Thanks for not dropping your peroration because I agree.
In my view the strength of a poem
depends on the fusion of sound, sense, and imagery.
Sure.
I mean, the emphasis you know what I'm saying?
Is a fusion.
Yeah.
And different sensibilities respond differently
to different fusion.
And you can have a variety of forms
in which you don't get the kind of fusion which
moves you to respond.
Yes.
Well, I think that that's true.
I agree with that.
I think that one of the things we're so aware though
of how in making a memorable poem,
all those things have to come together.
Then it's really quite overwhelming, I think,
when you're trying to learn your craft.
And I think that it's extremely useful if you approach it
in a really sort of--
a kind of almost scientific way.
It's like the surgeons.
They drape all-- if they go to operate
on your knee they drape all the rest so they're not
distracted by them.
They just see the knee and you hope they drape
the right one [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
Something like that.
You can take these different elements and look at a poem
only through that lens.
Just take any of your favorite poem,
and it doesn't matter, and look at it only just
in terms of syntax.
Don't look at anything else just look at a great poem
that you love and look and see what the syntax is.
And see if it's varied.
I'll bet you it is.
If it's not, see if it's purposefully not varied.
Or whatever it is, just look at it in terms of syntax.
Or take the same poem, put the lens of lineation on it.
Just look at that.
Say why are the lines like this.
Don't look at anything else, or if it's image,
or if it's whatever.
Doesn't destroy the poem at all.
And you can do the same thing with your own poems.
If you have some poem and it's kind of stuck
and you don't know why it's stuck.
Take one of those lenses.
If you haven't thought about that you're
writing in sentences--
[LAUGHTER]
--take them-- take it out of delineation,
we love the delineation, we adore delineation
because we can force pattern onto it.
We can jazz it up.
But if the sentences are inherently boring then
no matter how you jazz it up you're
not going to get that thing that Beethoven gets.
So take your own poem, take it out of lineation,
look at it just the sentences and see.
Just use that lens then put it back in the lines.
I think that one can do that.
That in trying to get this fusion--
I mean, we want it to you know come out of the blue
and strike us in the head like lightning.
We want it to be a flash or have it spontaneous.
That doesn't happen very often.
Sometimes it does.
But in the meantime while you're standing out there
in the rainstorm waiting for the lightning to hit you,
this is a thing that you can do on current poems that
are underway and you can sort of tutor your intuition
about each one of those elements you
can look at them separately.
OK?
Time to go home?
OK.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.