Intuitive Withholding

Poets do not say. They leave out pieces of narrative, leave out pieces of stories or entire narratives. This it is not always a deliberate or conscious process. I think of it as intuitive withholding. The employment of a poetics of reticence is not always intentional. Poets usually unconsciously allow reserve.

But are all poems narrative? You cannot have narrative gaps without some narrative. While not all poetry is explicitly narrative, one can find a snippet of an event or story in even the most rigorously anti-narrative poems. A single abstract word, surprisingly, can tell a piece of a story. For example, in Galway Kinnell’s three-line poem ‘Prayer’, which withholds almost all narrative information, the abstract language (no images, no storyline) still suggests a story:

The title of the poem ‘Prayer’ offers a glimmer of narrative and may be taken, in its most traditional meaning, to refer to a person speaking to God. The abstract language that follows can be understood as words of request or gratitude. But the nonfigurative and unsensuous words ‘whatever’, ‘what’, ‘is’ (repeated three times in a row), and ‘that’ along with the deliberately awkward phrasing seem to obstruct any way into a story. The words that have a bit more meat on them (‘happens’, ‘I’, ‘want’, ‘only’ and ‘but’) give the poem a kick and offer narrative flickers; however, they provide very little information. Slight hints of a story behind the poem still leave any narrative opaque, but the language and line-break choices give a sense of a voice stopping and starting, thinking through their desires (‘I want’) no matter what ‘happens’, suggesting a multitude of possible stories. But the narrator’s ‘want’ remains mysterious and their unwillingness to reveal the narrative suggests vulnerability. The restraint suggests a fragile person who holds their stories and emotional responses close. Although information is sparse, a reader can pick up on a narrative hovering in the background of the most abstract poems. And where there is narrative, there is always emotion attached to it. Poetry ‘takes its origin’, William Wordsworth wrote, ‘from emotion recollected in tranquillity’. Wordsworth was implying that an event or sequence of events that stirred up emotion recalled later ‘in tranquillity’ can become a poem. And this process can take place in seemingly non-narrative poems such as Kinnell’s.

PROMPT:

I’d like to suggest that we try writing a short poem in completely abstract language (no images) but allow there to be hints, nods towards a narrative. Post your poem below! Or send it to me. And I’ll respond.

UPCOMING ONLINE CLASSES:

MAY/JUNE COURSE: I am teaching an online course: Grappling with Trauma in Poetry over a course of six Thursdays in May and June. https://www.mainemedia.edu/workshops/item/grappling-with-trauma-in-poetry-online-workshop/

SUMMER SESSION: Paid subscribers to the Poetics of Reticence may sign up for my one hour poetry immersion session this summer. Write to me for the details.