A
Magical
Clockwork:
The Art of
Writing the Poem
Susan
Ioannou
Wordrights
160 pages, paperback
ISBN 0920835120
A
Magical Clockwork is the fourth of Susan Ioannou’s self-help
books intended for the idea-starved writer striving to polish his or her poetic
art. It is highly detailed and well researched, and potentially an invaluable
guide for students and readers of poetry, especially those trying to lesson the
number of brow-creasing rereadings it sometimes takes to understand a poem. The
volume’s format – a useful little handbook – makes it easy to lug around should
an enlightening thought hit at work, in the subway, or when grappling with pen
and pad at a café.
A
Magical Clockwork is a comprehensive and helpful
guide to the careful planning and production of poetics. I say “production”
because throughout the first chapter Ioannou compares the artistry of poetry to
the inventiveness of cinematography. By paying meticulous attention to detail
and following the techniques recommended in this book (including a physical
exercise one might want to try), the poet is supposed to be able to acquire the
same kind of control over his or her work that a photographer would have, guiding
a viewer’s feelings by creating an “emotional and physical point of view.”
Ioannou invites the reader to believe that “new descriptive details…should not
jump hither and thither around the picture, but draw the eye cinematically,
along a smooth path.”
However, the book’s title
contains a paradox, suggesting that the wizardry of writing poetry is reducible
to clockwork. The second definite article in The Art of Writing the Poem suggests that poetry is a monolith that
anyone can master; by asking in the preface what makes for a good poem, the
author opens a can of wriggling worms, implying there are definitive measures
or guidelines for writing poetry. At best, this is a clever marketing ploy
aimed at catching the attention of writer’s-blocked poetry fans prowling the
bookstores for “how-to” books. At worst, Ioannou reduces the airiness of poetry
to a sort of science by chronicling systematically the intricacies involved in
unfolding a poem and unleashing its meaning. From the outset, she provides numerous
examples of poems (several of them hers) to illustrate the diverse effects
those intricacies can have.
Is it necessary to drive the
devices found in A Magical Clockwork
through a poem like rivets, or is poetry more successful when it is an
unconfined eruption of words as thought meets paper? In The Art of Poetry (West Coast Paradise, 1997), Robert G. Ansley
argues that “with poetry, it is much simpler to accept the original work
because usually the idea is still there and tampering with it too much can only
remove this magic and spontaneity.” In a recent television interview, Timothy
Findley reaffirmed the notion that the writer is possessed by a magical
connection to language. When asked about the methods he uses to initiate his
creative thought process, Findley identified himself as being merely a vehicle
in which words travel, and are later transferred to paper, and claimed there is
little preparatory logic in his writing. A. E. Housman experienced a similar
unexpected flash while writing. For Housman,
there
would flow into my mind with sudden and accountable emotion, sometimes a line
or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza at once, accompanied, not preceded,
by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form part of (What
Poetry Is, Ladysmith Press, 1970).
I have no doubt that we are
richer for Coleridge’s decision not to resume writing “Kubla Khan” after the
gentleman from Porlock and the laudanum-induced trance left him.
Ioannou, on the other hand,
believes that “rarely does a whole poem spring into being at once, like Athena
from the forehead of Zeus,” and relies on details such as tone, line
arrangement, comma function, rhyme, the interplay of image and symbol, and so
on, for a poem’s development. Can it be assumed, then, that the mystery of
poetry becomes a conscious art or, perhaps a better analogy, technical
craftsmanship similar to the process of building a car? Ioannou does note that
the creative process and the editing process should occur at distinct times,
but while her discussion of editing oneself is solid, too little is said in her
book about the enigmatic experience of actually writing poetry. In the last
chapter, Ioannou suggests ways of provoking inspiration and jumpstarting the
muse. The reader is tossed a slew of solutions, including mood music, deep
breathing, gazing out the window, chanting, napping, concentrating on one body
part, and (get this!) using triggers such as a poetry pen or a fragrant
writing-time tea. It seems a tad contrived to list several activities with the
expectation that they bridge the gap between the abstract and palpable. It is
implied that anyone can write a “good” poem, simply by using the detailed
approaches outlined in her book.
I do not believe the true
poet flicks on a switch to induce creative flow – you either have it or you
don’t. Ansley suggests that “if poetry is art… it must be unbridled and set
free to live in its own life and to be what it will be.” Ioannou herself makes
this distinction at the end of the book: “the magic of imagination darts
unbounded; the clockwork logic of editing is orderly, careful, and precise.”
Although there are two separate sides of the brain working together, Ioannou
fails to caution against the frequent overlap of these two thought patterns.
Ansley argues: “If I start to dicker around with [the poem], soon it loses its
texture and feel and then what have I got?” The creative is the antithesis of
the analytical, and the overuse of the analytical will inevitably deter from
the ability to function on an undaunted creative level.
The poet has a deep yearning
for expression but because of the abstracting nature of left-brain thought,
committing this vision to paper puts the bard in a quandary. A Magical Clockwork is a marvellous
collection of devises that will benefit both the reader lacking the literary
tools for dissection and the trained literary critic possessing that fine eye
for detail. But while it may provide readers with the tools necessary to reach
a deep respect for the poetical experience, by no means are these tools a
prerequisite for writing poetry. I have read that a poet is not so much one
with a command of language as one under its power. This sense of power is
elicited by the poet who metamorphoses the indomitable interests of a visceral
world into those of a physical one, stirring within the reader an inexplicable
movement and transcendent light of the brightest kind. No book can teach this
to the crafty poet, who waits gaping for that flash exalted and exacted at the
fragile moment of experience.