A Fruitful, if Fanciful Origin of Poetry

Once upon a time, Edgar Allan Poe pondered, weak and weary from staying up late past a midnight dreary, thinking how quaint and curious that many a volume was now forgotten lore. While he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at his noggin’s door. “’Tis an apple!” Poe then muttered, “Falling on my head before. Only this—but damn it’s sore!”

He was right—the apple had left a gash, and Poe’s head was bleeding. However, this was just the nogginly nudge he needed to move past writing more forgotten lore to his new way of writing. It would become known for it’s inventor, the poe-m, and the art of crafting it for the source of it’s inspiration, the poet-tree. And just as Poe’s head was now red, just as an apple is red, so would the new art form become fruitful and be read.

And fruit would remain a theme as the art grew more complex. Blake wrote a pear of poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” He was also concerned about the health of the trees, recording in “A Poison Tree” his efforts to “[water] it in fears, night and morning with my tears…and it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright.”

Other poets were concerned with the trees, noting the weather. Percy Bysshe Cherry, I think it was, wrote an “Ode to the West Wind”: “Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!” [Given that his wife was occupied writing about monsters and society, we can appreciate his concern.] Williams Carlos Williams was also concerned, noting in “Spring and All” “small trees with dead, brown leaves,“ relieved by “the profound change” when “rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken.”

Williams was really more concerned with possession, preservation and consumption of fruit, though, as he shows in “This is Just to Say”:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Not everyone protects fruit so carefully. I once had to post this on my department’s break room fridge (titled “This is Just Dismay”):

I have discarded
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were evidently
saving
for eternity

Forgive me
they were decomposing
so soft
and so old

But even less high-brow forms of poetry, such as song lyrics, are concerned with enjoying tree fruits, like this excerpt from The Eagles:

Avocado
Why don’t you come to our senses?

and in a later verse:

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table

Nor is the orange the only tropical fruit featured in poetry. After all, when we really like something, it has “appeal.” Consider Gary Soto’s “Oranges,” where he notes that the first time he walked with a girl, he had two oranges in his jacket. And Frank O’Hara appreciates the inspiration he gets from oranges, even just their color, in “Why I Am Not a Painter”:

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Not all poets write about fruit trees, of course, but they still retain their attachment to trees, as Frost shows us in “Birches”:

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Voice (Or, Writing like a Musician)

Mindful of the persistent student perception that their grades simply depend on who reads their work, I tried an experiment. I took one of my pieces and, acting as if a student wrote it, asked a colleague what she thought of it (sharing student work is not an uncommon practice—we frequently share pieces for help with difficult grading calls). My experiment failed inside of a minute—she turned to me and said with firm conviction, “YOU wrote this.” I admitted the ploy, and asked how she knew so quickly. “I was halfway through the first sentence,” she replied, “when I thought ‘I KNOW this voice!’”

I should have known. A former girlfriend, Jean, once read me a passage she wanted to share. “Nice!” I noted. “Do you know who it is?” she asked (Jean was fanatically competitive and given to provocation). “No,” I answered, “but it sounds like Joyce.” “It is Joyce,” she confessed.

In college, I used to look for my fellow music major and best friend Gordon, a trombonist, simply by walking around the practice rooms—I knew his sound from the other trombonists. One day in the snack bar, scarfing down my cheeseburger and fries over lively conversation, I suddenly stopped, exclaiming, “That’s Phil Woods!” recognizing the alto saxophone work I admired on Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” playing on the radio, a song new to me that day. Much more recently, a writing colleague and friend called me to excitedly say “Turn on the radio!” I did. He was listening to a classical piece and wanted to purchase the recording. “Do you know what it is?” he asked. “No,” I responded, “but it’s Beethoven.” Then the violin took over. “Oh!” I explained, “It must be the Beethoven Violin Concerto,” a judgment the announcer later confirmed.

