Influence On Purpose

A couple years ago in a poetry class, I was asked to name a poet who could be considered an influence on my writing. The response was "a mix of Charles Bukowski and Louise Gluck," mainly because they love free verse and personal issues and still mainly because they're easy to imitate.

Every creative profession is prone to being full of the cleverest thieves who retro-fit other people's work into something just different enough that the plagiarism isn't noticed. The worst writers are thus the most entertaining ones who must hide their shameful secret. The best writers are the slow-cookers who read as much as they can in the field but then go the extra mile to consider, "What does this teach me about my own writing? What awareness does this poet share that I can apply in my own way?"

This has less to do with tools as it does with style. Every poet should have metaphors, similes, meter, and rhyme in their toolboxes. But how they choose to tell a story or relate an idea, that can be as suffocating in its freedom as in its writer's block. So it helps to look at how other writers did it, if only to get an idea of what works and what the budding writer likes on the page.

For example, the past few poets I've been reading have all colored my ideas for "Your Only Shiny Thing." In the past, I stood by my answer of Bukowski/Gluck, but now that I don't have to read poetry for assignments anymore, I can read for personal growth and not an exam-approved interpretation.

The results put me to sleep sometimes, and spark my mind with lightning other times. A few examples:

Sylvia Plath finally entered my oeuvre in recent weeks, despite her reputation as the Institution For Insecure Girls and Somehow-Inferior Confessional Poetry. Haha, no, ivory towers, Plath does in prose and poetry what people love about good writing: it's engaging and emotionally invested and uses tons of writing tricks without existing SOLELY to show off her ability with a sestina. "The Bell Jar" was spellbinding, even when it became a progression of more and more self-hating schemes to lose the protagonist's virginity and self-esteem. "Ariel" reconfirmed all the talent a second time, and now I'll happily align myself among her followers.

That's just one example. This blog is going to be almost nothing but examples, so stay tuned! There'll be copyright-infringing excerpts and everything!

Synopsis, Origins

Before I knew this would be a chapbook, my writing journal was slowly filling with experimental stanzas and titles without content. Then word reached me about a chapbook contest and I figured that a title would give me a theme by which to tie 20 or so poems together, as beneath a standard.

I went through some songs on my computer's playlist and noticed one of my favorite Tom Waits songs, "Shiny Things." That made a great title, as well as used the word "Your" to pull in passers-by, but a split second after choosing the title, the cover image came to mind. My cousin, Elle Liamson, has a hobby of painting robots on canvas, and what better "shiny thing" to display than a robot walking along?

This led to an attempt to fulfill inspiration, and I wrote a rough poem called "Your Only Shiny Thing," except it ended up being about an old woman unwilling to help herself or acknowledge the warmth in her life. I wanted it to be about a robot who secretly loves his owner! But the theme meshed easily and convinced me: the chapbook would be about one-sided relationships. But there's more to the equation -- there has to be, or else I would just be writing angsty "me me me" poems and realize it before the journal was even shut.

No, other poets have been teaching me. Figures that the most vital poetry lessons would arrive after graduation!