Quilting, Poetry, and Plums

Welcome to Poetry Friday, today hosted by Tabatha Yeatts HERE. Thank you, Tabatha for hosting. It’s a cool sunny beautiful day in Upstate New York. I have been thinking, as are many, about the storm in Florida and hope that people who need it find food and shelter and stay safe.

This week I quilted a small table runner for my sister who just moved to San Antonio, Texas. I made it by piecing different prints of fabric in stripes until I liked the way it looked. It was not difficult, but it was fun to arrange the patterns next to one another.

It was like moving words and lines around in a poem. I am currently reading HOW POEMS GET MADE, by James Longenbach, who teaches in Rochester, NY, published in 2018. ( Bear with me. Sometimes I write a blog post so I understand something better. It just might be the case here.)

Trust me, it a lot more challenging reading this heady book than making my little table runner, placing fabric pieces where I want them. But in this book the author showed me, in a concrete example, how the placement of a word in the right place can make a difference in the tone in a poem. I already knew that, but I felt it more clearly after reading his chapter on “tone.”

Longenbach gives us an example to think about, of a simple sentence written three ways. The bold-printed word in each version is to be accentuated. 

You said that?
You said that?
You said that?

We see the same sentence, but the tone of each line is different depending on which word gets the accent. It’s fun to perform these three versions like an actor: horrified, or curious, or in an angry tone.

Now, given that accents can change tone, a poet in the process of writing a poem must decided where to place a word that she wants accentuated. Longenbach gives us the example of a poem by William Carlos Williams to help us think about it. Here are the first two stanzas:

To A Poor Old Woman by William Carlos Williams

munching a plum on
the street a paperbag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her. 

The rest of the poem can be read Here.

The first line of the second stanza feels satisfying. “They taste good to her.” But the next three lines, through enjambment of the line, we hear the same sentence five syllables differently. In line two, we read the word “good”as accentuated because it’s at the end of the line. In line three the word “taste” is accentuated because of where it appears at the end of the line. In general, a word at the end of a line gets noticed, and I can see it here. It alters the tone of what is being communicated.

I cannot describe it as well as professor Longenbach does, and I’ve greatly simplified the point, I am sure. But I understand perhaps better why enjambment and line endings are such important tools in any poets toolbox.

Just as I could have placed the fabric in my quilt a number of different ways to achieve a certain results. There are different ways to arrange words in a poem to achieve the accent and tone that you seek. I recommend this book if you want more than just the nuts and bolts of writing poetry.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

17 thoughts on “Quilting, Poetry, and Plums”

  1. I love that you’re quilting table runners! 🙂 And yes, I can relate to writing something to understand it. I don’t like looking under the poetry hood too often…of course it can be helpful to learn about the “tools” and how to use them. But. For me, understanding (of the mind) can really get in the way! I find the most satisfaction in writing from a place that kind of ignores all that? I love dwelling in the mystery of poetry, following intuition, allowing things to unfold… of course this approach has its drawbacks, too. Thanks so much for sharing! xo

    1. I agree. I don’t delve into such challenging craft books very often, but I am trying to understand the rhetoric about poetry writing that I hear from some who write it. What are writers like Longenbach talking about exactly? I think you do have a intuition and feel for rhythm and tone on the page. xo

  2. It’s interesting to compare your lovely table runner & the placement with words on a poetry page, Janice. Changes create different tension in wording for sure! (FYI – your link on Tabatha’s post isn’t working.) Have a great weekend!

  3. Wonderful comparison between quilting and writing. Yes, word placement, enjambment, etc., can make a big difference in meaning. Thanks for sharing the WCW poem, too (wonder why I hadn’t seen it before)?

  4. Tone. There is so much that could be written just about tone. Maybe that’s why I love poetry – the challenge of finding the right word and placement to evoke my intention. And yet, was it Billy Collins who says – once the poem is written, it belongs to the reader. Thank you for this thoughtful post.

  5. This is so interesting, Janice. I teach pre-service teachers a reading foundation course and we talk about the same thing when teaching fluency. Yet from a reading fluency standpoint it’s called “stress” on a word and not “tone”. When I think of tone, I think of voice. It’s interesting how these terms get conjumbled in various contexts. I do though love your analogy to your table runner. And I also love that you shared this book because I plan on looking for it on eBay and digging into it. Thank you for sharing it and for pondering on it with us.

    1. Thank you for reading. The way I see it is this: When a particular word in a sentence is stressed, the tone of a sentence may be changed. Tone is just one of the many characteristics, like diction/word choice that creates voice. I think you will like the book. 🙂

  6. I think it was Mem Fox who said of picture books – “perfect words in perfect places.” I think this applies to poetry, too. I love learning from this community.

  7. Janice, Your intro to the post led us right into the placement of words and the introduction of tone. I remember working with teachers on tone. It was enlightening to hear their remarks. Thanks for sharing the book and your thoughts along with the poems.

  8. Janice, thank you for introducing me to a new book. It sounds like something I would enjoy. I do love seeing how others analyze poetry (in the best ways, not in the terrible ways described by Billy Collins in Introduction to Poetry).
    You’ve given me much to think about!

    I’m in NJ this weekend, but definitely missing my fall days in Rochester.

  9. One time I took a class on poetry editing where we took one of our poems and cut it into strips like your table runner and rearranged them with abandon. A fun exercise. (To be honest, I haven’t done it again! But I could if I got stuck.) I was very interested in what you were saying about enjambment. We need all our tools 🙂

  12. I just have to say (type) amen. I think I was craving paper crafting/collage because of writing in some weird way. It’s arrangement and placement and putting things together that look good. When I came home from a week of school yesterday, I went right to my craft table and played with paper and glue. It was soothing to me…moving things around while kind of letting my mind drift. This post makes so much sense to me!

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