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Poetics

by Tom Spencer

Writer’s Block

I have writer’s block. I think I’ll look to see what is on the tube tonight? Or should I talk of writer’s block, is it real or just a legendary neighborhood in the subdivisions of the mind, a place to lose yourself in the everyday crowds. Nothing exciting exists there in that nether land of idleness. However, you can tell your conscience self, you are lost in the neighborhood of “writer’s block.” This gives you good reason not to write.

A writer must write to be considered a writer. This is also a truism for the poet. Not only do you need to write poetry you have to read poetry.

Discipline is the name of the game if you want success. Set aside thirty minutes a day for reading poetry and thirty for creating words imbued with emotions. You can’t turn on the television and watch another re-write of an old I Love Lucy show with more modern mores and language using the excuse that “I have writer’s block” and still call yourself a writer or a poet.

There is always something to write about. To be a poet you have mastered the format of a short story, i.e., a beginning, middle and an end, or introduction of a protagonist/antagonist, adversity that needs to be overcome and brought to a resolution.

Poetry is telling a story, assuming that the protagonist/antagonist is known to the reader and therefore, does not need an introduction. What you have left is conflict and resolution. Or you can eliminate the resolution by presenting the conflict in a way that the reader has choices to the resolution in their mind.

In reality, a poem can be a short story with beginning middle and end, or it can be any one or two of the elements of the short story standing alone. There is a world of subject around you everyday that can and should be used as material to hone your writing skills.

Where did that table you are sitting at come from? There are, without a doubt, twenty to thirty different people and places that have had something to do with it becoming a table. Write about those people and places: the lumberjack that cut the tree, the trucker who hauled the tree, the sluice that carried it to the sawmill, etc., etc. A poem could be wrought from the environment around you: your table or any item you have surrounding you in everyday life. There are, at least, thirty minutes of writing you can do about every item that surrounds you.

Build yourself a wealth of stories that can be turned into a poem at a later date. When you are at a loss to find a subject for a poem, review these archives. Become the lumberjack or the trucker, express in poetry your views of their thoughts about; their day, the product they have harvested, the pleasures or displeasures as they do their job.

Be descriptive when you write the story. When you transform the story into free verse, drop the unneeded articles, the descriptive verbs. Let the reader create the sounds and images, as they perceive them in their imagination. You can also change the tense of the story to make it more immediate.

The heavy truck groaned
as it climbed the logging road
its plume of blue black exhaust
permeated the air.

The truck groaned
climbed the road
exhaust choked the air

If you don’t know about that lumberjack, trucker, or the sluice, this is where that all-important exercise of every writer, called research, comes in. Look it up, look it up again, and then look it up once more in different places for different views. Whenever you research you are enhancing your knowledge and your writing skills. There is no such neighborhood as “The Writer’s Block.” If you think there is a “writer’s block,” you might as well turn that television on and forget your future as a writer.