Given Names

Building a Poem

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My counsel to teachers as well as students during residencies in the Poets-in-the-Schools Program remains the same: instead of counting syllables and calling the product a poem, try a different approach.

Start with feelings and incorporate appeals to one or two of the major senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching; the sense of balance, of place, time, proportion; the sense of rhythm, of the absurd, of the sacred.

Be ready for surprises.

It is not a typing lesson —
letters and lines assigned,
nor is it a math problem —
train A approaching train B
at incredible speeds, so when
do you throw the switch?

Build a poem the way a toddler
plays with alphabet blocks:
trains at first, towers and bridges later
(so much hanging in the balance),
tunnels eventually or maybe never,

and always with a gleam in the eye,
deep breathing, the wonder:
How much do I care?
How long will this hold?
And then what?

Oh that sway, that giveaway
when the riotous constructs
with their tumbling-down sounds
let another image crash through.

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“Building a Poem” originally published in Given Names: Portraits Authorized by Margaret Honton
Copyright © 2020
Pueblo Prints,
Pueblo, Colorado 81003

Photos courtesy Maple Landmark