Creative Writing

 

If creative writing classes are usually an introduction to commercial writing, and poetry is never a paying proposition, why include poetry? What's the object — to get the creative juices flowing, or simply develop a more adventurous and flexible prose style?

Discussion

Poetry is the workshop of language, the most acute and comprehensive way we have of expressing ourselves. And in poetry the medium is words. Prose may employ ready-made phrases — generally has to, given the needs of a busy world — but poetry works at a deeper level. One essential distinction between poetry and prose lies in the more sustained and elaborate attention paid to its constituent parts. Words for poets have meanings, appropriate uses, associations, connotations, etymologies, histories of use and misuse. They conjure up images, feelings, shadowy depths and glinting surfaces. Their properties are marvellous, endless, not to be guessed at from casual inspection. And each property — meaning, association, weight, colour, duration, shape, texture, etc. — changes as words are combined in phrases, rhythms, lines, stanzas and completed poems. Out of these properties the poetry is built, even if the end cannot be entirely foreseen but grows out of the very process of deployment, that continual, two-way dialogue between writer and poem.

Poems start in odd phrases, an image, a tune in the head, a deeply incoherent pain. How these develop is the poetry. There is nothing difficult in stringing words together — not the exacting research a good journalist must undertake, or the backbreaking labour of novel-writing. It's in responding to what has been written, feeling it, understanding it, extending its possibilities with imagination, honesty and sensitivity. But that means very fine discriminations. Verbal originality, wide sympathies, generosity of heart and a compassion for the human condition are essential for poetry, but they are nothing without extended toil. Poetry trains the character needed to be an artist, the infinite capacity to be honest and take pains.

Poetry also calls for self-criticism, which becomes essential as a writer's talents develop. Literary criticism hones many skills, and those which the practising poet needs are close reading, explication and evaluation. And the first two because poems commonly fail through lack of care. The originating emotion still clots the lines or, in striving for originality, the work becomes muddled, pretentious or incoherent. The incomprehensible can always be taken for the profound of course, and much no doubt gets published for that reason, but only the beginner will see publication as the sole purpose of writing.

The starting point of criticism is the analysis of the reader's or listener's response. Poems may be complex, requiring a good deal of sorting out, but there has to be an immediate impact of some sort — not very strong, and not blatantly emotional necessarily, but something that allows the critic to ask: how is this obtained? how significant is it? how does it compare with similar works? Writers need to know what's been done before, and how comparisons may be objectively undertaken.

Then there is literary theory. Poetry is a dense and compact medium. It is also an art form, serving no practical end. What better medium exists to ask such questions as: What purpose does language serve? How does it mediate between ourselves and the outside world? No doubt the answers are hard to arrive at. Humanism believed in the perfectibility of man. New Criticism had a simplistic psychology. Structuralism drew up fanciful analogies between literature and society. Semiotics misread its originators. Post-structuralists continue to push theories contrary to common sense and the authorities quoted. But all speculation gets the writer thinking, and there is surely a need for some theoretical support in a career that is not overly rewarded or well-regarded.

Furthermore, the subjects which current literary theory claims to oversee are fascinating domains in their own right. Their study enriches, deepens and invigorates our understanding of the world. Whatever beginners suppose, their ideas and outlooks come from somewhere, and the self-evident is usually the shallow and unexamined public mind. At its very least, theory serves as a prophylactic against the preposterous and stultifying, and may provide something of the unifying inspiration that artists seek in their work.

Creative Writing Classes

Classes vary enormously. Most are excellent, though some still exist to give employment to hopeless writers. If a particular class is included in your course of study, then you're stuck with it. But if you have some choice in the matter, and particularly if you're footing the bill, try to evaluate by:

1. Asking for testimonials, and following these up.

2. Looking carefully at the reading lists supplied. From these the level and aspirations of the course should be apparent.

3. Reading the published work of the class tutor. First class tutors do not necessarily write well, but you will not be happy under someone whose output you positively despise.

 

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