When Emily Dickinson was asked where she thought poetry came from she replied \u201cPhilology<\/a> and Cherubim<\/a>.\u201d Michelle Bonczek Evory\u2019s book seems to hold both language and angels in mind with the clear emphasis on the poem being delivered from sources both immediate and accessible. Naming the Unnameable strikes the right tone for students and for instructors in that it enters the \u201cpoetry mind\u201d in the act of making. It\u2019s a creative writing text. It\u2019s not interested in interpretation but the making of original poems. The text is clear in its goals, and its emphasis is with process and discovery oriented learning rather than, say, historical or critical learning. The preface states that it connects both to the \u201cnow\u201d and to \u201cthe knowledge of what came before so we feel connected to poetry\u2019s tradition and participate in its lineage.\u201d Clearly the emphasis is on the now, the practitioner\u2019s immersion in the craft and the making of poems from personal experience. The emphasis is on \u201cspontaneity and freewriting.\u201d I\u2019m convinced that Michelle Bonczek Evory knows her stuff and I\u2019m persuaded that she\u2019s in touch with the New of the title\u2019s New Generation.<\/p>\n The mindset of forgiveness that Patchett describes is similar to what William Stafford writes in his little essay \u201cA Way of Writing\u201d when he recommends that a writer must \u201cbe willing to fail\u201d in order to be successful. As with Patchett\u2019s essay, Stafford\u2019s advice is all about giving yourself over to the writing process. One cannot expect a poem or any piece of writing to be perfect, or as Patchett says, to translate the \u201cbrilliant detail\u201d one imagines and feels onto a page. As Stafford explains, you have to listen to what occurs to you in your mind and let the ideas \u201cstring out.\u201d The process relies upon trust\u2014you must trust that what you are doing will go somewhere. Here is an excerpt from Stafford\u2019s essay (a link to which can be found in the resource section of this book):<\/p>\n One implication is the importance of just plain receptivity<\/a>. When I write, I like to have an interval before me when I am not likely to be interrupted. For me, this means usually the early morning, before others are awake. I get pen and paper, take a glance out of the window (often it is dark out there), and wait. It is like fishing. But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble\u2013and this is where receptivity comes in. To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can\u2019t keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression: it\u2019s cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between! Or well, the possibilities are endless. If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I\u2019m off. If I let the process go on, things will occur to me that were not at all in my mind when I started. These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected. And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen. . . .<\/p>\n So, receptive, careless of failure, I spin out things on the page. And a wonderful freedom comes. If something occurs to me, it is all right to accept it. It has one justification<\/a>: it occurs to me. No one else can guide me. I must follow my own weak, wandering, diffident impulses.<\/p>\n I am not sure if being \u201ccareless of failure,\u201d as Stafford says, is a rule to apply to all aspects of life, but in creative acts such as writing, it is a necessity.<\/p>\n The poet Richard Hugo has said that he wrote his book The Triggering Town in order to help the writer \u201cwith that silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity: writing poems.\u201d And so, as he did then, I do so now.<\/p>\nReceptivity<\/h3>\n
Silliness<\/h3>\n