What We Craft

Craft? What is it. Sounds like raft, something that might carry us across the sea. And even though I know it means in poetry world––line breaks, metaphor, syntax, and so forth––I have come to see it as a kind of vessel, one that carries me into new territory of myself, and of the world. Crafting a poem has the potential to change me, or at least the way I see something, even if only in the most microscopic way. It came up today when I was visiting the lovely Laurie Wagner’s writing community and talking about how we know when a poem is finished. While I have a mental checklist I might go down–––looking at form, line length/breaks, volta, etc.––asking myself what’s working and what isn’t, I am just as aware of asking myself: has this poem changed me, yet?

Horace said “No Surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” a sentiment echoed thousands of years later by Robert Frost. I would add, “No change in the writer, no change in the reader.” And isn’t that what we’re really wanting? To be altered in some way?

When we are working on a poem, we have the potential to craft ourselves. It was William Butler Yeats who said:

The friends that have it I do wrong
Whenever I remake a song,
Should know what issue is at stake:
It is myself that I remake.

There is a certain satisfaction on writing about something I fear or dislike until I am almost persuaded into a state of liking. Or of writing a poem about a mistake I made until I can touch the hem of self-forgiveness. Or maybe writing about hopelessness until it turns into something in the neighborhood of hope. We are all facing things (and need I say especially now?) that are difficult and that ask us to find our way to something near acceptance, or even survival.

I love these lines from Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “The Weighing”:

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

So plainly and perfectly said. The world asks more of us and we give it. It is asking that even now. And I find myself reaching for lines like these that may have carried one poet to deeper understanding and acceptance, to carry me there as well.

If you’d like to learn more about my upcoming classes go to: www.danushalameris.com

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