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THE CREATIVE PROCESS, PART 5: How Confinement Can Expand Creative Expression

ByLee Ann
This entry is part 5 of 11 in the series The Creative Process Unmasked

COVID has taught us something that I think relates to the creative process: being confined can lead to greater creative expression. We can’t get together with friends for dinner, so we sign up together for an interactive cooking class online. We have to wear masks everywhere we go, so we find some fabric that makes a statement or makes us smile. Europe is out of bounds, so we discover new places we didn’t know existed, right in our own neighbourhoods. This is how, in the pandemic world, confinement can lead to new creativity.

I am a poet whose typical style is free verse. By definition unstructured, free verse has few rules beyond those that relate to good writing. But sometimes I feel the need for a poetic structure with very specific rules. Surprisingly, it’s that very restriction that can expand the creative expression in a poem.

There are so many forms of structured verse that entire fine arts graduate courses are taught on this. Structure can be found in rhythm, in rhyming sequences and in the number of lines or stanzas in a poem, to name a few.

How Shakespeare Did It

For example, Shakespeare’s preferred rhythm structure is what is known as iambic pentameter. The best way to think of iambic pentameter is that it’s like a heartbeat. It goes like this: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Here’s one of Shakespeare’s more famous lines in iambic pentameter (see if you can get the rhythm structure):

If music be the food of love, play on.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Nice, eh? Shakespeare, of course, was a master of rhythm, using its structure to help express all kinds of different emotions.

When Every Syllable Counts

Haiku is a structure that consists of three lines, the first line with five syllables, the second line seven syllables, the third line five syllables. Here’s one that I wrote after my dad passed away:

LAMENT FOR MY DAD IN HAIKU FORMAT
We always ended
phone calls the same way. Now, for
all time: “love you, ‘bye.”

From the straightjacket of those three lines can come very big thoughts and emotion.

Repeating Lines

When I started writing my most recent COVID poem, I was feeling the squeeze of Ontario’s latest stay-at-home order. The first draft was in my usual free verse, but I was unhappy with the result. It did not convey the constriction I wanted to express, so I turned to structured verse. A pantoum uses four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

Demanding? Yes. Constricting? Actually, no! I found that pantoum’s structure itself provided the sense of restriction I was feeling. That sense became an integral part of the poem, without me having to spell it out. So, structure allowed me to expand the creative expression in the poem, beyond what I could have done with free verse. This is how, in poetry, confinement can lead to new creativity.

I hope you’re finding innovative ways to live within the restrictions of COVID. Maybe this structured poem will help you to appreciate how sometimes, being confined can lead to greater creative expression. Here’s Hope and Chaos; I’d love to know what you think!

Lee Ann

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THE CREATIVE PROCESS UNMASKED: Part 4, Rest Time

ByLee Ann
This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series The Creative Process Unmasked

Hello there! I hope 2021 has been good to you so far. It’s winter time in my part of the world. To respect that, I am allowing myself a season of rest. That doesn’t mean doing nothing! But it does acknowledge the natural rhythm of the seasons. Winter is a time when energy levels are naturally a little lower, and hibernation is the theme. The winter season also reminds me of the value of rest time in the creative process.

My garden at rest, January 11, 2021

Issues With the Freshly Written

You may remember that last year I wrote several pandemic poems. (Maybe one or more of them struck a chord with you. Maybe they help you express what you might be feeling during the isolation. I hope so.) I had the opportunity to look again at these poems in November, when The Ontario Poetry Society held a Pandemic Poetry Contest. Well, I learned anew the importance of letting something newly-created rest for awhile before proceeding.

One poem in particular stood out. I had struggled with the ending of “Reframing the View” when I first wrote it. I wanted to lead the reader to a conclusion, but not dictate that conclusion, allowing each person to look at the accompanying photo and decide for themselves what they saw. This is always a challenge for a writer. You want to respect the reader’s intelligence by not spelling everything out and giving her a figurative hit-over-the-head. Yet readers do appreciate being led towards the writer’s intent and/or what they might conclude.

My writers’ group members (the insightful Lynn and Jen) told me the poem did not lead the reader quite far enough. Neither of them were entirely sure what they “got” from looking at the photo after reading the poem. When I looked again at the poem with several months’ distance to sharpen my view, I saw they were absolutely right as usual! And more to the point, I knew what I needed to write in order to fix the problem, which I couldn’t see when the poem was freshly written.

Why Artists “Let it Rest”

This is something that seasoned writers know well: to put something aside for a period of time, especially if it’s not working. That rest period will sharpen the general sense of unease and expose the specific flaws. More importantly, that time away will often result in the writer realizing what it will take to create a much finer piece… and by that I mean one that readers can respond to more strongly. And that connection is what every artist is striving for.

“Reframing the View” now leads the reader more directly. It also has a more structured “poetic turn” at the end. This is a technical term that poet Kim Addonicio describes as: “picks the reader up in one place and drops them off somewhere else.”

I’d love to hear what you think. Do you have a preference for one version over the other? Do you like poetic turns as much as I do? Were you surprised to learn about the value of rest time in the creative process?

By the way, “Reframing the View” (the words without the photo) was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Pandemic Poetry Contest and will be published in an upcoming anthology. Further encouragement for me to remember the importance of rest!

May this season’s slower pace help refresh you.

Lee Ann

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WHAT IS POETRY FOR?

ByLee Ann

This month’s post was going to be a few paragraphs to answer the question, “what is poetry for?” This is also the subject of this month’s poem, and after trying several times to write some paragraphs, I decided that my best answer to the question is in the poem itself. So here it is.

