Jeff Derrickson

The Peril of Breaking Unknown Rules

      My first real experience with poetry came during my freshman year of high school.  We studied a few, but the ones that really stood out to me were Burns’ Red Red Rose and Poe’s The Raven.  I loved how the rhymes worked together, and even though I didn’t understand all the words, I knew I liked it.  Then it came time to write one.  I decided to write one in the vein of The Raven, and end all my lines with the same rhyme.  To that end I created Red Rainfall.  It was only four lines, but I was proud of it.  I remember two of the lines: “My mind stands alone with no other thoughts to call / In the crimson glow of the red rainfall.”  I turned it in, only to have my teacher remind me that there must be at least twelve lines!  Dejected, I sat down at my desk.  I didn’t understand.  It was perfect!  I remember I was more interested in conveying a mood, I think, than making a coherent poem.  So I arduously pounded out eight more lines that ended with an “-all” rhyme.  I even came up with what the red rainfall was: a rainforest on fire.  But even though my teacher raved about it, I still really liked it better when it was only four lines.  To this day, in one form or another, this is how I feel about poetry as a whole.  I’ve learned a lot of poetic rules, edited a literary magazine, taken classes on modern and contemporary poetry, and tried my hand at writing a few, and even though I know it’s wrong, I still have the initial notion to reject what poetry is supposed to be.  As much as I struggle with that, however, I know ultimately that you have to know the rules to effectively break them.

      The first reading assignment of our class really struck me because there was an actual section that was devoted to how I felt about poetry.  It is headlined “conventions versus individuality.”  I related very well with this section because whenever it comes to poetry or anything creative, a little rebel voice jumps up in my head that wants nothing to do with conventions such as iambic pentameter or rhyming.  To my great regret, this voice was a dominant one during my tenure as editor of Lee College’s literary magazine, Benchmark.  I sought out poetry based solely on its uniqueness.  If it sounded anything like anything I had heard before, I did not want it in the magazine.  I shudder at the idea that I may have been unfairly prejudiced against a well-written poem that followed a few conventions.  In the text, we are advised to use poetic conventions to shape our work towards our own individual styles.  I agree with that, mainly because of my second venture in writing poetry.

      My poem, Ode to Seuss, was that second try.  Looking back, I’m glad I never mailed it to the real Dr. Seuss, because I fear he would have died much sooner.  I have a great respect for the good doctor, and I wanted to utilize his whimsical rhyming style to house a love poem.  Unfortunately, the end result was something akin to an assault on his style.  I ended up cramming a stale love story into a dozen or so lines with forced rhymes.  Sure, it was just for fun, but I ended up adhering so faithfully to poetry’s conventions that the work was rigid and stale, just like it says in chapter one.  In short, I was bouncing from one extreme to the next, and I needed to find balance.

      Last spring I took a class on modern and contemporary poetry.  As a testament to my resistance to the rules, I can’t tell you today what the difference between those two are.  Throughout the class I was more focused on what spoke to me, and I didn’t really care how it spoke to me.  The poetry of Stevie Smith spoke to me because it wasn’t as stuffy and serious as much of poetry is, but it was also complex.  She even used doodles to drive her points home!  William Carlos Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow and Richard Wilbur’s Death of a Toad spoke to me because they were so simple, yet they could be dissected and deciphered for hours!  E.E. Cummings’ r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r was astounding, to say the very least, so it looked like I again was being drawn to poets that were unique, but these poets were long-dead and published, so I didn’t feel as bad about it this time!  Could it be that my balance was within reach?

      When it came time to write my own poem for this class, the first thing to come to my head was to write a poem about sushi, only with sexual undertones.  Six or so lines into that, and I was quick to realize that it was a one-trick pony, so to speak, and I needed something with a little more substance.  I chose my current relationship.  I was inspired by Stevie Smith to use nonsense words like Parthenobahn and shys.  And for the first time, I was concerned with cohesiveness.  I wanted it to be tight, from start to finish, and although the rhythm changes a couple of times in the poem (there’s that rebel voice again), I think I’m okay with how it turned out.  It’s definitely the most time and effort I’ve ever put into a poem, and I will write more.  The balance I’m looking for as a poet did not come this time, but I’m sure as I read and write more, I’ll get closer.  I just need to maintain a familiarity with poetry’s conventions so that I can manipulate them to meet my needs.  This is the first poem I’ve written that does not look like I had used a cookie cutter on some prose and made it rhyme, but I think prose is where my heart truly lies.