Profession: Poet is a quarterly blog feature exploring craft and identity in poetry by Hanoch Guy, who writes poems in both English and Hebrew.
Writing poems of despair and hope
Our lives are full of sensory experiences.
You feel cold or hot, one or more senses are activated, such as sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.
You have vibrations that consist of electrical and chemical reactions.
What are ways to translate these feelings into a poem? What are the different ways to shift into verbal expression?
Among the pathways are degrees of breath.
The breath of life holds keys to portraying emotions.
Writing a poem of depression may translate to holding your breath while ecstasy may be expressed through swift, shallow breaths.
What do you feel when reading the poem aloud?
Pay attention to the pitch and tone and volume of your voice, high or low or flat, soft or loud.
There is a whole arsenal of verbal devices to utilize as conduits of emotions. These may seem quite basic, but they are the materials of language, used to convey the complex and intangible.
Some of this arsenal consists of the basic parts of speech and the components of sentences, such as subjects, adjectives, verbs, adverbs. What is the subject when writing about emotions?
How do you use adjectives that describe emotions in a way that is particular to the situation you are describing?
This requires a deeper look into your own emotions. Are you angry or furious, sad or despairing, joyous or ecstatic? What are the shades and temperatures of your emotions? What are the sensations in your body and where in your body are they most noticeable? Do you feel aggressive, indifferent, numb, cold, sweating, tart, sweet, sour, bitter, grim, withdrawn? Loving or hateful? Where is that love or hate directed, toward yourself or others?
Investigating your emotions on deeper levels and being specific about your experience of those emotions gives you access to a well from which you can draw out your poems.
How do you use adverbs and verbs that describe emotions in a way that is particular to the situation you are describing? Even the articles and prepositions you choose make a difference in the tenor of your poem.
Explore how each of the five senses enhance paths to emotions.
What do you feel when you touch, smell, hear, see, taste?
There is a great deal more on poetry of emotions that we may explore in the next blogs.
Let me offer you two of my poems tackling emotions.
Geography of depression
A.
Rock blocks.
Cave darkness.
Feel my way through
slimy walls
between flying bats.
Eels bind my feet.
B.
Trapped on a treacherous
mountain slope.
Black fog gags.
A hairy hand shoves me off
the cliff.
C.
Holding on for dear life
to a wild dog
along a snowy field,
icy wind cuts.
I fall into a hole.
An Eskimo spears me.
What kind of a fish
is this?
D.
A sack
over my head,
hangman
tightens the rope,
mumbles curses.
Late bus
Quiet ride from Jerusalem,
we made salad with olive oil.
Coffee burned my tongue
I wanted to say to Nilly
plead
I
She looked at me
with deep brown eyes.
I dragged my suitcase
to the last bus
on the old road.
Please tune in for the next blog on spiritual quests through poetry.
Hanoch Guy Ph.D, Ed.D spent his childhood and youth in Israel. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch has taught Jewish Hebrew literature at Temple University and poetry and mentoring at the Muse House Center. He won awards in the Mad Poets Society, Phila Poets, Poetry Super Highway and first prize in the Better than Starbucks haiku contest. His book, Terra Treblinka, is a finalist in the North Book Contest. Hanoch published poems in England, Wales, Israel, the U.S., and Greece. He is the author of nine poetry collections in English and one Hebrew book.