Waking Up in the Middle of the Night, or Texture in Poetry

I often wake up in the middle of the night, the demons scratching away in my mind---all the things I have to do, all the regrets, the fears, the memories. But two nights ago, I woke up after a dream in which I was teaching a poetry workshop again, trying to engage to the young students about "texture" in language. I remembered giving them a simple sentence, something like, "Today I walked to the post office and talked to Margie behind the counter about her teenage son."

What's the texture of that sentence, I asked. And then, how can you change the texture? Make it nubby or silky or tangled. What about each line of a poem? Or the whole poem?

What do you do with a snag? Is it a productive snag, one that stops the reader for a good reason and adds to the texture of the poem? Or one that stops the reader for good, confuses the reader and causes the poem to lose its flow?

And color? What color is this sentence I just gave you? Sort of beige? How can you change the color? How does syntax enable you to play with color and texture?

I was having a grand time, even wishing that I had a set of those little hot pad weaving toys that I loved as a child, with a lot of yarn on the table. Making it all tactile, as well as visual.

I woke up feeling excited about language, about poetry, and I remembered the Saba poem I posted just a day ago on this blog.

What, I wondered, would a reader have to say about the texture in this poem? Line by line? as an entirety? And color?

Give it a try, those of you who visit my blog. Look below this post at A Winter Noon. Leave a comment to tell me how you "feel" this poem. What is the syntax doing to weave its texture? The imagery?

Happiness? Well, I can say that waking up at 3 in the morning and feeling jazzed over a dream about poetry and the fabric of language comes pretty close, especially after the other dreams lately have been about endless searches for lost passports, letters, recipes, working an eternity to try to get a meal on the table, pack a suitcase, decide which poem to read, what clothes to wear, and finding none of what I need close by, nothing ever resolved, my heart pounding when I wake up. After waking up from this dream, I kept teaching the class in my head, thinking of ways to make poetry come alive. Who cares that it took me at least an hour to fall back asleep? I was having a blast.

So, let me continue the workshop. Tell me how A Winter Noon runs through your fingers like wool or silk or broadcloth, where the stitchery changes, becomes nubbier, or smoother. The cut of it as it falls to closure. How it hangs on the clothesline!

I will use your comments in a later post.