Tag: restraint

After reading about Wendell Berry’s death last night, I pulled out my kindle and began reading him again. To my amazement, I never realized the quiet influence he had on my own writing, and I had never really read him before this year.  

When I decided that I wanted to seriously write poetry for publication, I asked ChatGPT, “who are four modern poets I should read who can help me develop my voice as a poet.” Berry was one of those (I think I might actually write a series of blogs on my influences).  

What did I learn from him? It showed up a bit under the radar. My early poems were either songs masquerading as poems or Hallmark-type poems, filled with abstract phrases that sounded really nice to the ear. Once I began ingesting what I was reading, my poems changed.  

I started to trust my plain language and stopped trying to sound poetic. With that I began to trust the natural pulse of how I phrase language and work it into the poem. I can’t say I am fully there yet as I tend to be afraid my poems are too simple, boring and plain. As I am rereading Berry, I am getting a little more comfortable.  

While I can’t attribute my comfort in writing about the natural world to him, I think he influenced part of my writing. Much of that aspect comes from my love of the Transcendentalist writers and Romantic poems. However, with Berry, I can see now that my use of a simple piece of nature to carry the weight of a poem comes from him. A simple river. A cotton field. A bird outside the window. All these things have been a central image in my poems and carried the emotional message through it.  

Most of all I think he is teaching me still. The poem can rest in a single image, a single scene – be restrained. It does not need ornate language to make it powerful, letting the natural scene provide meaning, beauty and power. Then, I can use my little darlings, the abstract Hallmark-like phrases, because they are earned.  

Recently, I watched a community theatre production of a popular musical, and while I am not reviewing shows at this time, my critical eye still influenced my thoughts. As I watched these college-age actors perform, I had a realization—one that helped me understand something about writing.

During the show, I kept watching the two actors playing the adults, and they had a presence and poise that I did not see in the others. It was restraint. They understood how to stand still and have their whole bodies exude emotion, and how to let their voices carry the line without going over the top. With the younger actors, I kept thinking, Dial it back. You are trying too hard.

That is when I began to think about my own writing and my developing poetic voice. I keep hearing about restraint—that it separates the hobbyist from the published poet.

Restraint is also what I struggle with the most. I like to be wordy at times, and I like to explain at times. Like the actors on the stage, I tend to try too hard.

I don’t trust the images and the words of the poem to carry the thought and the emotion. Instead of being too loud or relying on unnatural facial expressions, I repeat the same idea, use a general phrase that sums up the thought, use competing metaphors, or explain the theme.

Like an actor’s work onstage, it may come across fine. But to the discerning eye, it will be flawed. My writing could be great for casual readers who are not interested in polished poems and just want to enjoy reading it. (I was going to write like the community theatre audience, but that would be my lack of restraint.)

But I want to be taken seriously by others in the craft. In theatre terms, I want to be onstage at a regional or Broadway theatre, where the professionals play.

If I want to better my craft, I need to work on restraint. Just like the adult actors on the stage, I need to be able to tell my truth in a quiet stillness without exaggeration, without trying too hard.