Writing Thoughts

It's easy to see why ideas have to be pooled, interrogated, developed and dropped to bring forth fresh ideas from the detritus of their beginnings. This is what's so very hard about writing anything. The process of one dipping a sanguinary pen into the wordy mix-up of a poem or story and knowing, not suspecting, but actually knowing, that most of the initial output will be bilge makes it hard to make that start. It's the knowledge that anything decent, before it can decorate the page, has to be prized from from remotest corners of a leaky brain and galvanized into something striking by a sliver of inspiration, if it turns up, and built up by head-spinning, mental hard graft.  But there's no other way.

I wrote a couple of poems the other day which I quite liked. This was despite them being the usual artless, sub-standard, naive scribblings you often find in a local papers when you're searching for a plumber or a second hand car. To get to the 'quite liking' stage I had fussed and picked and played around with them for hours, but somehow I knew, despite everything, I knew that a revisit would yield horror; and it did. What looked half decent when I tucked away - reading them three later induced waves of dizzying embarrassment, and heart jabs of quiet madness. Since then I have re-edited both and I really do now think them decent. Not about to submit them to competition decent - but, they look at least competent in that they appear to meet some of the poetic requirements of free-verse.

But this is it. Knowing that the first draft is going to be so terrible. And that the second draft won't be much better. This might very well be one of the major causes of writers block. Not dried up inspiration, not a deficiency in motivation, not a lack of ideas, not feelings of low self-esteem or crises of confidence, but just a depressing fear that everything you're going to write is always going to be rubbish and will need industrial strength work.

 And that's even if you understand that it has to be this way - much like the sculpture who has to turn a piece of ugly rock, a plain block of wood, or a lump of bronze into an artistic representation. The ugly starting point is amorphous before a framework can be deciphered, a semblance of what is being aimed at. Then it at least looks like something, even if it is a million miles from being what it needs to be. It's only during the the closer attention to detailing, the ever more specifying, the gradual finessing of the intricate, the unification of a multitude of parts gradually crafted together into one harmonious whole and allowing it to come alive and sing into the hearts of those who view it - only then does it matter.  The rest of the time it's a workshop, a sooty foundry, a splattered floor, an ugly lump squatting in a cloud of paint, powder or smoke. But none of that matters because no one is interested in the process,  It's only the finished article that matters.

Only the finished article matters. The bloody knuckles, the mess and the wreckage of the tools, the sleeplessness of nights,the damage to the heath and well-being, the howlings across the creative lake and the praying to the muses, don't.

Ted Hughes on Free Verse.

In the way you’ve put the question “formal” suggests regular metrics, regular stanzas and, usually, rhyme. But it also suggests some absolute form that doesn’t have those more evident features; it suggests any form governed by a strong, inflexible inner law that the writer finds himself having to obey, that he can’t just play around with as he can play around with, say, the wording of a letter.

(Hughes is addressing a question about poetry progressing from regular metrics etc, but says that there is always some form detectable through an inflexible inner law that the writer still has ti obey almost as if he is writing in strict metrical form)

That kind of deeper, hidden form, though it doesn’t show regular metrical or stanzaic patterning or end rhyme, can’t in any way be called “free.” Take any passage of “The Waste Land,” or maybe a better example is Eliot’s poem “Marina.” Every word in those poems is as formally fixed, as locked into flexible inner laws, as words can be. The music of those words, the musical inevitability of the pitch, the pacing, the combination of inflections—all that is in some way absolute, unalterable, the ultimate perfect containment of unusually powerful poetic forces. You could say the same of many other examples: Smart’s “Jubilate Agno,” any passages in Shakespeare’s blank verse, Shakespeare’s prose.

(Its not free verse when it truly works as a poem because the words are chosen so carefully. )


To my mind, the best of the kind of verse usually called free always aspires towards that kind of formal inevitability—a fixed, unalterable, musical, and yet hidden dramatic shape. One difference between this kind of verse and regular, metrical, rhymed stanzas is the problem it sets the reader at first reading. Regular formal features give the reader immediate bearings, the A-B-C directions for reading or performing the piece being nursery simple; the poem has a familiar, friendly look from that very first encounter. But when these are missing—no regular meter, no stanza shape, no obvious rhyme—the reader has to grope, searching for that less obvious, deeper set of musical dramatic laws. That takes time, more than one or two readings. And it takes poetic imagination—or some talent for rhythmical, expressive speech. But if those laws are actually there, as they are in the Eliot, the Smart, and the Shakespeare, sooner or later they assert their inevitability in the reader’s mind, and the reader begins to recognize the presence of some absolute, inner form. Of course if those laws aren’t there, they can never assert themselves. The piece never gets a grip on the reader. It might be interesting and even exciting to read at first encounter, but then it will slowly fall to bits. The reader will begin to recognize the absence of any law that makes it go one way rather than another . . . the absence of any deeper pattern of hidden forces. So the thing ceases to be read.

