The Invocation of Place in Poetry (One Possibility)

I’ve tried to have a lot of the content that seeks to invoke place in writing. Place is often over looked in poetry. Sometimes, mere setting can be the meat of poetry, not just the background. Place can be used in many different ways, and on many different levels by an author. One way is to play upon the readers culturally designed preconceived notions of place.

For instance, ionic American places like “the South” and “the West” rely on nothing else but these names. But, by the mention of them, the imagination conjures all kinds of different clichéd images. “The South”, we think of Southern bells, long mustaches, good manners, sweat tea and heat. “The West”, we think of rootin’ tootin’ cowboys, wide open pastures, five pointed Sherriff stars, whiskey and gold. True, these images are cliché, but as artists we can rely on the images these places invoke to either reaffirm or disaffirm those American preconceptions of that place. As writers and poets, we can take things like the image of the Sheriffs star, and build it into our description of a sky we see as we pass through a strip of land in the West.

Place can be used in so many ways, it’s best just to give it a try yourself. Take a moment to read Monday’s post on place-based poems. Now, instead of snap shots, make your poems long narrative ones that discuss place in a new, possibly political, light.

Cheers, and I will see you next week! Enjoy the Fourth of July, the day that celebrates the birth of our Nation!