Lessons in Art

In praise of the poem sequence (which I love)

If you have spotted weak poems in your Work-In-Progress (cf. SELF-EDITING in Section Twenty of this guide) – a great way to conceal them is in a carelessly-assembled Poem Sequence.

This is, most often, a successful strategy if any given text hasn’t yet made it to the fully-fledged poem state, or indeed any state at all. It could be said that the sequence poem is halfway to nowhere, unable to survive on its own, moribund – receiving oxygen from the overall sequence on which it depends.

The sequence poem is, as it were, abandoned to the wholly-unmemorable banal fragment stage, where you may now safely leave it, pretending it has Great Significance, e.g.:

iv.

I feed
echoes in black hall
black house blood shakes
I am in me

If the complete sequence is filled with such pieces (and you are desperate to move on to your next hybridised twenty-six-line sonnet: see Section Thirty), it is useful to attach a strident, abstract poem title – and add sonic abstract texture to the lines themselves, for good measure. For example:

The Witch of Knifelessness is Eating My Mother

i.

Petrol glamour fused
in socket I puppet in
trance on trance or in
gloopy naked body
move to paradiddle

However, it’s not uncommon to find that such highly-coloured abstract language can become accidentally (if comically) suggestive, even emotive, which, while being particularly suited to procured criticism (cf. COMMUNITY POETRY, in appendix 2), may well need further editing to make it less memorable, less potent, providing less traction for the reader:

iv.

cooking something
outside
it’s so easy
that’s it really

The sequence has the additional advantage of making truly awful poems seem like they have extra weight and potency, even glamour. In fact, one may write pages of such fragmentary incoherent material and house it in that other great structure for bad poems: the ‘Part’. Putting sequences of bad poems into Parts has the added effect of introducing even more white space and thus length to your manuscript. Additionally, it offers the great pleasure of introducing portentous unconnected epigraphs, e.g.:

“Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

In fact, supplying multiple epigraphs to a Part Title can imply that there is truly huge significance to the weak poems following in the sequence – wrong-footing critics and readers alike.

Don’t forget to number every aspect of your sequences and, where possible, provide a sub-sequence stanza title, as illustrated below:

PART SEVENTY-THREE

PART 73

‘Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively.’
―G.I. Gurdjieff

‘EPS, commonly recognised as Styrofoam, is characterised by its cellular structure, making it an excellent choice for packaging, insulation, and disposable food containers.’
—Everything you need to know about polystyrene

SECTION ONE

The Witch of Knifelessness is Eating My Mother

i. Evil Shadow of the Styrofoam Mouse

Petrol glamour fused
in socket I puppet in
trance on trance or in
gloopy naked body
move to paradiddle

PRO TIP. Poem sequences are especially suited for mid-career collections and may be enhanced by adopting the Themed Collection Strategy we considered in Section Six – here you may choose a single poignant subject and pretend your poems are addressing this, for example: The Future of Greyhounds, Child Miners in the Central American Coal Industry, or best of all, The Sad Thing About Glaciers.

In the next section of this advanced user’s guide, we shall turn our attention to another important consideration – How To Make It All About Me. For now, please go to Exercise Fifteen on page 435 and prepare your first Poem Sequence. Good luck.