(The laws of form in terms of words chosen for pitch and musicality really do have to be there - so Hughes seems to against free verse per se its just a question of: what is free verse against what follows a complex structure that defies easy analysis)


In the long run, the same fate—to be rejected and forgotten—overtakes most formally shaped verse too, no matter how strict its meter or how accurate and dexterous its rhymes. Good metrical rhymed verse, if it’s to grip the imagination and stay readable, has to have, as well as those external formal features, the same dynamo of hidden musical dramatic laws as the apparently free verse.

(If in strict metrical form - for it to work it needs the same attention to musical dramatic laws to work - so there's much more than slavishly following iambic pentameter for example, otherwise we'd invest too much respect in say: nursery rhymes or limericks and dismiss classics like Eliot's Waste Land. )

Having said that, I think you are then left with the pro and contra arguments for using or not using those features of regular meter, stanza, rhyme. The main argument, to my mind, for not using them is to gain access to the huge variety of musical patterns that they shut out. Imagine if Shakespeare had stuck to sonnets and long-rhymed poems and had never got onto the explorations of his blank verse and those wonderful musical flights of dialogue or onto his prose. Imagine what might have come out of the eighteenth century in England if the regime of the couplet hadn’t been so absolute. How could Whitman ever have happened if he’d stuck to his crabby rhymes? That seems to me a strong argument.

(Too much constraint too often is not a good thing)

But the main argument for using meter, rhyme, stanza also seems strong. It’s not just that rhymes and the requirement of meter actually stimulate invention—which they obviously do, at certain levels—but it’s the strange satisfaction of making that square treasure chest and packing it. Or making that locket with its jewel or its portrait. Or making that periscope box of precisely arranged lenses. There’s mystery to it, I’m quite sure. Maybe a mathematical satisfaction. Take the ballad stanza, which is basically just an old English couplet. The best of those quatrains have a kind of primal force, not just musical finality but an inner force, a weight of paid-for experience that most people can recognize. Yet when you break the meter, lose or disarray the rhymes, everything’s gone. Then there’s Primo Levi’s remark. He found that in the death camps, where it became very important to dig poems out of the memory, the poems of regular meter and rhyme proved more loyal, and I’m not sure he didn’t say that they were more consoling. You don’t forget his remark.

(But its absolutely vital that it continues as a major poetic device and must never ever stand aside and allow itself to be washed away by a tidal wave of freer verse)

Ted Hughes on where his poems originate

'Well, I have a sort of notion. Just the tail end of an idea, usually just the thread of an idea. If I can feel behind that a sort of waiting momentum, a sense of some charge there to tap, then I just plunge in. What usually happens then—inevitably I would say—is that I go off in some wholly different direction. The thread end of an idea burns away and I’m pulled in—on the momentum of whatever was there waiting. Then that feeling opens up other energies, all the possibilities in my head, I suppose. That’s the pleasure—never quite knowing what’s there, being surprised. Once I get onto something I usually finish it. In a way it goes on finishing itself while I attend to its needs. It might be days, months. Later, often enough, I see exactly what it needs to be and I finish it in moments, usually by getting rid of things.'

Interesting. A thread of an idea with a notion of a momentum waiting behind it ( a thought that this idea has legs and a thought that I know where it might go!), then grabbing a pen and going for it - almost like focused free writing. Then during the process of focused free writing letting it go into different areas and being interested in those areas. If the original idea 'burns away' its not a problem there is a new momentum, the real momentum that has been hiding, takes over. Then new energies new possibilities - the original thought long extinguished now like a fire lighter in the heart of a raging bonfire. Then being surprised by the outcome but not the sense of surprise. As time goes by it helps in the finishing.

Subjects and Themes for Poems

If you consider Ted Hughes poems for a moment - take a look at where his inspiration to write poems came from. Hughes poems are often from episodes from his childhood. Pike for example or Pig. He takes these subjects and explores greater themes during the writing of them, turns memories once seen into poetic thoughts about them and other things that concern or interest him. There is footage of Hughes talking about thinking. Thinking about single things and concentrating hard on them - pushing invasive thoughts away and gradually conceptualizing images of those things through words, trying to find the words that illustrate the thoughts. And succeeding through sheer effort.

If the idea of a poem comes from a more intangible inspiration where there's nothing to stare at - the thoughts themselves are the solid matter, love, fear, awe and so on. I love the idea of writing poetry about awe. I recently (keeping with the animal theme, thanks Ted) saw a film clip of a jaguar prowling the banks of a South American river in search of prey. The astonishing denouement and the reason it had made it into the public arena was that the big cat attacked and killed a caiman crocodile. It was seen swimming out to a small river island and with incredible stealth approached the sleeping crocodile, leaped onto its back and administered a powerful bit to its neck. In an eye blink and with even more audacity it then jumped back into the water the caiman's absolute predatory territory, with it in its mouth. Impossible to believe unless seen.



