Talking Poetry: with poet Bonnie Enes (by Michelle McEwen)

I came across this online: The Bonnie Enes Workshop— the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of Poetry. It said this course is for people interested in understanding how poetry "works." What is meant by "works"?

Enes: The most important area where a poem works is the connection between the poet and the reader/listener through feelings in the poem be they comfortable, uncomfortable, non feelings, real uncomfortable, sexual and/or spiritual.

For instance (very simplistically) if I am talking to a person about vacationing in Maine and both of us have had great vacations there then we connect through comfortable feelings. But, if I am talking to one of my friends about vacationing in Maine (she spent summer there with her parents who drank and argued all the time) we do not connect because my feelings are comfortable and her feelings are uncomfortable.

That is what I mean about how a poem WORKS.

This, of course, happens with any form of writing and art and music. If I go to a museum and see a painting by Monet, I feel comfortable feelings. If you go and look at the same painting, you will feel comfortable feelings. If I open a book or go to a poetry reading and read or hear a poem that contains comfortable feelings, I will feel the feeling. If you read or hear the same poem, you will feel comfortable feelings (unless you have had an experience like my friend had). The feelings are real, the feelings are alive; the feelings stay in the piece of writing, work of art, or musical arrangement.

So, the most important slice of the poem pie diagram is what feeling[s] is/are incorporated into the poem. I suggest when beginning to write and read contemporary poetry is to keep a list of the poems you have read and come to understand what is going on inside of you and write the feeling next to the poem title. This will eventually become automatic.

I used a specific writing exercise for people to begin writing and come to understand how feelings become incorporated into a poem.

Poem pie diagram— I like that! So incorporating feelings into the poem is a necessity then. In a writing class I took in college, a professor made note of this line in a poem: “…[it] smelled like my grandmother’s house.” She, the professor, pointed out that this line is too vague because all grandmothers’ houses aren’t the same— so the incorporation of feelings would help to make that poem line less elusive. That said: can a poem without incorporating feelings be called a poem then?

Enes: Yes, there are a lot of different categories in poetry. There is the Slam poetry, the Beat poetry and the more contemporary Experimental poetry. Some of those have feelings incorporated into them at times and at other times not and they are poems.
In most of my poems (except for a few experimental ones), there is always a feeling that has flowed into the poem even if it is a Non Feeling.

In the illustration you mentioned above, writers need to delete from using it and replace it with something concrete— like the apple pie baking in the oven at my grandmother’s house. Maybe it wasn’t apple pie, maybe it was chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. The point being is that if you mention something concrete instead of it most people will automatically conjure up some kind of homing food smells and vision that was made and enjoyed at grandmother’s house and will connect to the poet through a Comfortable Feeling[s]. That feeling[s] remains in that poem for others to feel when they read/listen to the poem. Of course, there are other readers/listeners who never went to a grandmother’s house or went to a grandmother’s house and the experience was unpleasant and will not be able to connect to the poet on that level, but may be able to imagine what it might be like.

In the course I teach, I use examples of poems containing one of the following feelings as I have categorized them: Comfortable, Uncomfortable, Non Feelings, Real Uncomfortable, Sexual and Spiritual. Even with a Non Feeling in a poem, like feeling numb, there is still a dominate feeling in the poem.

And example of this kind of poem would be:

Ice

sound
of a frozen forest
sound
of being under water
sound
of ripples fading away
into satin silence
where the stone was dropped
into the pond
sound
followed by the last shovel full
slid onto the mound
sound
of space left
in the room
with you gone
not
going
but
gone
for
good
for
ever
for
a
l
w
a
y
s
—Bonnie Enes

And, while someone may say this is a poem with the feeling of sadness incorporated into it (and that is true), the dominate feeling is one of numbness.

Excellent example! Thank you for sharing one of your poems. I’m glad you did share a poem because I’m always interested in what sparks a poem or rather what sparks certain lines in a poem. For instance, you have: “…ripples fading away/ into satin silence/where the stone was dropped…” When you first wrote this, did you have just the word “silence” at first and then “satin” came later or did “satin silence” come to you all at once?

Enes: When I begin to write a poem, I brainstorm it out for one and a half pages. Brainstorming is the process of writing in a white heat without any concern for grammar, punctuation and/or spelling. I also don’t pay any attention to my internal censors because no one is going to read the brainstorming except for me.

So, with satin silence, that just flowed onto the page along with about one and a half pages of writing. I don’t have an idea of what I am going to write about before hand. I just maybe see a word or something and it triggers a flow and I begin to write in that white heat.

Once I have a page and a half (and am drained) I set it aside. A few days later I go back to it and start breaking lines. Then I set it aside. A few days later I go back and tighten it, tighten it, tighten it and rework some of the lines. Then I take the poem kicking and screaming (poems hate change) to a critique group, read it to the group and the members make suggestions. We don’t work on the theme of a poem, just any technical problems which would be clarity, set up of lines, word usage. Poets can be very creative with words and the way lines are broken and set up.

My poems usually talk to me in the early hours between sleep and wake if I have a concern and I listen to them.

