A Poem and Some Thoughts About Poetic Language

My current poetry workshop is taught by a woman who is a spoken-word poet. I like to work with her, except that there are times when I think she is a little too literal. She believes in “bringing poetry from the coffee-shops to the sports bar.” Ideally, I agree with her. But I think, just from the kind of feedback she gives me, there might be some differences in the way we perceive the process. There might also be ways in which we differ in our perceptions of functions of poetry. I am not someone who believes in “dumbing down” my writings, whether creative or scholarly, for an audience. Yes, I am willing to provide contexts, and be reader/listener-friendly, but I also want the reader/listener to do the work.

Also, in my interactions with “ordinary folks”, I have found, there is an incredible amount of poetry/metaphor/magic in proverbs/sayings that they use to communicate wisdom. I believe, it's important for my poems to tap onto those reservoir of poetry/magic in everyday language, and also enrich it by adding my own metaphors. But when I am creating too literal work, because it needs to reach the masses, I am really banking upon some archaic presumption of popular literary tastes, rather than taking up the challenge of making poetry/literature be relevant to folks who are not going to be in academia, within literary circuits, amongst the blessed circles of the cultural elite. I don't have all the answers to all the questions this post will arise, but one thing I am convinced of: dumbing down in not the answer.

So, her suggestion to me is to write in more “concrete imageries.” One of the things I wrote in this poem was “rainbow-smelling oranges.” Her specific question to me was: do rainbows smell? In a literal world, perfectly magic-less, rational, it doesn't. But I see the work of poetry as stretching the limits of those perfectly rational experiences, to expand our so-called normal world of senses. So, when I write something like “rainbow-smelling”, I know perfectly well, rainbows do not smell. But I am inviting myself to imagine a rainbow that emits a smell. Simultaneously, I am also inviting my readers, to put pressures on their world of senses, and thereby, hopefully, consider the implications of what I am saying through that non-realistic imagery to think through the meaning I am trying to construct in these lines, in this poem.

The other imagery that got me in trouble with her was:

But on mornings I become

the leaf-sculpting caterpillar,

looking for the rhizome-shaped vein,

I am insistent.

Her question to me was, “What does this mean?” Well, imagine a caterpillar moving through leaves, the way it makes the leaves its habitat, the way it feeds of them, sculpting them into different shapes. Imagine those veins in the leaves. They are veins, but they also look like roots, hence the word “rhizomes.” Those veins do enable the plant to survive, and in an ironic kind of a way, they also resemble the roots in terms of their visual impact. And since this was a poem about what's often erased within a patrilineal culture, I thought, comparing the narrator of the poem to a caterpillar will make space to write about a young woman who is looking for ways to retrieve the erased/silenced women's histories.

Now, I am not sure if this is working fully or not. But the meaning is clear inside my own head. And in certain ways, I do agree that I am expecting my reader to think through it a little bit deeply. Am I expecting too much? Yes, I am. Why should it be different? I respect my readers, and their abilities to cull meaning from the worlds and words around.