Formulae for Poetry

Poets slowly resolve themselves
Into a word
And express
A thought so rich in meaning
That it would help the lonely world to live.

Now there are necessary formulae
Which you must follow energetically
To achieve a resolution
Into expression.
You must wear corduroy
Which you
Can do too
If your hair suits you.
Now take a pen
And write a word.
Then halfway across the page
Write "multiramous"
and stop.

Next recall all those horrid things
You laughed about behind the desk
As small boys sniggering at school.
Look up an Oxford Dictionary
And find a multisyllabic word
That means something you would not say.
Look into your garbage bins
And make a list of what you see.
If your stomach does not churn
At this,
Read your last attempt to write.
Now, from the compost heap
Of your own thoughts,
Select the most dry-rotten
And write them down—scattered—.

Pour
Your beer into your pipe,
And smoke from the cold-water-tap,
(upstairs).
If you can turn straight
From an incomprehensible giant
And slide swan-like to a graceful end,
Perching on a chimney stack,
And now before you leave your art,
You too will be a poet—yet—.
Take a look at Eliot,
Seize a word out from his lines
And keep it safely in a box.
Search about in Auden's work
Till you move in numbers to an inverted clause section.
And pressing hard upon the metred line,
Ease out what you want
And put it in your box:
With you pliers insert these in your poem
(Don't worry what it means
We must lose reason, in momentary servitude).
Squeeze them in an arch
Of your most senseless line
And be a poet's prototype,
A long-haired, highbrow, arty type,
A sea of bitter passion
Without
rhyme.

—Amangle Debelsh