by Christine Swint

Place in poems — who needs a GPS device when we’re grounded in detail?

Lately as I’ve been driving from one place to another I’ve started jotting down interesting town names and street signs: Tulip Lane, Sleepy Hollow Road, Famous Raymond’s Hot Boiled Peanuts, The Best Little Hair House in Georgia (a hair salon!) and the list goes on.

In her book, Writing Alone and with Others, Pat Schneider suggests: “Write using a town name to get started. Use specific names. ‘A small town’ will not show itself to me as clearly as will ‘White River Junction,’ ‘Mansfield,’ or ‘Platt’s Corner.’”

Many of us remember Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan, because of the evocative place mentioned in the first line:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Specific place names allow the reader a more concrete vision of what the poem is relating. In the first stanza of her poem The message of crazy horse, Lucille Clifton lets us know exactly what Crazy Horse sees in his mind’s eye with words “the Black Hills hooped around me.”

I could describe my world as metro Atlanta, suburban Fulton county, the Chattahoochee hill country or the foothills of the Appalachians. Each name conjures a different mood, a different attitude toward the subject of the poem.

As you ride the bus, the train or walk city streets, pay attention to shop names, the names of subway stops, restaurants, towns and streets. Maybe you’ll even make up your own place, along the lines of Gabriel García Marquez’ Macondo, or William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.

If you like, you can post comments here about interesting place names you come across as you journey through your day.