Hunting the Wild Series

When you get an idea—that glimmer that catches your eye and won’t let go—how do you follow it? Does it become one poem? Or does it build into a series of poems? How do you keep going, pursuing that idea? And what makes a group of poems a series?

You can mold a group of existing poems into a series—for example, by titling them in a specific context. But I want to talk about writing a series from scratch.

I’m happiest when I’m working a bunch of poems that explore the same theme. The ongoing work provides an opportunity to explore a subject in different ways. And, for me, it alleviates the angst of a blank page. If you’re already working on a series, you have a starting point. Even if it doesn’t show up on that blank page, you know where you are—and where you’re going is the adventure.

But when I mention working this way—for example, writing a chapbook-length group of poems—friends have said, “How do you write that many poems about the same thing? How do you keep it up?” Good questions. It’s hard enough to pursue that one elusive poem—but 25 or 50? How do you hunt the wild series?

First, let’s look at the concept of a series in a loose, informal way—poems that are all grounded in the same theme or idea. They stand alone, but when you take them together, you can say these are all poems about a long-awaited trip to Italy (I’ve done that one) or these are all poems about recovering from a serious injury (J.W. Marshall’s done that in his book The Blue Mouth). All the poems are about something that you want to explore. Your series is the trail you follow. And I say “hunting” because it’s going to involve some tracking and some digging (think of those truffle-hunting pigs in France).

You might start out with an idea that makes you really excited. Or you might write one poem that you’re happy with, and you think, “I want to write more about this.” Or maybe a line jumps out at you, and one thing leads to another, and you suddenly have seven pages.

Sometimes, I write a whole lot of stuff down, maybe days and days’ worth, without even worrying what goes where—what will be in each poem. Then I can move lines or stanzas around, realize that the image I came across on Wednesday is really a part of the poem I started last Saturday. And that’s one way to keep going—to keep the momentum by leaving everything as open as possible for as long as possible. Almost stream of consciousness.

But then there might be a point where nothing seems to fit.

You’re chasing the series, and the trail gets a little thin. What do you do then?

Just because you’ve run out of steam, you don’t need to give up. This is your opportunity to explore more, to go the places you didn’t even imagine at first. You go deeper. Take those lines that aren’t working for you, those poems that aren’t working for you anymore. Can you remember what first caught and held your interest? Can you remember why this seemed like another part of the whole?

This is your second, your next chance. And this is really a pep talk—because I’m betting you already have the tools you need to jog your deepest inner creative self. Any tricks or tactics that you use when you’re revising can also help you find the next direction or the next layer to your series.

You can pull out a line and write a new poem based on that, trying to see where it will go. You can try on five new endings, like trying on different shirts, and maybe write new poems from those.

A few years ago, I saw a couple of poems online, and both started with the line “More than peace and cypresses, emboldened”—I had to go back and check to make sure they really were different poems—and I noticed that the name of the book was More than Peace and Cypresses, by Cyrus Cassells. Imagine a whole book of poems that start with the same line and then go different places! I bought the book, and it turns out, it’s just the first poem and the last poem. But I still think it’s an intriguing idea. Is it sustainable? I don’t know. When I tried it, my series attempt didn’t work so well (I learned that you have to have a really incredible first line), but it did give me the impetus to write.

If you find the trail dwindling, try changing the textures, choosing different forms, even different voices. If your series has one voice now, is another one clamoring to be heard?

It’s just a matter of knuckling down and using those tools and digging and tracking. And that takes work and energy and determination.

Even then, sometimes the trail will go cold. Really cold.

Maybe you have 30 poems—it’s more than a chapbook, it’s less than a manuscript. Here is where you can add a different element, a different way of looking at what’s at stake. It’s like trying to find something and looking everywhere and then walking out of the room, and when you come back in, it’s suddenly right in front of you.

I’m not saying you need to leave your idea, but try coming back from another direction. Try a different form or a different avenue. One of my favorite examples of this is in Oliver de la Paz’s Furious Lullaby. His book is full of aubades:

“Aubade with a Book and the Rattle from a String of Pearls”

“Aubade with Constellations, Some Horses, and Snow”

“Aubade with Bread for the Sparrows”

“Aubade with Starlings and Kerosene Muted by Glass”

Those are just a few of the aubades, and then he interleaves these with essay poems:

“God Essay”

“Penitence Essay”

“Mysteries Essay”

“Prayer Essay”

And there’s more—the “My Dearest” poems:

“My Dearest Apostasy”

“My Dearest Transgression”

“My Dearest Regret”

and then:

“On the Pores of the Flesh”

“On the Epidermis”

“On the Motions of Death”

“On the Pulse Residing Behind the Lobe of the Ear”

moving to:

“What the Ear Said”

“What the Scapula Said”

“What the Dead Said”

“What the Devil Said”

Those are just some of the titles, but you can see how he’s using those titles to build a structure, scaffolding that supports and reinforces the themes in his poems. That structure is one way the poems fit together.

