In writing my poem in response to Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars, her use of musicality and allusions influenced me the most.
As I wrote in my review of her collection, Smith uses sound to emphasize the themes and ideas within her poems. While writing the first draft of my poem, titled “Counting Up the Scale,” I focused on how the same sounds within a single line or two could affect the imagery. At the time, I had m’s stuck in my brain, which I felt highlighted the lazy rolling of the poem. After all, m’s are drawn out and force you to slow down in reading, especially when there are several of them. However, at first I found that I tended towards alliteration, a technique that brought to mind tongue-twisters meant to trip you up and make you stumble over your words. Not to mention, this technique also created an unrelenting and choppy rhythm unsuited for this poem.
Because I wanted to avoid this, and of course I couldn’t get the lazy m’s out of my mind, I experimented with consonance. Rather than lines like “mimes mirror my mother’s movements,” I wrote “Time melts into marbled black/and cream pudding, the numbers…” The m’s scattered to different syllables of different words—some appeared at the beginning, some in the middle, some at the end. This spread out the repeated sounds to create a surprising musicality that was also able to emphasize the imagery of time slowly dripping down. I similarly used long o’s later in the poem when I wrote, “I roll from the bowl, flesh bulging/through seams and holes.” Although the placement of the o’s is more consistent, the combined repetition of l’s still spread the sounds out in such a way that it was lyrical without being predictable.
While Smith’s use of sounds influenced my own implementation of musical devices, her use of allusions did the opposite. Smith makes several allusions to various subjects and events, such as David Bowie and the Challenger, among others. Even though I caught many of her allusions, I still found that I didn’t understand or even notice many others, especially the science fiction and generational references. This made me realize that many of my poems tended to focus on personal references to specific events in my own life—things no one outside my family would even understand!
Because of this, one of the goals of my response poem was to be more straight-forward and to avoid allusions at all costs. As difficult as this was, I found that it forced me to think outside the box more and helped me steer clear of some clichés (though some might have sneaked in). I found that this also forced me to realize how diction affected the tone of the poem, something I always to recognize. For example, in the new draft, I had written, “My father stands/on candy shrapnel,/licorice wrapped around/swords,” very violent imagery with words like shrapnel and swords so close together. By striking allusions from my poems, I’ve been able to write more unique descriptions that are surprising and won’t become as easily outdated as cultural references.
As I wrote in my review of her collection, Smith uses sound to emphasize the themes and ideas within her poems. While writing the first draft of my poem, titled “Counting Up the Scale,” I focused on how the same sounds within a single line or two could affect the imagery. At the time, I had m’s stuck in my brain, which I felt highlighted the lazy rolling of the poem. After all, m’s are drawn out and force you to slow down in reading, especially when there are several of them. However, at first I found that I tended towards alliteration, a technique that brought to mind tongue-twisters meant to trip you up and make you stumble over your words. Not to mention, this technique also created an unrelenting and choppy rhythm unsuited for this poem.
Because I wanted to avoid this, and of course I couldn’t get the lazy m’s out of my mind, I experimented with consonance. Rather than lines like “mimes mirror my mother’s movements,” I wrote “Time melts into marbled black/and cream pudding, the numbers…” The m’s scattered to different syllables of different words—some appeared at the beginning, some in the middle, some at the end. This spread out the repeated sounds to create a surprising musicality that was also able to emphasize the imagery of time slowly dripping down. I similarly used long o’s later in the poem when I wrote, “I roll from the bowl, flesh bulging/through seams and holes.” Although the placement of the o’s is more consistent, the combined repetition of l’s still spread the sounds out in such a way that it was lyrical without being predictable.
While Smith’s use of sounds influenced my own implementation of musical devices, her use of allusions did the opposite. Smith makes several allusions to various subjects and events, such as David Bowie and the Challenger, among others. Even though I caught many of her allusions, I still found that I didn’t understand or even notice many others, especially the science fiction and generational references. This made me realize that many of my poems tended to focus on personal references to specific events in my own life—things no one outside my family would even understand!
Because of this, one of the goals of my response poem was to be more straight-forward and to avoid allusions at all costs. As difficult as this was, I found that it forced me to think outside the box more and helped me steer clear of some clichés (though some might have sneaked in). I found that this also forced me to realize how diction affected the tone of the poem, something I always to recognize. For example, in the new draft, I had written, “My father stands/on candy shrapnel,/licorice wrapped around/swords,” very violent imagery with words like shrapnel and swords so close together. By striking allusions from my poems, I’ve been able to write more unique descriptions that are surprising and won’t become as easily outdated as cultural references.