Course:The Moves: Common Maneuvers in Contemporary Poetry by Elisa Gabbert
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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The Moves: Common Maneuvers in Contemporary Poetry
As part of the book, The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics, this chapter by Elisa Gabbert offers some insight into the maneuvers in poetry. What are some common moves that poets use? What are their effects? How do we use them with intention, with awareness? What difference does it make when, for example, a bad joke is used with awareness in a poem which is then labeled as “camp”?
Reading this essay is a bit cruel, but funny. Gabbert identifies many of the moves that we use without even realizing it. For example, fill in the blank, when we’re trying to be experimental. Or what she calls the “casual hedge”, using more colloquial rhetoric such as “kinda” or “like”. It’s one thing to use them, but it’s another to recognize them by name in our work. In an effort to create a distinct and individual “voice” of the writer, we have in some ways tried to mark certain moves as ours. It can be disappointing to think that our attempts to create difference only ends up in categories which were labeled long ago in the realm of poetry. To this Gabbert writes,
“But moves aren’t just something to be identified and then avoided. There’s no chess – and no dancing – without moves. If each of a poet’s poems were unlike the others in every way, there would be no reason to prefer some poets to others; one could only have favorite poems, not favorite poets. A move is just a small element of a poet’s larger style, and having a few distinctive moves, or maneuvers that can be isolated and imitated, is a mark of having a strong and recognizable voice.”
I find solace in reading this paragraph. While it can be more distinctive in some poets than others, a move shouldn’t be definitive of a poet. It’s a small device amongst the four temperaments of story, structure, music and imagination. In reading this essay, it actually helped me identify some moves that I’m familiar with, and others that I’m not (some of which I started experimenting with). I’m becoming more aware of what I’m comfortable using as a device, and whether it’s there to fill up space or there’s a specific intention. (Though sometimes I think filling up space shouldn’t be condemned either!) I think for me this essay is also becoming a dictionary: I’m finding names and examples, and I’m learning from people who use certain moves the best.
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