Another one of my favorite examples is Louise Glück’s The Wild Iris. The book hangs together as a whole, but it’s divided up between the voices of flora (“Trillium,” “Lamium,” “The Jacob’s Ladder,” and others), the poems about the humans, poems that might be prayers (“Matins”—there are seven poems called “Matins”, and “Vespers”—there are 10 of these) and a voice that sounds like God. The book becomes a conversation between these voices, and the voices provide a unifying context for Glück’s explorations.

That’s a series loosely defined, a group of poems that are connected by theme, structure, or context.

A friend told me about how an editor has asked her in the past to send him a series of poems—and when she sent in her poems, he’d reply, “This is good work, but it isn’t really a series.”

Thinking about this, I see a difference between poems about a theme (for example, those poems from my vacation to Italy) and a more formal series that involves an interdependence between the poems, a tighter correlation between the poems and a necessary order, a definite unfolding—a sequence of time or evolution.

The most classic series is the sonnet cycle. For example, I have a series of sonnets in Weathered Steps, linked by the chronology of an accidental hitchhiking trip across the country. And then we come to the crown of sonnets, in which the sonnets are linked by their first and last lines. An example of this is John Donne’s “La Corona”—but you can also find newer examples online, including collaborative crowns of sonnets.

If linked sonnets seem a bit daunting, you have other options. You might build your series on narrative, in which characters and a storyline determine where each next poem heads, and in which the poems require reading in a specific order. A few examples of this are What the Ice Gets, the poems about the Shackleton Antarctic expedition by Melinda Mueller, Taken With, by J.W. Marshall, in which he tells the experience of his mother dying. Other examples include Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, which tells the story of a young girl in the Oklahoma dust bowl of the ‘30s (it was published as a young-adult novel, but it’s riveting poetry), and The Afflicted Girls, by Nicole Cooley, which speaks in the voices of people caught up in the witchcraft trials in 17th-century Salem Massachusetts.

For a character-based series, the classic example is Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters. Each of the poems does stand on its own—but it’s so much richer and more poignant when you take them as a whole community.

Or you might write an exploratory series, in which an idea is pursued in the layering of images that build on one another (in a specific evolution). One example of this kind of work might by Fence Above the Sea, by Brigitte Byrd. Each poem is separate (it has its own title), but work is stream of consciousness, with the images threading through all the poems and no obvious chronology. Another possible example is The Angel of History, by Carolyn Forche. The poems reference times and events without adhering to a chronology. The interdependence is harder to pin down, but the series leaves the reader with a hauntingly beautiful layering of images.

Once you’ve written these interdependent poems, how do you keep the feeling of the series and yet craft each poem so that it has enough context to stand on its own when you submit it to a journal without being repetitive when the poems are read in sequence?

Here’s an example: In my newest manuscript, I have a poem called “To Be Out.” This poem has been rejected—multiple times. Now, for me, that is not uncommon. But I thought, “Why is this poem getting rejected?” And then I looked at it, and it says, “To Be Out.” What is that? What does it mean? It could mean a lot of things—which can be good, but here, it might not provide enough context. All the images in the poem make perfect sense when you read the poems prior to this one and the poems after it—but if you open an envelope and pull out a poem called “To Be Out?” I realized maybe, on its own, it just doesn’t provide enough information. But if I add all that information to all the poems in this manuscript, they are going to feel like a hammer that is hitting the reader over the head.

Clearly, I’m still working on this. But I have another example, and for this I’m going back to Oliver de la Paz. His first book, Names Above Houses, tells the story of Fidelito and the people in Fidelito’s life. I was immediately enchanted—by the language, by the imagery, and by the story. But then, I had to flip back to the front and see whether Mr. de la Paz had had any luck placing these poems in journals prior to publishing the book. And he had! So it can be done. I’ll keep working on it.

And that’s the best part, isn’t it? The work. The writing. I hope I’ve given you some ideas about how to write and keep writing, how to explore your own series and avoid that blank page.