Lyne - Writing Poetry from the Inside Out

finding your voice through the craft of poetry

SANDFORD LYNE

Copyright 2007 by Sandford Lyne

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

Richard Jones, Boundaries from The Blessing: New and Selected Poems. Copyright 1991, 2000 by Richard Jones. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org

The Giant Slide from Flying at Night: Poems 1965 1985, by Ted Kooser, 2005. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Jade Flower Palace By Tu Fu, Translated by Kenneth Rexroth, from One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, copyright 1971 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End? from Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver. Copyright 2004 by Mary Oliver Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.

Excerpt reprinted from The Writings of Florence Scovel Shinn by Florence Scovel Shinn / DeVorss Publications / 978-087516610-0 / www.devorss.com

All other poems reprinted by permission of authors.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lyne, Sandford.

Writing poetry from the inside out : finding your voice through the craft of poetry / Sandford Lyne.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Poetry--Authorship. I. Title.

PN1059.A9L96 2007

808.1--dc22

2007003025

Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

(630) 961-3900

Fax: (630) 961-2168

www.sourcebooks.com

Printed and bound in the United States of America.
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To John-Roger
with love and gratitude

My thanks to the many people (more than I can ever name) whose example, inspiration, wisdom, loving, and support have made my journey as a poet and teacher, and the journey of this book, possible: To my incredible and inspiring partner, Fran Clarke, who has also been my rock and angel through many challenging experiences; my sister, Jayn Stewart, for her awesome gifts and her lifelong encouragement and support; my teacher and friend for more than twenty-five years, John-Roger, for his example of unconditional love and for helping me find my way; Robert Bly, who started me on my journey as a poet and opened doorways for my first steps; my inspiring colleague, friend, and now inspiring colleague again, Nancy Morgan; Philip Graham and Virginia Waid, who embarked me on my work as a teacher; Lynne Silverstein, Barbara Shepherd, Amy Duma, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, for widening and enriching my opportunities as a teacher; Michael and Brooke Thompson for their many kindnesses over many years; Carol Beau for her unconditional friendship and the hours of laughter together; Barry Lane for his experience and wisdom and for believing in this book; Phyllis and Doug Frame and Round Oaks Creative Center for creating such beautiful spaces in which to do this work; Patricia G. Lyne for the experience of the sweetness of her soul; Judy Podlesney for her friendship and for lightening my journeys with a welcoming heart; to the teachers who invited me into their classrooms (teachers are my heroes); and to the many partners of the John F. Kennedy Center for inviting me into their communities to help spread the influence of the arts in education. My deep gratitude also to my remarkable editor, Ewurama Ewusi-Mensah, for so thoughtfully and enthusiastically shepherding this book into existence.

I want to put a book in your hands that will help you find the poet inside you. I want it to be portable (poetry writing is the most portable of the arts) and instantly useful. I want it to be one that will produce a poem for you in five minutes, if that is all the time you have, and I want it to do this even if youve never written a poem before. If youve written poems, I want it to call forth other poems still waiting to be written, surprise you with poems you didnt know were there. If the poetry inside you feels like it is a frozen river, I want this book to break up the ice and start the river moving again. And I absolutely want it to be a book that will be useful to your souls journey and awakening, for writing poems and the souls awakening are made to go hand in hand.

There are countless ways to discover and open up the poems waiting inside you. This book offers a beginning, a sure starting place. Since 1983, Ive taught poetry writing to over fifty thousand young people and to several thousand teachers in public and private schools. In corporate, conference, and retreat settings, Ive taught poetry writing to people from many walks of life, including architects, executives, managers, editors, accountants, government workers, health care professionals, engineers, salespeople, entrepreneurs, human resource professionals, psychologists, therapists, homemakers, spiritual seekers, clergy, and church groups. This book focuses on simple and expandable approaches that worked across the board for all of these diverse groups of people. They work, I believe, because they are grounded in the very design of who we are as multidimensional beings, as human and spiritual beings living and gaining experience here in the classroom of the material world.

The primary approaches presented here are simple and direct, practical and economical, never complicated or grand; they are approaches that cut the Gordian knots of our overactive minds. So many times people have said to me, This is so simple. I might have thought of this myself. Because poetry writing had added so much to my own journeyand perhaps because my gratitude for this was deep and genuine I found myself increasingly in a position to make it available to others. I wanted others to experience their poems as fingerprints of their souls, for that is what poems aresigns of our humanity, our divinity, and our uniqueness, born of our own processes as individuals, no two people writing their truly honest and authentic poems in the same way. The Nobel poet and educator, Gabriela Mistral of Chile, wrote: Speech is our second possession, after the souland perhaps we have no other possession in this world. If there is truth in what Mistral says, then not to speak, not to find and express our own voice, is to give up half of our inheritance, to live a half-life. That is too much to lose.

MACHADO, LORCA, NERUDA, JIMENEZ

Every poet has a beginning;
every river begins somewhere
raindrops, then pools, a lake,
circles in the mist.
You are young. You have not met
your angels yet. Then it happens:
on the tablea knife,
on the white linen of a page
language sliced open like a melon.
You go out, looking for the road.
You do not know if you are worthy.
You just want to be with them,
touch their sandals, wash their feet,
know a little of their courage,
walk, listen, learn, speak
one day, perhaps,
one beautiful sentence
with those disciples of the word.