Reverie Eight: a cast of thousands

First, sorry for the delay in posting; was out of town and rather busy this weekend, so I’m only just now getting to the Reverie for the week. I’m sure you’re all terribly disappointed. :) But being between three cities in three days takes its toll, and when conferences, family brunches, roommates leaving the country, and the most delicious cupcakes in the world are involved, poetry takes a bit of a backseat. (That’s the most I think I’ll be telling about the story.)

This week: “a cast of thousands“

Some poets have an easy time writing settings and events, narrating personal experiences, and choosing the best words, meters, or prosodic rhythms for what they want to say. But there is another skill, character-building, that poetry can share with prose and other forms of writing as well. And don’t think that if you write nature poems only or something you’re going to get off easy with this one; we’ll get to you.

For those of you that have people populating your poems, there are two possible directions to go in this challenge, and both start with the same suggestion: sit in a public place and take notes (one to two sentences, more if the spirit moves you) on twenty-five people who cross your path. My favorite is definitely the coffeeshop (where – surprise! – I am now), since you have the people sitting around you, the people who come in then leave, the people walking by, the baristas, and whoever else to draw from. But a park, or a train, or elsewhere, will suffice.

You don’t need to record what they look like, though it might help. What your goal should be is to capture the moment in which you see these people. If you can overhear a conversation, make a note of that (the guy sitting at the next table goes to the gym every day). Otherwise, see if you can pick out a mannerism or object to figure out an element of who they are (the guy walking by the window has a cello case, and therefore is probably a cellist). Sometimes the physical description is enough for this (the old man who just entered is wearing a Rangers jacket and glasses).

Next, pick out at least two that interest you and try to develop them a bit more: the cellist, maybe, has been busking in the park all day to earn pocket money (since he barely can pay tuition), and perhaps the Rangers fan has been a fan all his life, despite his team’s ups and downs. Slip your imagination’s leash a bit; part of the challenge to being a writer is a sort of controllable multiple personality disorder, that lets you explore the possibilities of the lives of others. You can stick to the familiar (the cello case holds a cello) or get bizarre (the cello case is full of bullion that its owner is wheeling from where he dug it up in Central Park, as quickly as he can, to someone he can sell it to), but the former usually makes for a story that will be easier for both you and the reader to follow.

Now, put that character in a different situation. Take them out of the coffeeshop or wherever, and try to imagine them somewhere unique. Perhaps their defining qualities that you’ve gleaned/invented won’t be immediately apparent, but you can sneak them in. Think of the cellist making love to his girlfriend:

He knows where to put his fingers for tension,
bowing the strings buried in her skin until he has made
a concerto out of her hums and sighs. He nestles her
between his thighs and dreams of vibration. 

The easy thing to do is to put them in a private place after encountering them in public. But equally, they may surprise you: once you come up with a quality or two about your characters, try sending them to a different public place and imagining how they might react. It can be tough to find the right amount of information to record or invent, but go through a few attempts to really fine-tune the process.

The character sketch itself, with the little bits of history and memory shining through, could be poem enough. But you may want to write a narrative poem about what led your character to this place or that, or (even better) have more than one character interact in the same poem. Maybe the Rangers fan is the father/uncle/friend/enemy of the gym bunny or cellist. They could be in the same place at the same time; there could be some deeper narrative (one looking for the other in their favorite haunt) that connects them; or they could have no connection at all, and just be strangers in the same place at the same time. Make use of what you create, and the more you write about the characters, the more qualities may occur to you.

It’s up to you whether you want to do the poem in the voice of one character or another: your poem could be observational only, or you could take on a persona. But as a guideline, give us five pieces of information in total about each noteworthy figure in the poem: physical description, plot point, thought process, whatever we need to know. I’m going to leave a parting thought about it as well: avoid fables. People are complex enough without having to be a symbol of a moral lesson or having to jerk out unambiguous emotions from readers. No sob stories, or tragic head-shaking: present a person, with all their positive and negative parts, and let the reader be the judge. You should only be worried about showing someone interesting for this exercise, rather than writing an allegory.

And for the nature poem writers (I didn’t forget!), we have a completely different mini-exercise. First, choose an element of nature that catches your eye today: something in the landscape, the atmosphere, the happenings of the day, whatever. Pick a few qualities about that feature which could apply to a person as well: hills could be voluptuous, the crisp winter air might have a biting humor, newborn lambs might be wide-eyed and innocent. Then, either write a poem as you normally would, but be sure to include that personification; OR, you could take the plunge and have your bit of nature get up and walk around, like some elemental, with those qualities you mentioned. Where you go from there – and this option does have the possibility of veering into the symbolic, I’ll give my blessing for this one – is up to you. You might push them down a narrative path that has a completely incongruous environment. Perhaps you’ll have some willow-tree dryad (nurturing, and pitying, with long hair and sad eyes, her skin surprisingly weathered for one her age) wander into the center of the city, and see how she reacts.

Of course, either a nature-centric poem or personal poem is possible no matter what your normal writing style involves. But try to change it up and go in different directions from what you normally write, as always. See if you don’t come up with a memorable character. And the very last step: title the poem with a name that you think is fitting for the sketch you’ve just created. That’s when you know there’s a complete entity wandering around your verse, and you could even spin them out into further adventures (with companions, perhaps). Poetry is populated with images and their emotional effects; but sometimes the person (like the reader) can be an image as well. Take advantage of that, and use what you know about yourself and others to stretch your narrative mind.

Good luck!