Back from a cool and rainy beach, where we saw the following: six baby peacocks and a white parent peacock, ten baby quail and parents, a mother and baby racoon, 12,000 fawns and various deer, otters, harbour seals, and a multitude of seagulls. After reading Lucia Perillo’s I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing, I can even identify the kinds of seagulls. Yes, that’s my takeaway from the poet’s book: the wildlife biology.
Well, I came back to a Tempest on the Wompo list over whether writing poetry in persona was proper, ethical, allowable, etc. I had to write a little post on the topic, and here it is:
Dear Wompo crowd,
My goodness! What a passionate discussion about something I thought was an accepted truth in our literary world – that the speaker is not the poet. We do not assume writers of plays, or novels, or songs, etc must always write as themselves, but somehow the poet is expected to do so. I love to write dramatic monologues and fiction, but I happen to be a poet, so I use persona poetry.
Perhaps it’s because of some of my favorite poets write in persona, such as Gluck and Margaret Atwood and Lucille Clifton, to name a few, or perhaps I find persona poetry a nice contrast, to the I-was-walking-through-the-woods-and-had-this-epiphany poem you find all over the place or the sixties-era confessionalism that still seems to be one of the main modes today. I hope we can all agree there’s room for that kind of poetry, and for poetry that allows us to create character, plot, and dialogue in our minds as well.
In a little class I prepared for college students, I talked about the benefits – or the reasons why – of writing persona poetry.
Here’s a condensed version:
-Empathy. Allowing us to put ourselves in the shoes of the “other.”
-Imagination. Getting out of the prison of your own life and circumstances, and into someone else’s. Or a different universe altogether. This is one of the reasons it is the mode of writing I’m most strongly drawn to.
-Especially for women, allowing their full range of voice in a society that may or may not be happy to hear what they’re thinking or feeling. The three poets above (Gluck, Atwood, and Clifton) are pretty sly in the way they critique society through their personas, in ways they would maybe not be able to get away with writing as themselves. I’m also thinking of HD here. There’s a social aspect to giving voices to the voiceless…the midrash – to re-writing mythology and history by using a woman character’s voice to critique the social situations they found/find themselves in. I mean, Mary Magdalene didn’t get to write her own story. or Leda, Philomel, Helen of Troy. Or, come to think of it, Wonder Woman. Sure, these women are fictional, but don’t they deserve to be heard?
The two cents of a passionate persona poetry lover and writer, Jeannine Hall Gailey
Peter
I agree. Poetry is a big house, and the more modes we have available to us, the better.
Collin
I’ve written a number of persona poems and will continue to do so. I hate those who try to limit poetry and put it back into a tiny little box of what is and isn’t acceptable. I say, write what you like, anyway you like.
Robert
Persona has been an accepted aspect of great poetry for centuries. Shame more people who claim to want to be able to write great poetry don’t actually read it. I’m giving a talk on Monday wherein I hope to lay some smack down. Nobody disses Li Po like that.
Tom C. Hunley
Jeannine,
Thanks for the post. I wanted to comment on WOM-PO but am too busy and tired to get it right. My poem forthcoming in Triquarterly is from the pov of someone whose wife has cheated on him and left him due to pressures in their marriage that arose from losing a child to SIDS. When people ask me if that happened to me (it didn’t) I tell them they’re missing the point. One of my students called it a “James Frey” poem, but Frey’s book was a memoir, so there’s sort of a contract that says it really happened. I think people readily accept the narrative “I” in fiction because the contract there says the story didn’t really happen; it’s fiction. One thing I love about poetry is that it can swing back and forth between those two poles. The contract is “anything goes,” more or less.
Okay, I guess that’s about what I would have posted on WOM-PO, and maybe now I will.
Thanks for the shout-out on WOM-PO, too. It was so funny to open up the digest and see my name. That’s another discussion I may stay out of, though I can see that her problem is the workshop model. She’s not using techne, she’s just letting the students write about whatever they want, left to their own resources. She really needs my book, _Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach_. I don’t know how to tell her that without sounding like I’m self-promoting.
jeannine
Thanks Peter, Collin, and Robert. I’m with you guys! Let Persona rock on!
Tom – good luck with the new baby, and thanks for the note!
Jilly
I don’t think that limiting your poetic options is practicing very good “creative hygiene” for yourself.
Alissa Nielsen
Agreed. Great points, Jeannine. Especially about empathy and giving voice to the voiceless. Thanks for this post!
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Eloquent as always, Jeannine. Your students are going to be lucky to have a teacher like you.
Every day I wake up, I’m a new persona. I can’t believe what that other Lana wrote yesterday has much to do with me. Perhaps this is diagnosable 😉 but I’d hate to think I can’t wake up and write from whoever (or whatever) my writing voice is coming–Mary Astor, Little Bo Peep, or a sugar maple tee. Okay, maybe certifiable. 😉
cornshake
um, i have to pipe in here. no one is talking about the amazing fact that you saw peacocks?! on the beach??!! so jealous!!!
jeannine
Aimee – six BABY peacocks, and a white peacock – all in a lavender field about 45 minutes from the coast. That is also where I saw the covey of quail. Cute!
Thanks Jilly – and Alissa – and Lana (no, not crazy – just creative 🙂
Steven D. Schroeder
“I-was-walking-through-the-woods-and-had-this-epiphany”
I like to think I coined this phrase 😉