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.
I recently saw the writer Janice Leagra recommend two books on social media, so I immediately texted my book concierge and bought them both. I’m halfway through the first one, Glitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto for Better, Braver Writing by Mindy Nettifee, and today’s exercise is cribbed, in part, from that.
I like the way Mindy Nettifee has set up this book, because it’s similar to how I think about this newsletter. Sometimes she approaches a poem from the angle of structure (there’s a whole chapter on different approaches to list poems!) and other times, she treats the poem itself like a tool. For example, in writing about honesty and vulnerability, Nettifee treats poetry (and the process of its composition) as a way to pry up the old stones of repression and let whatever’s squirming beneath come out to play. I like how much she bounces around, proving a poem’s structure, form, title, rhythm, can all be tools for the reader just as much as they can for the writer.
In a fiction workshop I took a while ago, our instructor laid down this basic rule. If you insist on one thing (say, spending the whole text saying over and over, “the neighbor Jimmy is the murderer!”) and then change it abruptly with no foreshadowing, your reader is going to be mad and stop reading. That’s a cheap trick. But if you leave room for doubt, for questions, for guessing – in other words if you make your reader think about the belief(s) you want them to hold – you can take strange new directions, and travel farther, without making your reader angry.
Nettifee touches on this a little bit while talking about poem titles. I think that her phrasing can be used more broadly, to describe a great goal for writing poetry. It’s “Plant seeds of doubt and epiphany in them for the jury of your readers.” What a perfect way to phrase that! In a poem, you want to resist saying “This is clearly a red herring, and meanwhile, this is the miraculous part of the story.” You want seeds. Let your reader tend to them. Every reader will cultivate them differently.
Our exercise today is an adapted version of Nettifee’s “assignment” from chapter six.
Exercise: Two Truths and a Lie
You might’ve played this game before! Now, we’re going to do it in a poem.
Make a list of lies you’ve told throughout your life. The more embarrassing, outlandish, cringey, ridiculous, or emotionally-charged, the better. In her version of this prompt, Nettifee recommends digging into lies that make you remember “regret, embarrassment, or fear.”
Choose one lie, and set a timer for five minutes. Free-write about the lie – who you told it to, why you told it, what you thought would happen VS what actually happened. How old were you? Where were you when this happened? Did anyone know you were lying, and has anyone learned the truth since? Try to write for the whole five minutes without stopping. It’s okay if what you write doesn’t consistently make sense, or if it turns into a stream of feelings/memories.
Next, make a list of “truths” that you learned about yourself in the time since you told that lie. Maybe you learned that, actually, you DON’T like sports and will NEVER like them and that’s totally fine! And you are not going to pretend you sprained your ankle to get out of gym class ever again! Or, maybe you learned that your handwriting is more like your dad’s than your mom’s, and so you should forge HIS signature from now on. Maybe you learned that your friends can tell when you’re lying, but they choose not to say anything, because…they think it’s funny? They want to protect you? You tell me.
Choose two truths to write about, then set a timer for five minutes. Just like before, write stream-of-consciousness style about the truths you chose. Maybe you feel a sense of forgiveness toward your younger self, or maybe you resent being called out on your behavior. Whatever the case may be, write about how the truth(s) made you feel.
Once your timer goes off, look at your “lie” free write and your “truths” free write. Choose your favorite words and phrases from each section of text, and then use them to compose a poem. Let the truths and falsehoods intermingle.
If you want to add another layer of interest to this, don’t make it clear in the poem which sections of the text are true, and which are lies. Plant those “seeds of doubt and epiphany.” Embrace the grey area and leave your reader thinking.
I’ve got another book in my queue once I finish this one – so stay tuned because I’m hoping to talk about it in next week’s newsletters.