Walking Up a Poem

By Natalie Bright

At Frontiers in Writing 2011 conference in Amarillo, poet Donald Mace Williams spoke on Walking Up a Poem. He talked about how the physical activity of walking clears the brain and brings on the muse. “The brain is a tough editor,” he said.

One example he discussed is a poem by A.E. Houseman:

 Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

 Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

How different would the line read with “cherry tree” rather than its singular form as “cherry”. Adding one word changes the flow and vision of the words. One letter can do the same; “hung with blooms” instead of “bloom”. Would you like it as well? Houseman allowed the rhythm and natural flow of words to dictate his work. Obviously he shut his inner editor off.

Another example we discussed is the poem “A Leaf Treader” by Robert Frost. The rhythm and the sound of the words in this poem imitates “treading” as we imagine Frost must have walked in the woods near his home, and then tackled the fallen leaves in his yard. There are numerous writings on his true meaning of this poem, however I like to take Frosts’ words at their face value; a gifted man walking and observing the changing seasons.

The speaker for this workshop is a poet in his own right. Modernizing the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, Williams did a contemporary version set in Texas’ Palo Duro Canyon, and most of this verse arrived clear and complete while walking. He explains that entire sections would come to him, which he wrote down as soon as he got to pen and paper. I’m inspired by how he signed my copy of this lengthy undertaking “To Natalie, With Writerly Sympathy and Best Wishes”. I leave you with an excerpt from Donald Mace Williams’ poem Wolfe:

 At night sometimes a cowboy sang

Briefly to a guitar’s soft twang

While others talked, wrote letters home,

Or stared into brown-bottle foam.

Wolfe has been used in university level classes as required reading. Donald Mace Williams is a former newspaper writer, editor, and college English instructor. His work is available at the Buffalo Bookstore in Canyon, Texas or online at www.rattle.com

Natalie Bright