Lorine Niedecker called making poems "condensery."
It's true; poems must be distilled. The language is compressed, and poets use line breaks and enjambment in order to create ambiguity and add meaning. My mother was born right before
Prohibition. Many people built their own
stills, called Blind Pigs, and distilled their own liquor. It was illegal, and the results uneven, but it happened. The image of a still comes to mind when I think about the process of turning language into poems. One must take lessons in compression.
After writing long pages, start the process: practice reduction. Be ruthless. Take out any extra words or phrases. Everybody uses a different recipe. I began in paragraphs, but then boiled it down. This is a first draft of the poem that became one of the poems in my book Night Train Red Dust.
After writing long pages, start the process: practice reduction. Be ruthless. Take out any extra words or phrases. Everybody uses a different recipe. I began in paragraphs, but then boiled it down. This is a first draft of the poem that became one of the poems in my book Night Train Red Dust.
Blind Pig
Make ruinous beauty
in imaging
pare it down –
find the essence.
If moon, then only
crescents
continuous rough music
of verb and noun
to shine that road upon the lake
trouble the tongue
keep sonorous secrets.
Work double duty
to intoxicate
delete and de-
liberate
expand the seems
increase the proof.
Pour off the mind
into wild gleams.
©2013
Sheila Packa
Lessons in Compression
Read the work of Lorine Niedecker
Tips on Revision: line breaks and enjambment
Poetic Compression by James Longenbach
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