In a few seconds, I can tell the difference between Baroque and Classical, Stravinsky and Ravel, even which orchestra and conductor are performing—and so can any other musician. [I’m reminded of a cartoon depicting a smug looking music listener and his agitated wife, saying, “Why can’t you just say ‘Scarlatti,’ instead of ‘Scarlatti, of course!’”] We also talk about “an ear for language,” and why not? I’m in the midst of reviewing a new text for my Intro to Poetry class, and the emphasis there on slight variations in sound, meter, rhythm and their permutations will be enough to send the average undergraduate into utter despair over ever passing the course. [I’ll work on fixing that problem.]

My fellow writing professors understand this about language, but they also notice a difference between us. Looking over my shoulder while I composed a piece on my laptop during a contentious faculty meeting, one colleague noted admiringly, “You’re just so fluent at this stuff.” Another colleague on a previous occasion remarked, “I can see the poetry in your writing.” A bit confused (since I’m primarily an essayist), I shared that with Tim, another colleague and friend, who nodded and said, “You don’t write poems, but you do write poetry.” My department chair, after visiting my class (on my request), had a single comment afterward: “You should be editing MY writing.”

None of this is to my credit—it’s just who I am. My colleagues are excellent writers, but different writers. And I can see the difference they mention too—my friend and colleague Joe and I see writing much the same way, but we also couldn’t be more different. Joe always wanted to be an English professor, and his frame of reference is continually focused on that perspective. Joe is also a musician, but he sees the world in terms of his English background. I NEVER intended to teach writing (not that I’m sorry), pursuing instead a career in music—which led to music business, which led to writing for those businesses, which led to free lancing, which led to offers to teach, which led to teaching at better colleges—and while Joe and I see writing in similar ways, my approach to the world is that of a musician, and it colors my writing.

How, then, does one write as a musician? Well, when I recorded my albums, I designed first the overall idea, the structure—then added other elements quite freely (jazz background kicking in here). In many ways, I could have played anything over the underlying structure, as long as it reflected and either reinforced or developed the overall idea. This is how I write too. The piece needs an overall flow, but it also needs percussive elements arranged in a pattern that both keeps the piece moving forward and adds interest and vitality. This isn’t easy to explain. Jazz musicians call this approach “feel.” We just know it when we hear it. Many music writers have noted sentiments like “Many people note that music is expressive, but when asked to explain what it expresses, fall silent.”

Aaron Copland may have summarized this best in his essay “How We Listen”:

“My own belief is that all music has an expressive power, some more and some less, but that all music must has a certain meaning behind the notes and that that meaning behind the notes constitute, after all, what the piece is saying, what the piece is about. This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “’Is there a meaning to music?’ My answer to that would be, ‘Yes.’ And ‘Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?’ My answer to that would be, ‘No.’ Therein lies the difficulty.”

After all, what does a Bach fugue mean? Or a John Coltrane improvisation? Sure, songs have lyrics, but change the underlying music, and your favorite songs could easily become silly. Imagine ZZ Top in their standard style performing the theme from “Titanic.” Um…could change it a bit. [Could be fun, though: “Word goin’ round….ship goin’ down….by an iceberg round North seas…”]

Improvising over a song structure is not a matter of just going nuts, but rather mining the original piece for essential elements and reconstructing those pieces in multiple, original, creative ways. Classical composers do the same thing—look what Beethoven does in his Fifth Symphony with just a few notes. How does a musician learn to play like this on demand, live? Practice. Lots and lots and lots and lots of it. For me, writing is the same. All that reading? All that studying? All those drafts? These become tools and material ready to use to develop a motive on the page.

How does this translate to writing? First, I choose a direction. Sometimes, as in an argument, I can state that purpose explicitly, others, it’s just a feeling, as in a piece of music, and only implicit. From that starting point, I choose the major “events” that will happen along the way, looking for a good flow of ideas toward a meaningful climax and satisfactory denouement—whether I can explain it literally or not. And I remember that no musician grows without taking chances, exploring new territory, going out on a limb…(substitute your favorite cliché here—see the point?).

For a good musical example of how I see writing, download Pat Metheny’s “Last Train Home” [or buy this excellent album—“Still Life (Talking)”]. It starts quietly. The drummer is pushing a very quick regular “train” background consistently through what comes off as a slow, easy song. Listen and you’ll see what I mean about this song and writing.

Then it builds in the middle, adding (what else?!)—voices.