A Blank Sheet of Paper

Writing of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Jorge Luis Borges said, “I know for a fact that we feel the beauty of a poem before we even begin to think of the meaning.” This beauty exists because the poet, “under the command of his own will” (to recall Coleridge’s Napoleonic phrasing), chose specific words to frame and articulate it. He didn’t sprawl on the grassy riverbank and say to himself, “I’m going to write a sonnet that means sadness or loss or desire.” Those abstract meanings are revealed only by way of a reader’s interactions with the solid materials of the sonnet.

For a reader, a question such as “What’s the most important word?” narrows the focus while broadening the possibilities for discovery. There’s no single correct answer; and in fact, the more answers you come up with, the more intensely you’re participating in the life of the poem. As a classroom discussion starter, this question and others like it are prime ways to light an intellectual firestorm among your students: one person’s chosen word links to another person’s chosen word, a third person begins explaining why, a fourth person disagrees, and the room becomes charged with the excitement that arises when curious, concentrated people overflow with opinions and ideas.

            If you’re a reader alone with a poem, a structured yet open question such as “What’s the most important word?” can help you sidestep distraction and develop your own conscious connections to details of a poem. But it can also help you relax. Too often, especially when faced with a canonical bigwig such as Shakespeare, our instinct is to hunch up in a corner like some sort of lesser being. Yet one day, several centuries ago, he was no better off than we are at this moment. He was faced with a blank sheet of paper. He knew he wanted to write something, but where were the words? He snatched the word Or out of the air. And so he began. By coming face to face with those bare words he chose, we become, in a way, his peer and his partner. We begin to understand what it felt like to be Shakespeare writing a poem.

[from a draft of The Conversation: Learning to Be a Poet (Autumn House Press, 2014)]