Writer to writer: From think to ink - Gail Carson Levine 2014

Write your story a poem
Poetry country

Here’s the beginning of “How Do I Love Thee?” a poem Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to her husband, Robert Browning, who was also a poet:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

Obviously these are lines in a love poem from one person to another, but they express how I feel about poetry itself, which touches my heart and my mind just as profoundly as stories do. When I read or write poetry, I feel as if I’m extending invisible fingers into the center of my being and also out to the edge of the universe. It brings me joy to share this love with you.

Both poetry and fiction clasp writers and readers in an embrace of ideas and feelings. Both explore how it is to be alive, to struggle, to fail, to succeed, to remember, to imagine, to enjoy the natural world.

I’ve always been interested in both kinds of writing. When I was little, I wrote poems and stories, and my first publishing successes were with poems. Two were published in an anthology of poems by high school students. I have no recollection of what they said, and I wish I did, but, alas, back then I didn’t save what I wrote.

As an adult, poems crept into my books for kids almost from the beginning. I wrote poems for Ella Enchanted, Fairest, The Wish, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Ever, Stolen Magic, and The Fairy’s Return. The poems in these novels crop up only occasionally, but my book Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It is a collection of funny poems. (Books of poems are called collections.)

For years I’ve gone to a January retreat that the writer Susan Campbell Bartoletti has organized for herself and other women who write books for children. Each retreat has been taught by a poet. I’ve come away from every one inspired.

Why? What do I need poetry for, when I’m primarily a writer of prose, and I earn my living from my stories, not my poems?

Do I need it, in addition to loving it? I think I do. Let’s look at what poetry has done for some of my novels and what it can do for your novels and stories.

Early in The Wish, Wilma receives two love poems. Here’s the first one she gets:

Wilma’s sweet.

She’s a treat.

Let’s make a date.

We’ll call it fate.

Boo hoo.

I love you.

This is the second:

My barking siren

My short-necked beauty

My long-toothed divine

Tie me to a tall mast

So I may not come at you

Stop my mouth with a silk bandanna

That I may not tell my hope

I think and dream and drink of you

Clearly, these two were not written by the same characters. So a poem can be an instrument of character development, and it works that way in most of my books that include poetry.

The first poem probably wasn’t written by an original thinker. We can tell in just six lines. The second poem probably was. In eight lines we discover that he expresses himself well, that he’s not afraid to show his feelings, and that he knows mythology.

This is an example of one of the main attributes of poetry: compression. Poems can squeeze a lot of ideas, emotions, and information into a few words.

Writing time!

Pick one of your stories, one you’re working on now or one you already finished. Go into it and have two characters each write their own poem. The poem can be a love poem or a poem that reveals another feeling—anger, confusion, sorrow, joy—because poems are great at revealing feeling. It can rhyme or not rhyme. One of my examples does; the other doesn’t. Take care to make the poem of each character reflect his or her personality.

Have fun, and save what you write!

In chapter 22 we talked about backstory. In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, fragments of an epic poem provide the backstory. The book begins with a stanza:

Out of a land laid waste

To a land untamed,

Monster ridden,

The lad Drualt led

A ruined, ragtag band.

In his arms, tenderly,

He carried Bruce,

The child king,

First ruler of Bamarre.

More fragments of the poem show up, and the reader learns the history of the kingdom and its great hero.

That’s backstory, but a poem would also be a fine way of handling foreshadowing. A prophecy, for example, could be presented in a poem.

Fairest takes place in a kingdom of singers, and the songs, which are really poems, not only reveal character, but also move the story along. And they provide variety, which is one of the hallmarks of good writing. Poetry also adds liveliness and energy. A poem breaks up the stately progression of paragraph after paragraph of prose.

Writing time!

• In chapter 22 we looked at ways to present the backstory of Queenie (the Queen of Hearts). Let’s have a poem do it. Hoping his wife will find some comfort, Kingie (the King of Hearts) has commissioned a poem to commemorate the assassination of Daddy Card, which will be read at the next anniversary of his death. You decide whether Kingie made a good decision or a bad one. Write the poem.

• Now let’s use Queenie and a poem for foreshadowing. Seven of Diamonds, who is sick of the beheadings, plots against the royal couple, but Jack of Clubs is gifted with second sight. He wakes up one morning with a poem on his lips that hints at the plot, not precisely, but disturbingly. Write his poem.

Have fun, and save what you write!