Poetry Consultations with TJ Beitelman

“These are the two forces that form must come to terms with. The imaginative tendency to include everything, through disjunction and wildness, allows all to enter a poem, versus the concentrating gravities of formal control, of will and limits. We must work to lose control when control has become too limiting, just as we must assert more vigorously the presence of choice to counter a too great loss of control. The making of poems is in constant tack between these two poles and there will always be poems that fail in this zigzag sail.”

– Dean Young, from The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction

I agree with Young’s sentiment, and I think the “zigzag sail” is a perfect metaphor for how a poem or a manuscript forges its way into the world. If it was a straight line, we’d all be writing technical manuals. These are some basic elements I consider when I read and respond to poems-in-progress:

Intention. The essential question all readers must ask of what they read—why did I read this? What is it trying to communicate to me?

Form. Line and shape and punctuation are the parameters of a poem. Has this poem found its parameters? Is the poem in a traditional verse form? Free verse? Why?

Sound. What sounds does the poem make and how does it make them? Does it pay proper attention to the rhythms of language? Are there poetic devices such as alliteration/consonance, anaphora/repetition, rhyme, etc.? What affect do they have on the poem’s meaning?

Image. What does the poem help us see? What about the other physical senses? Are those things concrete or abstract? Satisfying or not? Are the metaphors fresh, unique, pertinent?

Language. Does this poem have good words in it? Does the juxtaposition of words create energy and meaning? (That is to say, there’s a difference between “orange juice” and “blood orange,” even though they both contain citric acid and originally come from trees.)

Voice. Does this poem come from an idiosyncratic (original, unique) perspective? All good writing does. Is that idiosyncrasy successfully communicated to the broadest audience possible?

I’ll respond to individual poems and to manuscripts with these elements guiding my commentary, with the overarching goal of reading the work on its own terms. You are, after all, the captain of the ship (to circle back to Young’s maritime metaphor); I aim to be the guy who climbs the mast and shouts “Land ho!”