A three-time United States Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky visited the Walt Whitman Birthplace to perform duties as Poet in Residence…Poetry Master Class, Reading, and presiding at the awards ceremony for student poets.

It is one thing to read his biography on the flier, quite another to meet him, hear him teach, listen, comment, and recite and read. Almost 25 poets gathered to work with him. It was fabulous.

“I like the word compose rather than write. Musicians compose with notes, we use words. Words have sounds. Listen to the materials. They will tell you what to do. Just wait for something that feels interesting.”

He asked us to brainstorm words associated with WATER. As we pitched in, he wrote them on a blackboard. With about 25 responses, he began to play by matching words that had similar sounds.

“Turn the word inside out. Look for odd couplings. Find sound in  words.”

Pinsky gave several examples creating poetic lines using the words. This became the model for our writing exercise.

“Pick a topic, brainstorm associated words, get something started on paper, 20 minutes.”

He asked for volunteers to read what they’d written. He’d ask to repeat, and then commented. His editing and revision suggestions were enlightening.

“You have to pay me $300 for every adjective you use. Nouns and verbs carry the power. Latinate words and Anglo-Saxon words have different sounds and make a powerful contrast. They also help break up a phrase that you might have overloaded and made too rich.”

“Shirt”, his poem about the Triangle Factory Fire, provided a response to the question. “What is your process?

“Every one of us has a different process. I imagined a fictional setting for the daughter of one of the workers. After a couple of false starts, I started thinking of the sewing machine. I listed the parts. This became the engine that drives the poem. I brainstormed the parts of a shirt, another engine. The superstructure of the poem comes from the sounds of machine and shirt parts. I was then able to hang the rest of the lines on the Union, the conditions, the aftermath, the terror, and so on. And I never used my story about the daughter.”

At his reading, the SHIRT  poem came alive. What also came alive was the Favorite Poem Project, which he conceived. As a result, Robert Pinsky has made and continues to make, a huge impact on the increase in the public’s enjoyment of poetry.

“A poem isn’t finished when you compose it,” he said, “but when someone else reads it – probably aloud.”

 

 Tom Stock