Deborah Bogen is one of my all-time favorite poets, and I’m thrilled to have her as my guest for 3 Questions & a Poem.
QUESTION 1
What do you consider the three most important elements of a poem?
Looking up “elements” I’m going to go with the “basics, fundamentals, essentials” part of its many definitions. Number one:
DON”T BE BORING. Seriously. Don’t be.
We all have important experiences that are meaningful to us and these should be honored in our minds and hearts. Perhaps we had a grandparent who made our childhood better. That’s significant and we should privately honor that good luck. But the meaning it has in our lives is not necessarily what a good poem needs. I don’t mean you can’t write a good poem about your grandmother/father but the fact that they were good to you is not enough to make it interesting to a reader. Grandparent poems tend toward sentimental memories (think jam jars and fishing the creek) and sentimentality is deadly in a poem. In my view, the language or the anecdote or the writer’s perspective must offer something the reader can respond to with a basic “oh, I’m glad I read that.” Better yet, “oh, I didn’t see that coming,” Or “I never thought of it that way.” Maybe something in your childhood experience can be surprising, or funny, touching in a non-sentimental way. It’s possible, but it’s not easy to write a grandparent poem that feels new to the reader. Likewise, sunsets, rivers, beauty in general are tricky to work with . But if you want to read a great poem that avoids sentimentality while thinking about beauty try BH Fairchild’s Beauty in The Art of the Lathe. It’s a master work.
Second thing
GET TO THE POINT OR HAVE A REASON FOR YOUR RAMBLE
So, no, I’m not saying Leaves of Grass was a bad idea, but the width, breadth and length of that work was in service to Whitman’s goal of sweeping out the poetry stable (among other things). Brevity itself is not a virtue (e.g., all Kay Ryan poems are brief. I love many of them, others I cannot really read as poems.) But that soft middle ground that can show up in a pretty good poem, the one laden with explication or description, is probably best avoided. This is a big deal in my writing because I am
1) wordy by nature;
2) slow and unclear for quite a while on what the heck my own poem is trying to do or say; and 3) lazy.
So, for me the rule is cut, cut, cut — then worry that I have cut too much. I rely on other poets to help me with this problem. A good poem often owes much to writer pals who help. This personal poetry predicament is part of what led me to write box poems. I needed that corral to use as a decision maker.
Finally – and it sounds weird to even write this –
BE ARTFUL
in whatever form that takes in your work. One example is intentional internal music (although choosing not to use rhythmic or rhyming effects to create music can also be intentional and artful). This is the big difference between poems and other forms, other texts. Is your prose poem a poem or a paragraph? As a prose poet, this is a distinction that is critical for me. I’m always asking myself how I can make you, the reader, experience my work (currently in box format) as a poem.
Having said that, all traditional poetry forms are now subject to deviation. Deviation can be artful. You may write a poem that is in the form of a medical diagnosis, a piece of legislation or a news report. In that form you are still responsible for the language work that moves it into poetry’s territory. So, perhaps the rule is: be conscious of what you are doing and why you think you are entitled to say this is my art. This will require communicating your deepest intentions and knowing why and how your innovative formatting serves that. This is a big challenge and also what I call Big Fun.
QUESTION 2
What’s your best advice for writing poetry?
Everyone will tell you to start by reading. Reading a lot. Maybe reading for years. That may sound daunting but it was my path. I do not have an MFA so I had to pursue my poetry education outside the field. Clearly poetry MFA programs can be rich and rewarding (I am sorry I do not know more about everything but I’m 73 and pretty far into the process so I won’t be MFAing this life.) But I would not advise going into debt to get an MFA. The easiest way to stop writing is to be too poor to have time, too worried to attend to your work.
Here’s what takes the sting out of the reading advice. Read with a pen in your hand. Just start jotting down whatever occurs as you are reading. Keep notebooks of long hand notes, but I think getting that stuff into a file on your computer makes a lot of sense in this day and age. Take advantage of all the free online help you can. On April 10 I’ll be teaching a free workshop on Box Poems online. If you email jacarpress@gmail.com they will send you a link to the session. Other advice: invest time in finding the right poets for you to trade work with. Check out your local coffee shop for groups or writers. Think seriously about what you want from a writer’s life. If you want fame and position you will need to find poetry power brokers to connect with. If you’re a genius you may just send work to major poetry outlets and find success but in real life that’s not usually the case. Since I’m being asked here, I recommend figuring out a way you can be satisfied with a circle of good fellow writers and readers who will, over the decades, make the practice of writing a deep and abiding pleasure. This is not an easy psychological state to achieve but I’m not kidding – it will keep you from going crazy and enrich your days with the lively exchanges that poets have often craved.
QUESTION 3
What’s the one poem that everyone should read today?
Since I mentioned it above, I will again suggest BH Fairchild’s Beauty. No one sets the bar higher than Fairchild. Enjoy.
In Speak Now This Charm Deborah Bogen creates a mosaic from states of mind we all experience, but are trained to ignore. Or forget. Or devalue. She records what is visible and what is positioned beyond consciousness.
& a POEM
BODIES
Deborah Bogen
I’ve been thinking about your body and the box they put it in. Wondering if you’re still in there. If a hand under the lip of that box might be a way of climbing in, of being there with you — because once we were sisters. We thought our bodies were eternal. And, sweetheart, isn’t that every girl’s mistake? My hands ache to touch your face, to brush the bangs from your eyes. When they took you, when they closed the lid on the box, I wished I was a button on your blouse.
From SPEAK NOW THIS CHARM (Jacar Press, 2023)
About the Author
Deborah Bogen’s four full-length collections are Landscape with Silos, Texas Review Press & XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize winner; Let Me Open You a Swan, Elixir Press & winner of the Anti-venom Prize; In Case of Sudden Free Fall, Jacar Press & winner of the Jacar Press Poetry Prize; and Speak Now This Charm, Jacar Press. http://jacarpress.com/speak-now-this-charm/
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