My other answer to “what is poetry for?” is more personal. Although I am the published author of historical non-fiction books, short stories and magazine articles, poetry is my first love and focus. It’s how I express. It’s what I turn to, to figure things out. It’s how I respond to my world, both internal and external.

Billie Holiday

Here’s a recent example. As I grind on and on coping with COVID (along with the entire world) I found myself putting my feelings into a new pandemic poem. This one is a bit different than the ones I wrote when the crisis was newly upon us. This one is a blues poem. Yes! There is such a thing as a blues poem. Like the musical genre, this form has its origins in the American Black experience. It has as its structure two repeating lines, then a third line, all with end-rhymes. Sorrow and heartache are staples in terms of content, but so is triumph over adversity and sometimes even humour.

I offer this to you today as part of my answer to “what is poetry for?” If it expresses some of what you are feeling too, or what you’ve experienced too, or what you might want to say to explain what it is like to live in these times… well, then, there’s your answer!

Here’s The New-Normal Blues. Hope it helps.

Lee Ann

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GOOD AND GREAT ARTISTS

ByLee Ann
This entry is part 3 of 11 in the series The Creative Process Unmasked

Artistic imitation is something that many creatives have recognized is an important aspect of the creative process. Steve Jobs, for example, was apparently fond of saying,

Good artists copy; great artists steal.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, England’s Poet Laureate 1850-1892
Known for, among other famous words:
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost/
Than never to have loved at all.”

This is a quote he attributed to Picasso. Actually, an English journalist named W.H. Davenport Adams said it much better in an 1892 article in “The Gentleman’s Magazine.” He was talking about the work of Alfred Lord Tennyson when he wrote:

Great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.

I had the opportunity to practice artistic imitation during National Poetry Month this past April. In a workshop led by poet and writing coach Sage Cohen, participants wrote a poem a day for 30 days. One of the exercises she had us do was to write a poem inspired by another poet, in this case Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day.” The lesson had to do with engaging the reader directly, as Oliver does with a question at the end of her poem. It also had to do with writing description at a fine, even micro-level of detail, something Oliver mastered in her career.

Coincidentally, a dear friend had just sent me a birthday greeting in the form of time lapse photography that showed the opening of different types of flowers. I absolutely love time lapse photography of flowers! Watching the video over and over, I delighted in the life of blossoms as we can never experience it with the naked eye.

So I got the idea to use that time lapse for the workshop exercise: I would describe the opening of a peony, in fine detail. And I would – what? Steal? Imitate? Improve? – Oliver’s question to the reader at the end of the poem, because I absolutely loved that question.

If I could summarize the process, this is how I’d describe creating my poem, “The Peony”:

  • Something caught my attention, in this case the time-lapse photography of opening blooms. For sheer enjoyment, I spent some time with it, took it in.
  • Paying closer attention to the images, I paused the video to observe the details of the flowers opening. I started jotting down some descriptive words.
  • I studied Mary Oliver’s poem for word choices, ideas she introduces, the pace of the poem. This was more a process of absorption rather than a technical analysis. I got a “feel” for her poem, since I’d decided to use it as a launching point for mine.
  • I drafted my poem (several times!) and found a suitable photo from my garden collection, which helped in the refinement of the words.

This list implies that creating is a linear process, which it is not! It’s more like a spiral, twisting around itself many times.

Once the poem was drafted, one of the members of my writer’s group pointed out to me that my question to the reader is not an exact copy of Oliver’s question. I had not realized that until she mentioned it! So also in the process of creating, it seems that some kind of alchemy re-molded Oliver’s words into my question, formed my way.

Maybe ‘alchemy’ is a better word than ‘imitation’ for what really happens. An artist absorbs what she thinks is fabulous from another artist, then molds something new in her own way.

What do you think about this? Is there really “nothing new under the sun”? Is this “artistic imitation” a legitimate aspect of the creative process, or thinly-disguised thievery? Here again are the two poems; if you like you can compare the two and see how one inspired the other. “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver. My poem, “The Peony.”

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I hope you found something new to think about, through this latest peek “behind the scenes” into the creative process!

Lee Ann

DIFFERENT WAYS OF LOOKING, Part 2

ByLee Ann

Hello there!

This week, I have another example for you of looking at an “old” thing in a new way. This example seems quite timely, as we remain hunkered down in isolation and try to keep ourselves productive, or at least amused.

As an artist, it’s natural for me, and SO MUCH FUN to look at something and wonder:

  • What does this make me think of?
  • What else does this look like/feel like/taste like/sound like? And probably the most important question:
  • What’s really going on here?

Looking at “old” things in new ways is a skill that all artists work to hone. Doing this can be a jumping off point for a poem, a new interpretative painting, or an invitation for a reader/viewer to STOP in their tracks and have a re-think.

I hope you enjoy “Life Lessons from a Jigsaw Puzzle.”

Lee Ann

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DIFFERENT WAYS OF LOOKING, Part 1

ByLee Ann

Hello, there!

During April (National Poetry Month), I took a course with poet and author Sage Cohen, during which we wrote a poem a day for 30 days. For me, was an adventure in reading lots of poems and experimenting with different styles of poetry. But mostly I worked on honing the one skill that is key to any artist: different ways of looking.

It’s what artists do: examine an object, a person, an experience and ask questions like:

  • What does this make me think of?
  • What else does this look like/feel like/taste like/sound like? And probably the most important question:
  • What’s really going on here?

By looking at something in more than one way, a poet can open up a reader’s imagination, or offer a fresh interpretation. She can make connections the reader may not have thought of, or can probe more deeply into a specific aspect of life.

Here’s one example, where I explore “Ten Ways of Looking at a Candle.” Hope you enjoy it.

Lee Ann