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Published:
2025-06-22
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burning a poetry handbook into ashes

Summary:

Because sometimes, the soft animal of your body wants to wallow in muddy cliches.

aka I read some poetry advice and decided to do exactly what it told me not to do.

Notes:

So, my friend isiaiowin was complaining about the below piece of advice from Mary Oliver's "A Poetry Handbook." She took offense to the following paragraph and said she now wants to write a poem that only uses "poetic diction."

The language of poetic diction is romantic and its images come from the natural world. Patches of woods are "bowers"; fields are "emerald carpets"; trees are Druids or statesmen perhaps; the moonlight is a river; birds are members of a choir; the sun is the eye of heaven; and the sea is a briny bed. And so forth. It is a collection of real clunkers. It is language that is stale, mirthful when it does not mean to be, and empty. Avoid it.

My brain read this and went, "oh, so you want me to mash all of these metaphors in a poem together and make it make sense? And throw in a dash of old-timey language to be extra obnoxious?" And then it kinda morphed into a meta-poem on poetry cliches. To be clear, I don't totally disagree with Ms. Oliver here. My own poetry tends towards plain language, and I agree that it's easy to write really flowery passages that say nothing. But flowery language and even cliches are tools like anything else, so here I use it with abandon.

Work Text:

The river of moonlight flows through the bowers, spilling over leaves like pebbles until it reaches the emerald carpet at my feet. Under its gentle stream, I let my body sink into the grass, soft as a babe’s hair. Just afore midnight, I tumble over a cliff into slumber, trusting the druid trees to watch over me on this solstice-short night, as they have guarded this forest since Earth was Eden.

Did I dream? Mayhaps I did, mayhaps I did not. If I did, the choirs of morning birds hath sung it out of my memory. I glare up into the eye of Heaven and mine eyes burn from Icarian hubris. I speak a prayer of thanks that this is not the day the sun will welcome my weary mortal soul into His embrace. No, today, I march on towards my love, the one who lives by the briny bed of the sea.

Oh, my love! What is there to say of her that better bards hath not told before me? Have they all looked into her eyes and found the clearest skies paled in comparison? With every step I take in midsummer’s heat, my skin flushes to match the rose pink of her cheeks, the flower petals of her lips. Has every poet kissed them and declared that they would prick themselves with a thousand thorns for the mere chance to do so again? Has their every heartbeat drummed out desire for her, playing percussion for the songs of love they compose, the songs that, once sung, sound nothing like the orchestras they had composed in their minds?

Have we all loved the same woman? Or rather, are we all Odysseuses, journeying and toiling to return home to our Penelopes, who have all let the waves wash over their feet as they watch the horizon, writing their lovers’ name in the sand, praying for their return?

Perhaps love poems are like snowflakes, unique fractals, but with the same structure underneath.