by Christine Swint
Casting call — unique types wanted!
As poets we feel the need to write, but what do we write about? We surf the net looking for prompts, read newspapers, look at paintings or listen to music, but ultimately we end up writing about ourselves. How then can we turn our own lives into poems?
If your life is like mine, there’s not a lot of surface drama going on. It’s the hidden world we are trying to reveal. In her essay, “Creating a Personal Mythology,” poet Diane Wakoski writes, “… it is not autobiography you are writing, but your life you are using in order to write about life as other people experience it too.”
As Diane Wakoski suggests in this essay, a way to present recurring themes, ideas and images in your poems is to create a cast of characters who appear across several pieces. Some poets turn to mythology, others find inspiration in pop culture icons and still others turn to dreams and paintings. It is the poet’s task to search for characters who symbolize or represent certain feelings about the poet’s own interior life. In this way the writer must invent.
I list here some possible sources for characters – or even talismans — that can take on added meaning in your poems, either as minor players or as stars in their own right.
• World mythology: Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a classic book that combines the study of Jungian psychology with mythology, explaining the symbolic meaning of many common mythological characters.
• Archetypes: The Hero Within by Carol Pearson outlines six predominant archetypes that show up in the way many of us live our lives.
• History: Diane Wakoski’s key word is “emblematic.” Is there a certain historical figure who is “emblematic” of an aspect of your own life?
• Comic Strips: Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman and others have become icons in modern life. One of these characters might serve as a useful person in a poem, embodying a trait you want to express.
• Animals: Humans have recorded their relationship with animals and the natural world since the beginning of culture and society. Think of cave paintings, masks, fables and legends. Native Americans have developed a system of totemic animals, each one representing different aspects of the human psyche. Personification of inanimate objects can also work as a tool for character building.
If you keep a writer’s journal, jot down ideas about possible characters as you read, watch TV or when you’re on the bus. Each interaction in life provides the poet with a way to tell a story. It might be an event that truly occurred, but even so there’s a need to fictionalize, to embellish, to draw a reader in. To reveal your own hidden view of life, the reader needs to find common ground within the poem.
A recurring character might be a way to connect your feelings with your reader’s.
Source: “Creating a Personal Mythology,” in Toward a New Poetry, The University of Michigan Press, 1980, pp. 106-19, by Diane Wakoski.
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And the master of the form is Bob Dylan, a.k.a., all those a.k.a.’s we’ve all heard at one time or another.
Dylan’s been churning out work and personae for over 40 years. He “exists,” on vinyl, on disc, on film, on tape, on dvd, in photo’s, in print, and live, on stage, at a theater near you. Last night he played in Dallas, and this was his SET LIST
He’s a performance artist, and he’s taught them all…
this is a wonderful article!! i feel deep connections to fictional people, emblems and stories but even as a poet, it sometimes feels goofy to talk about. this is a good way to think about it, however, that they can help us reveal our hidden worlds. love it!
Great article! And I have done this. I began with a fictional “uncle” from a writing exercise I did some years ago in a class, and ended up with my Pepek the Assassin series! I had a whole lot of fun living in Pepek’s personae, and I think it’s probably my best work. Thus, Pepek is me, I am Pepek, haunted by ghosts, in need of forgiveness, reconciliation….
Some other poets have done this, too–who is it, (I’m having another senior moment here) with the Hermit series? I should go look it up.
Thanks for this!
Gee whiz, looking this up I find another poet (Lew Welch)has written a Hermit series…the one I’m thinking of is Maxine Kumin: (in Up Country) The Hermit Wakes to Bird Sounds, The Hermit Meets the Skunk, The Hermit Prays, The Hermit Picks Berries, etc etc. Really fun!
Now I’m going to go look up Diane Wakoski’s book! And buy a copy!
Pepek, I’m going to look up the Hermit series- sounds like fun. It’s interesting how your character has become a semi-permanent emblem of you, at least through your blog.
Richard, you’re right, we have a lot to learn from Bob Dylan, and performance artists in general. I know many poets dress in character when the read their work.
Carolee, I’m glad you like this way of populating poems. Like Diane Wakoski, many of my characters come from dreams. But I also like the idea of made-up people from real life, like using celebrities as characters, or fictional people from older literature, ike Grendel. There’s so much to inspire us.
OK. I am trying to make this link work. Here goes.
YEAAAAAAAA! It works! I figured it out! *doing a happy dance*