Ways of Seeing

So what is poetic insight? As Edith Tiempo, co-founder along with her late husband Edilberto of the Silliman Writers Workshop, puts it: insight in poetry is usually "dredged up only in the depth explorations of the poetic imagination [emphasis added]. It is no accident that such concepts have been labeled as insights: sighted in (the depths)" [emphasis provided] (viii).

Another poet and regular Writers Workshop panelist, Gémino Abad, defines poetic insight as the "illumination of a thought that no idea expresses, or illumination of a feeling that no thought catches.... ¶ That insight is what is sometimes called theme, provided we do not think of 'theme' as an abstraction than can be formulated.... It cannot be formulated; it is lived. It lives in the poem" (61-62).

Exactly what are these "depth explorations" or "illuminations of a thought/feeling"? I was more than confused. But if I were to be a decent poet at the very least, I had to find out how to make every little poem I wrote embody a poetic insight—or how to conceptualize a poem that would revolve around an insight. This is what the Writers Workshop panelists insisted on. And if that demand was not enough, they also cautioned that a poem's subject must be "reimagined and made fresh"; otherwise, "without change, art stagnates" (Wallace and Boisseau xix).

For something as crucial, poetic insight is usually given a cursory treatment in books on poetry, literature or criticism. One exception is Wallace and Boisseau's Writing Poetry. The authors talk about how insight can be achieved by peeling one's eyes open. Then again, that discussion is more or less two pages in length and is merely a part of a longer treatise on "subject matter" or "content." I wondered: if Wallace and Boisseau say insight "is at the center of making good poems" (128), why the scant treatment? If vision is the measure of a poem being good or bad, why are discussions on insight (compared to, say, rhythm or imagery) scarce?

Wallace and Boisseau suggest what poets should do to gain poetic insight:

"Discovering a good subject may be partly luck, but luck comes to poets who are alert, who keep their antennae out, who make new combinations, who truly see [emphasis provided].... Try to see everything with a cleansed eye. Look at things. Study a slice of bread, for instance; really see it and then write about what you notice. Free yourself of assumptions about the staff of life and shimmering fields of grain. Look at the bread. Like the purloined letter in Poe's story, the secret is hidden in the open. Look. Notice.... ¶ Accurate perception is not just an aesthetic choice, we have a moral obligation to see what is truly there, not just what we would like to see" (127-28).

Not that what the poet "with a cleansed eye" will see is something original. Rather, the re-imagining and making fresh is in being able to see "the secret...hidden in the open." It is in seeing "what is truly there" instead of seeing "what we would like to see." It is this alertness and ability to see "with a cleansed eye" that is perhaps the key to achieving poetic insight.

1 2 3 | Next

Works Cited

Tiempo, Edith L. "Introduction." Hearthstone, Sacred Tree. Merlie M. Alunan. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing House Inc., 1993.
Abad, Gémino H. "What Does One Look For in a Poem?" Father and Daughter: The Figures of Our Speech. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing House Inc., 1996
Wallace, Robert and Michelle Boisseau. Writing Poems. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Abstract

Critical Preface

Rationale
Review of Related Literature
Theoretical/Conceptual Framework
Statement of the Problem
Significance of the Study
Objectives of the Study
Research Design
Analysis of Selected Works
Summary of Findings
Conclusion
Implications of the Study
Recommendations

Creative Work

Child's Play and Other Poems

Ways of Seeing by Nino Soria de Veyra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Philippines License.