Poetry is often considered the emotional, raw, intense and confessional genre. However, emotion cannot be carried solely by content. Crafted form and attention to the music of language are the keys to creating feeling in poetry. These six poets have succeeded in drawing from personal experience to make moving and memorable books of poems, the first three of which primarily celebrate the act of loving another and the latter three which mainly commemorate the stages of leaving someone behind and moving forward.
Phyllis Webb's Naked Poems (1965)
Webb's book was groundbreaking in its elucidation of a female perception of desire as expressed through the long, continuous poem. In stirring fragments, Webb weaves the sensual details of arousal and longing, always attentive to the mind as a channel through which the body emerges and to the language within which it is framed. Each verse is self-contained and yet becomes part of the suite of pieces as each lover is both solitary and an aspect of the other and the lyrical whole.
You brought me clarity:
Gift after gift
I wear.
Poems, naked.
in the sunlight
on the floor.
Dennis Lee's Riffs (1993)
Better known as a children's poet, Lee brings that same sense of fun, jubilation and lyrically giddy movement to this poem in 88 sequences that chronicle the first twinges of love, full-blown passion and eventually, a dwindling and detachment. However, it is the music that is most prominent in this paean to the jazz rhythms of lust. Lee uses alliteration and line breaks in a randy and exquisite way to engage with the delirium of early and irrational desire.
How
hooked I--
honey how
hooked &
horny; hooked and happy-go-
honking--hey, how
hooked on your
honey-sweet honey I
am.
Don Coles' K in Love (1987)
Coles has always taken risks with the lyric voice and this book is no exception, a sweet chorus of love notes ostensibly written from Franz Kafka to his lover. Although research into Kafka's letters and biography informed the poems, they transcend any particular source to serve as erotic and melancholic forays into the expression of yearning. The object of these letters is both present and absent, a statement and a hesitation and Coles traces each vulnerable nuance.
It's so lonely here
Without you. I try
to write cheerfully and
Every word on the page
Bursts into tears.
Lynn Crosbie's Liar (2006)
Crosbie frequently transgresses boundaries in her work, writing edgy and controversial poetry. Liar is no exception, another long poem that erratically explores the intimate nature of a break-up. Crosbie is unafraid to be incoherent at times in tracking this path of infidelities and pain, listing the detritus of the relationship that went awry. Agonized with complicity, the book chronicles the obsessiveness that can result from asking why a union simply couldn't last :
I feel I am on the verge of understanding what transpired between us, / when I think of these socks, nestled in their black bouquets.
Sharon McCartney's For and Against (2010)
The only one of the six that is a collection of lyrics rather than a book-length poem, McCartney's work recounts the vicious and visceral moments leading towards a break-up of a twenty year old marriage. Her language is textured and unyielding as she delves into the nightmares of severance through everything from the novel Anna Karenina to her loathing for coyotes. Each poem is a hard pang of experience, one that should not be shied away from but that should shine with the speaker's truths: "Dump out the over- /
stuffed drawers. Make room for new disappointments."
Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband (2001)
Classicism defines all of Carson's work and this book-length poem in 29 sections called "tangos" continues her tradition of blending the scholarly and the emotive. Composed as a meditative essay on Keats' notion that "beauty is truth," Carson commences each part with a lengthy title and proceeds to enter scenes of her persona's split from her husband. These sequences include fragments of letters, music, and other allusions, the book concluding with the admonition to remain enamoured with the world, despite loss.
Well, life has some risks. Love is one: Here's my advice, "hold / Hold beauty."
Poetry speaks, through the music of language, about all significant subject matters. Writing about falling in, and out, of love are two essential ways poets seek to illuminate human experience.
Sources
- Carson, Anne. The Beauty of the Husband.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
- Coles, Don. K in Love.Quebec: Signal Editions, 1987.
- Crosbie, Lynn. Liar. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2006.
- Lee, Dennis. Riffs. Ontario: Brick Books, 1993.
- McCartney, Sharon. For or Against. Nova Scotia: Goose Lane Editions, 2010.
- Webb, Phyllis. Naked Poems. Vancouver: Periwinkle Press, 1965.
Catherine Owen - Catherine Owen, MA 2001, has published ten award winning books of poetry/prose. Her writing is lyrical, well-researched and fully ...
