Monday Poetry Post: Sing Along
Do you beLIEEEEEVE in life after love? (after love?) (after love?) (after love?)
Hi, and thanks for reading! Today is Monday, so we’re going to talk about poetry.
If you want to go directly to the poetry exercise, and skip all this “recipe blog” backstory, scroll to the next subhead.
Happy Monday! I had the best weekend! This weekend I celebrated the launch of my book the only way a Hattie knows how: reading poems, doing karaoke, and eating cake with my face on it. Well, not JUST my face – also my torso, my friend Tara, and the cute floral bathroom at Sardi’s. We’ll talk more about that on Friday. But! A robust, enthusiastic “Thank you, I love you, thank you!!!!” to Myles and Tara for making my first-ever book launch such a magical day. And also thank you to the Windsor at the Cherry Hill mall for putting this sparkly prom dress (with pockets!) on clearance for $19.99:
I’ve written some prose about my love for karaoke. I don’t think it’s my Main Defining Thing. But if you drew a pentagram to summon1 a Hattie, it’d definitely be good to put a karaoke machine on one of the star’s five points, just to make sure I showed up. So, when I was asked, “Would you like us to book the private room at Planet Rose for your book launch?” I said “YES YES PLEASE YES YAY YES THANK YOU YES.” And, really, have you celebrated a major literary accomplishment2 if you didn’t scream-sing Linda Ronstadt, The Killers, and a whole bunch of show tunes after?
After karaoke I usually think about karaoke. Which new songs were the most fun? What should I try next time? Are there some fun new mashups I could inflict on my loved ones? THIS time, I went home and laid in bed and thought…is…karaoke…poetry? Was I…was I doing poems…the whole time?
There’s a lot of discourse in the poetry world around the question “When does a poem start/stop being a poem?” We’ve talked, in this column, about erasures, about rearrangements, about changing the words and playing with everything we’ve tried before. Now, me, I think it is totally fine to take a poem that exists, and change it into something new (as long as you acknowledge the original author and the work they did to make something changeable). I also think it’s fine to break convention and ignore expectations. That’s why I often select “Toxic” by Britney Spears at karaoke, but sing the lyrics to “Look What You Made Me Do” my Taylor Swift instead. Trust me.
Let me insert a caveat here. Karaoke is one of those things that makes a lot of people say “Good for you but ew, no thank you, never ever ever ever.” Poetry is one of those things that makes a lot of people say “Good for you but ew, no thank you, never ever ever ever.” If you’re reading this, you’re interested enough in one or both of them to occasionally partake, if peer-pressured. Maybe combining them will make it easier?
Exercise: Poetry Karaoke
Remember, karaoke is just for fun. You are not on a network TV competition. Get a little goofy with it. You are not trying to make this poem “better” and you are not trying to be The Best at Poetry. You are having fun, dammit.
Find a poem you like. Any poem. Any length. Any author. Even you. The important thing is you like it enough to spend time with it.
Go through the poem and choose a few phrases or words you would tweak. They can be big changes or small – maybe you want it to rhyme, maybe you think “verdant” is a better descriptor than “lush.” Try and change fewer than ten words.
When I tried this with one of my all-time favorite poems, Dora Malech’s “Love Poem,” I changed this:
Let me begin by saying if he hollers,
end with goes the weasel.
To this:
Let me begin by saying mirror mirror,end with all’s fair.
Does it mean anything significant? Not necessarily. I just thought it was cute.Look at the poem again. Is there anything in it that is so true to you and your lived experience, it almost feels suspicious? If so, find a way to emphasize it. You can italicize it. You can underline it. You can make it bold. You can separate it out with line breaks. You can do all of these things!
Think of someone or something you have strong feelings toward. Find a way to include it in the poem. Hide a name in an acrostic. Change the spelling of a common word so it reflects an inside joke. Make expert use of homonyms.
Pick a line you don’t want. Delete it entirely. Leave the space in between blank. There, an instrumental.
In a part of the poem you think seems slow, or boring, or sad, add something new – a little “riff” in the form of wordplay, flowery language, spicy imagery. At karaoke, when Rebecca and I do “Suddenly Seymour,” I try really hard to make her laugh by making jokes in the backing vocals. It always works.
At the very end of the poem, add something that is just yours. The poetry equivalent of a “YEAH!” Keep in mind it may be “YEAH!” and that is great. Poems are allowed to say “YEAH!”
If you drew a pentagram to summon a Hattie, you would also want to put these things on it for maximum impact: a unicorn in two very cute pairs of shoes, a kitten wearing a hair bow and a little tutu, marshmallow Peeps (any flavor), and a friendship bracelet made of hair.
*Insert sidelong glance at Alice Munro, who I hope did this when she won the Nobel Prize*