“Passionate Stilled Attention”: Maureen Clark on Observational Poetry
I write a poem a day, and I always start with the concept of “passionate stilled attention.” I learned this phrase from my mentor, Donald Revell, in graduate school. Like the poetry prompt, passionate stilled attention calls for a quiet place and a focused mind. At the same time, each day brings a new stilled attention to some specific thing. I usually start by focusing on something in nature, or something in my house. It doesn’t matter what it is. I write with the clear understanding that the beginning of the writing is not the actual beginning of the poem. In other words, it doesn’t matter what I am giving my stilled attention to, I just need to start with keen observation and detailed description of what I am seeing and experiencing. Once the writing has started, I usually find that something else has entered the poem.
The dichotomy of passion and stillness allows for the kind of attention that blocks out distractions. It invites me to think in terms of concrete detail, rather than emotional ideas. The passion invites me to let go of controlling where that passion leads. Sometimes the attention leads me to something just below the surface of my consciousness. At other times, the narrative might already be very close to the surface. If I had sat down to write a poem about my friend Richard, his death would have taken center stage within the poem and been heavily didactic. Instead, the event came secondary to the physical attributes of the place and the time. I came at it sideways, or slant, as Brenda Miller puts it, and I think that’s what makes the poem successful.
The poem “Before Autumnal Equinox” came about through two channels. First, a writing prompt by David Lee that preceded the Boulder Cliff Notes Conference in 2024, and the second, the suicide of my dear friend Richard about a month before the conference. Richard lit himself on fire in his car, a particularly violent way to end his life.
The prompt was to pick a time of day and really sit in that space and write. I chose late afternoon on my front porch glider before the Autumnal Equinox. The poem could be free form or could be completed as a sonnet, a sestina, or a villanelle. The goal was to remain present in a time and place and see where it led you. I did not want to write about Richard. His passing felt too recent and it was very personal. I started out by observing the quality of the light and how the space felt, but the suicide kept pushing its way into the poem. My focus on the light and the coming equinox brought his suicide into a space already tight with description. The observations of the physical space and the focus on being present allowed me to write about Richard in what I hope was a less didactic way than if I’d approached the page with the intention of writing about Richard.
It can be so difficult to write about tragic events. But because I never moved from my location on the porch, the whole poem happened in a restricted and safe atmosphere. I was surprised how much that “stillness” affected the poem itself. The focus on my senses put me very much in the moment, feeling the change in the temperature as the sun went down, the light itself, and the sounds of the end-of-day traffic.
As simple as it sounds, concentrating on concrete detail is one tool I use to avoid abstract language and vagueness. For example, as writers, we write about the abstract ideas of love, fear, hate, and hope, but if we attack them directly, we usually find the writing flat and lifeless or too strong and pushy. The sweet spot, at least for me, comes when I allow that concrete use of language to open the door for me. I like daily practice because eventually I don’t have to think about it, I just follow it. Sometimes the attention and observation lead to a perfectly fine poem that has its own agenda. At other times, I enter the poem already hearing the words that will enter on a slant. The stilled observation becomes secondary to the idea, but is necessary to explore what is there.
In writing “Before Autumnal Equinox,” I was also aware of word choices that helped develop imagery, as well as mood. For example, I used the word “berserk” to describe the wisteria vines, but also to create a mood where things are out of control. I was also aware of using the bag pipe to describe the sound of the traffic and how it would resonate with sound at a funeral. When I talk about the actual suicide I use word like “gentle,” “enchanted,” and “glow.” In my writing I try to let word choice do a great deal of the work for me, particularly in the title. “Before Autumnal Equinox,” uses the word “before” to suggest that something has happened in the past and it grounds the poem in calendrical time. The reader immediately understands the framework of the poem without any long explanations from me.
Writing about Richard’s death was always going to be difficult, and I wanted to, as Emily Dickinson puts it, “tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Both ideas are necessary for this poem—“all the truth" and “telling it slant.”
A few of my favorite books on the craft of writing:
Walking Light
Stephen Dunn
The Poet’s Companion
Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
Ordinary Genius
Kim Addonizio
The Practice of Poetry
Robyn Behn and Chase Twichell
The Triggering Town
Richard Hugo
Tell It Slant
Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola
Walking on Alligators
Susan Shaunessy