You say you "... just maybe see a word or something and it triggers a flow..." I feel that way about certain words; words such as “apple” “willow” “oven” and “ripe” always make me want to grab a pencil and write. I call them poem-words. Are there any words that stand out to you as poem-words?

Enes: A word can prompt a poem for me, but I don’t have certain words. A poem can be prompted by reading through the poems in The Best American Poetry of... (whatever year). I read through the poems and some word or a phrase will send me in a different direction from the poem I am reading.

There are other poem prompts that drop in to my life, they come from anywhere— a piece from a newspaper article, something a broadcaster on TV says, or just listening to conversations. My mind is always seeking poem fodder.

For instance, I was watching Sweeney Todd and heard the song "A Little Priest" and a part in the song about a poet created the following poem for me:

"Haven’t you got poet or something like that?
The trouble with poet is how do you know it’s
deceased? Try a little priest."
— A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd
by Steven Sondheim

Maybe A Little Priest

[The meat has to be fresh for Mrs. Lovett’s
pies and if you were to use the meat
from a poet, really, how would you know
she’s not already deceased?]

A choir chanting Gregorian has entered
the poet’s study, it’s
a bit crowded and the monk
in the left corner seems a little off key.

The poet toasts the sunrise with a pot of coffee
and is exhausted later after three hours
of writing, rewriting, tightening and trying
to make a kicking screaming poem behave
[poems hate change].

Does the 3rd stanza in this one work better
here or here or here or does she set it aside
for another poem? She sets the stanza aside.

She lunches with other poets. Ann Sexton
who is hopped up on pills and glowing
with drink and Sylvia Plath who keeps
looking out the window for Ted.
They discuss the exciting occasions when
each had opened a window in a poem
and the wind blew in a metaphor or two.

Back to the white sheet, the uncarved block.
She returns the 3rd stanza to the poem.
Rewrite, tighten, rewrite, tighten, rewrite, time
out, rewrite, tighten, swat the poem on its butt.

Afternoon tea and biscuits while petting
the cat and riding the air currents
of A Lark Ascending
with Vaughn Williams and Yo Yo Ma.
Moved, she sheds a tear or twenty.

She labors over a selection of six poems
in a Word.doc, submits them
to Naugatuck River Review. Return
email: Dear Bonnie, Good to hear from you.
We are accepting only three poems this time.
Best, Lori, Editor

She labors over selecting three poems
out of the six. For sure, she knows she
is not making the right decision. Emails
the Word.doc. Now, really sure one
was a bad choice. Another poem had
its hand up, yelling, Pick me! Pick me!
It’s late in the day, she didn’t listen.

Evening and three poets pile into a car,
leave for a poetry critique group
where poems will be scrutinized.
Maybe A Little Priest will be read
and treated with utmost respect—
its blond hair patted down, shirt
straightened, shoes shined.

Returning home, she reads the poem
a bedtime story, tucks it in for the night.
The door bell rings. The poet
opens the door to a little priest dressed
in leathers, his bike helmet under his arm.

Ready Babe, he says. He climbs
onto his motorcycle, revs it up.
She climbs on behind, hugs tightly.
They speed off on down a ribbon of highway.
He'll have her back in time to greet
another sunrise, another pot of coffee.

Thank you for sharing that poem. I love how you personified the poem— made it have patted down blond hair, straightened shirt, and shined shoes; it’s almost as if the poem is the poet, too. Also: I love the Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes references. Speaking of poets, can you send us out with a poet you wouldn’t mind being with, say, for a fortnight?

Enes: Only a fortnight? Well, for now it would be David Kirby [he is who I am reading now]. I would grab a hold of him and fly to Bermuda where we would ride around the island on mopeds and eat fish stew and drink fruit punch and have a lay down on the beaches and go see the caves and go to the botanical garden and to the zoo and do other things that come to mind— after all, it’s a moderately large island. After two weeks, we would return home and he would write one of his long twisting poems incorporating myths and non-myths and metaphors about our trip. If you haven’t read his poems, do. He is incredibly talented and funny.

Bonnie Enes, former Poet Laureate of South Windsor, CT, now living in Bloomfield has had poems published in College Poetry Review, Shapes [MCC], Hartford Woman, New Dimensions [ECSU]), Canvass, Kennebec [U of ME], Namaste, Pudding Stones I & II, Nude Beach, Poet’s Cove, New Monhegan Press—An Anthology, Country and Abroad, Artis, Scope, Chronogram, Perspectives I & II, Voices Israel [07, 08, 09], Fairfield Review [editor’s and readers choice], Bent Pin, Rose & Thorn, Cyclamens & Swords, The Litchfield Review, Scope, Chronogram, Yankee Magazine, Equinox 07, 08, Naugatuck River Review, New Songs from the Meadows and Journal of Therapy Poetry.

She is the winner of several first place awards in The Windham Area Poetry Festival, was one of the recipients of The Maine Poetry Fellowship Award, was recently a winner in the Cyclamens & Swords poetry contest and was interviewed by Radio Disney.