Shaping Words

Good Friends:

I have an overall view of poetry. My view is that poetry is a kind of craft. I refer to the craft of poetry as “shaping words.” Poetry is the deliberate shaping of words into specific forms.

Seen in this way poetry resembles other crafts such as carpentry, which is the shaping of wood; or baking, which is the shaping of flour; or gardening, which is the shaping of plants into attractive forms and placements; or composing, which is the shaping of sound into melodies and musical forms; etc. A carpenter shapes wood into tables and chairs and desks. The poet shapes words into sonnets and sestinas and tanka and renga.

The task of the poet is to learn the tools of the poet’s trade in the way that a carpenter learns the tools of the carpenter’s trade, in the way that a baker learns the tools of the baking trade. A carpenter learns how to use a saw, hammer, nails, and how to measure, along with many other skills. The baker learns about flour, yeast, sweeteners, ovens, along with many other skills. The poet learns about lineation, meter, rhythm, metaphor, simile, resonance, rhyme, the formal structure of specific types of poems, along with many other skills.

At the beginning, a carpenter will make many mistakes, measurements might not align, nails might not hit their mark, etc. But over time, through practice and concentration, a carpenter becomes more familiar with the tools of carpentry and learns from mistakes and becomes more skillful. At the beginning, a baker will make many mistakes, the bread may be too dense, the cake lopsided, the seasoning too strong, etc. But over time the baker becomes more familiar with the tools of baking and learns from mistakes and becomes more skillful. At the beginning, a poet will make many mistakes, line count may be off, rhymes absent or misplaced, rhythm may not flow, or the choice of words may not be communicative, etc. But over time the poet becomes more familiar with the tools of poetry and learns from mistakes and becomes more skillful.

Of the poetic traditions I know, renga is the most explicitly a craft. An aspiring renga poet has to learn the following tools of the renga trade: linking, shifting, lineation, required scenes or topics, placement of scenes, the overall structure of specific renga forms such as shisan, nijuin, junicho, kasen, hyakuin, triparshva, etc. At the beginning, the aspiring renga poet will make many mistakes; linking may be trivial, shifting may be obscure, one might forget about a required scene or topic, the rhythmic flow may be choppy, etc. But over time the renga poet becomes more familiar with the tools of renga, and a growing sense of the flow of a renga begins to become natural. Like other crafts, the best way to learn it is to do it.

Best wishes,

Jim