The prowling cat its musculature
gleaming through patterned skin
treading banks for tidbits and carrion?
Tiny mammals scurry, insects flick away,
untroubled in his laser sights.
Instead the granite-scaled sleeper
toughened by centuries-long survival
unbroken by fear,
basking the sun-baked mud
lulled by the waters lap
resting machete teeth
resting terrible power.



Obviously that's not really a poem it 's just a few desultory ideas about where it might go or how the blocking process might begin.

Notebook Ideas.

I'm always going on about notebooks. I spend more time writing about notebooks than I do actually making notes. This is not a good statistic as without the daily notations I will never find the hooks and themes for plots and poems. 

Today I haven't really troubled my notebook - this happens all too often.  But in the news today and for the past few days has been the extraordinary story of a Mexican fisherman whose boat was washed up on an obscure island - part of the Marshall Islands after setting off 13 months from a Mexican port over 600 miles away ago and getting lost at sea. As one might imagine there's a story to be told here. The newspaper reports are full of spoken examples of how he has managed to survive - from drinking turtles blood to eating seagulls.  This is story to be expanded on. In fact it makes one think about how often one can write a story of survival against the odds and for it to be appealing to the public.  Think of Castaway, Life of Pi and so on. But a real story always goes deeper because people will be left to wonder about the experience and how they might have coped. All those empathetic emotions come into the story mix and help move it along as a reading spectacle. 

Starvation, psychological madness, physical frailty, visions, health, despair, resourcefulness, stubbornness, religion, belief and faith, stoicism, regret, love hate, bravery: you can see how all these and more can be woven into a story. One character against the wildness of the world - the human spirit conquering all the travails and finally succeeding through survival despite the world doing all it could to kill him. You could certainly play with visions, interior dialogue with dead relatives, angels saints sinners all. Animals taking on human characteristics, the pathetic fallacy of the sea and storms raging in and threatening him and his survival. Truly if all this hadn't happened before with Castaway among others it would be worth a go. perhaps it's already worth a go. A poem at least. 

Writing Warm Ups.

I rather like that phrase' loosen the ligaments',  it puts me rather in mind of what some musicians do when they're about to play the piano - finger stretches,  knuckle cracks hand flutters.  Or in the case of  the woodwind section, blowers making incoherent piping blasts before producing something a little more mellifluous. Or the artist who flings a bit of paint around in a haphazard before getting serious with his half inch brush.  So, why should writing be any different? Why should writers expect to sit down after making themselves ham sandwiches, or seeing the kids off to school, or putting on a dark wash and expect to immediately write sentences of great profundity or scintillating humour. The answer seems to be that they cannot.

One of my more regular physical exercises these days is the practice of throwing a medicine ball around. Strictly speaking I'm not throwing it around - I'm sure the neighbours, not to mention other inhabitants of my home would have something to say about that.  It's more of a regular hefting motion building in as many variations as is possible: lifting regularly from the side, through my legs, over the head in a circular motion - that kind of thing. All of which feels good and actually does feel as if it is physically effective in terms of exercise. But I have to be careful - not just of various mishaps waiting to happen: the odd table lamp toppled, a hanging ceiling light turned into a boxers speed ball,  the plasma TV screen waiting its firsts crack etc - but more my neck, my back, even my arms -  both bone and muscle. If I don't prepare myself for these little maneuvers I'm not just likely to feel painful twinges in my back and odd episodic stiff spasms in my neck both during and after exercise I'm not going to be able to the moves well, they will lack fluidity feel awkward.

Warming up is almost always necessary no matter what the skill. True you don't need to warm up prior to taking an engine out of a car or building a wall out of bricks - but that's not to say you shouldn't. I know, having completed similar tasks that often it's really difficult to make a start. Perhaps the reason why is because there is no conventional warm up leading to wielding trowels and spanners.  Arguably, things like that don't really require a warm up because they are neither not sustained actions like say running a marathon would be or an artistic skill like singing an aria. Singers are well known to sluice their vocal chords with a honey and lemon water concoction accompanied by maniac yodeling. And certainly athletes need to stretch their hamstrings before performing.  Certainly I need to warm up before I get my hands on that medicine ball.

It is with this in mind that I know that I need to do some warm up writing, any tripe will do - some people say that tripe is the better - the spilling of the subconscious which in many ways is what was behind that phrase about  ligament loosening.  So that's what I'm doing now. loosening my writing ligaments.