|
Notes of a
Cross-Training Writer
by Don Colburn
For
33 years, I have made my
living as a newspaper
reporter, writing
prose. But I also write
poems, which is why I
have the gumption to
call myself a
cross-training writer.
I didn’t pay much
attention to poetry
until I was nearly 40.
No disrespect – I
admired poets from afar
– but I didn’t think
they had much to do with
my work or my life.
After all, I was a
newspaper guy, reporting
on the “real world.”
Plus, I was pretty sure
poems were impossible to
write.
Now I know better. I
also know that poetry
has made me a better
prose writer.
Walt Whitman, better
known as the great
American poet than as a
newspaper editor for the
Brooklyn Eagle, said
in 1852: "The true poem
is the daily paper." I
don’t quite believe
that. You can't always
trust Whitman, any more
than you can always
trust any writer or
newspaper editor. This
is, after all, a man who
reviewed his own poetry
in the newspaper –
anonymously. And – need
I say? – favorably. I’m
not even sure that Walt
himself believed his
daily paper was a true
poem, although I think I
know what he meant. He
meant nothing is
off-limits to poetry,
and he wanted a poetry
that gets out of the
classroom into the
street to encompass the
whole world and, like
his own ego, contains
multitudes.
So
let’s grant Whitman his
poetic license, while
acknowledging some
obvious differences
between poems and
newspapers. Journalists
aren’t supposed to make
things up. Novelists and
poets usually don’t
write on deadline. Most
news stories are in
third person; many poems
aren’t. In prose, the
computer (or the page
margin) decides where
the lines end, and in
poetry, the writer
decides. (That's more
important than nonpoets
may realize.) In news
writing, you try to know
what you're going to say
before you say it, while
in poetry, you try
not to.
But think of what poetry
and journalism have in
common. To begin with:
words and the human
condition. Also:
concision, precision and
clarity. To my mind,
those sharings outweigh
logistical differences
such as deadlines and
fact-checking, newsprint
and the shape of lines.
What’s more, the two
kinds of writing can
inform each other.
Paying closer attention
to the sound and play of
language and the nuances
of words can help a news
story come closer to
telling the truth. And
poetry is not an escape
from the world, but
another way of
apprehending it.
Journalism and poetry
have become for me two
ways of reporting on the
world, two means of
truth-seeking and
truth-telling. Neither
holds a monopoly on what
we glibly call the real
world.
William Carlos Williams,
the 20th
century New Jersey poet
and pediatrician,
delivered hundreds of
babies and wrote
hundreds of poems and
said that finally it was
hard for him to
differentiate between
those two kinds of work.
He also wrote, in a poem
called “Asphodel, That
Greeny Flower”:
It is difficult
to get
the news from poems
yet men die miserably
every day
for lack
of
what is found there.
It’s not just that one
type of writer gets to
invent things and the
other doesn’t. Both
journalists and fiction
writers make stories
from. In a deft
reversal, Vladimir
Nabokov once said that
the ideal writer
combines the passion of
the scientist with the
precision of the poet.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
the Nobel laureate who
is renowned for his
“magical” style of
fiction, also wrote an
occasional newspaper
column in his native
Colombia. "Whether I'm
working in journalism or
literature," he said,
"I'm always describing
the same reality.”
Years ago, while working
as a reporter for
The Washington Post,
I joined a Master of
Fine Arts program in
creative writing. To my
surprise, many of the
writerly issues that
came up as we critiqued
poems in workshops were
the same as came up when
I sat down in the
newsroom with my editor
to go over a medical
story. Clarity.
Authority. Accuracy.
Drama. Pace. Tone of
voice. Redundancy. Does
it flow? Is it too slow
getting under way?
What's at stake here?
Does it leave the reader
out or invite the reader
in? Where does it bog
down or go flat? I just
don't get it. Who's
speaking here? Where
are we?
It
has always intrigued me
that in the newsroom we
all use that word
"story" to describe what
we do. Nobody says
"article" much. If we're
sounding a little
precious, we say we're
working on a "piece."
But mostly we say story.
So do fiction writers
and even some poets. So
do parents reading to
their children. So do
campers around the fire,
neighbors over the back
fence, riders on the
bus. It's no accident.
Tell me a story.
"In
poetry everything is
permitted," wrote the
Chilean poet Nicanor
Parra. "With only this
condition, of course:
You have to improve on
the blank page."
That one condition gets
complicated, but it
holds for all writers,
no matter what form we
write in: poetry, news,
novel, short story,
memoir, essay, diary,
letter, blog. Whatever
we write must improve on
blankness. Made up or
not, it must ring clear
and true.
There’s poetry in the
world’s news, and news
in its poems. Writers –
and readers – must stay
alert to both. As
William Carlos Williams
put it in another poem,
“January Morning,”
addressed to an old
woman, possibly his
mother:
I
wanted to write a poem
that you would
understand.
For what good is it to
me
if you can't understand
it?
But you got to try hard – |
