not know. English (poetry) instructors were also instrumental in promoting me as worth putting on stage with them and other notables - Broadside Press 10th Anniversary I read after Sonja Sanchez. This kind of recognition was accompanied by my going to conferences and readings. I heard Baraka and was lost inside his aesthetic forever! Seamus Heaney and Galway Kinnell read at my school, Marygrove College in Detroit. I was lost mostly, but the exposure was important. I grew. I wanted to read like they had read to me.

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Carl Sandburg's Fog shaped me. If there is any poem that had major influence on my decision to write, it was Fog. That red wheelbarrow in the rain shaped my ability to paint pix with words – okay – kudos and propers there. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was a mantra and still is. Eliot (oh those cats! and the epics) and Wallace Stevens for me are periodical repeat reading. The sci-fi novel Babel-17 is written in poetry expressions so prosaic and wondrous, I read it over and over and want to read it again as I write this. Star Trek, The Final Reflection is also written in poetical prose from a skewered perspective (a poem in total as one epic). I read the Odyssey, reading the Iliad now. Dune, Children of Dune, and Dune Messiah were read often as well. The Kvorsigan novella “Mountains of Mourning” by Lois McMaster-Bujold was mind changing. McIntyre’s “Of Mist, and Grass and Sand” and Jack Vance’s (?) “Call Me Lord” are all influences that give and give. The spark happened for me with these prose pieces of joy and contented poetic ear. These are a brief description of where the ear develops (imagination vocabulary of personal poetics systems) and the poetic eye and ear for a "catchy" original phrase. Knowing and owning a history of words in poetry and prose works gave me a unique view from which to create images, ideas, and philosophies.

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Borrowing is mandatory - when a poet asks to reprint my work I say no absolutely not; but when a poet asks to use a phrase or an idea in one of my poems - the answer is yes of course. Not mine anyway. The total product is mine, but the content is the part for sharing and expanding. Dove on Postpoems takes the heart of a poet's work and writes answers to them in the comment section. At first it was annoying, before I got to know her and her work, but what she does exemplifies what I mean by sharing and expanding - a more unique view is added to the poem as an adjunct, a footnote, a tribute. I find this kind of commentary worthy and important. I get ideas for other poems from such ventures and also (all the time) from other poem, yes, but sometimes the comments are (to me) better than the poem. Down ego. Down, I say!

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Enough for now. The question of how I approach writing is marginally answered or explored here, but it is a start. It comes from a unique thing in my experience or contemporary reading, overlain with my experiential accumulated phrase and idea vocabulary and my inhaled literature over fifty years, enformed by my exposure and internalization of diction, tone, and prosody studied up until now. In the wings, behind each write by me, is a long list of literary giants and lesser writers who look on to edit my work when I err. One day, I too will be in the wings, just off stage, and if God lets me, I will be there to mentor and inspire and edit for some emerging "new" voice.

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Yours In Writing,

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Stella L. Crews

03-22-15

427p

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