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My poetry notebooks are basically disordered lists of poems I’d like to write. Sometimes these are poem ideas, fragments of images, poem titles, or distillations of feeling. And sometimes they are poem forms, with notes on syllable, rhyme, or subject rules, or commentary on a great poem I just read. There are pages of my notebook that have poem drafts, and others that are mostly blank or aspirational, that may just say “sonnet” or “villanelle” at the top with a few notes, hoping that the right content for the form will arrive and then magic will happen, like the shoemaker and his elves.
I am working with a particular constraint—or rather, a particular font of possibility— in my poetry: to illuminate the grammar, beauty, and ontological brilliance of my Indigenous language, Niimiipuutímt/Nez Perce. My goal is to use poetry for Indigenous language revitalization, and this means crafting bilingual poems that will assist language learners in grasping Nez Perce grammar and usage, while also offering lovely, accessible gems of observation for general readers. In the case of “Because our Roots are in Rivers, Not Latin,” my goal was to write a sonnet that illuminated the word hiléew’ce, literally, “fish lies (still),” which is a Nez Perce word for hibernation.
To begin, I reviewed sonnets by Shakespeare and my notes on form. I started drafting by hand, and soon lines of language, devotion, and winter’s cold appeared. I felt optimistic that the poem could join themes of historical and personal intimacies with the thought-world specificity of hiléew’ce. I liked two lines that made a near rhyme with “suspend” and “essence” and I decided to use them for the final couplet. But even with all this promise, I was three lines short.
As I looked at the hole in the stanza I began to have doubts about the direction of the poem. I texted a poet friend (always good to have around) and wrote: I’m three lines short of a sonnet, which sounds like a euphemism for insanity but in this case is my actual problem. He suggested that I write three words, one on each line, as guides. Later he asked if I was intentionally writing a sonnet or if it just appeared that way.
Looking back, his question struck at the core of my revision process, because a writer is both responsible for craft (making intentional decisions) and for attunement to the organic form of the poem (allowing the poem to be what it wants). I wasn’t sure whether the sonnet form was right for this subject. Both form and content—to the extent that they can be separated—were not working. Following the advice of generations of writers before me, I decided to go outside. I took the dog for a walk and ruminated; I invited my body and my mind to move freely. There were too many ideas in the poem, and not enough words.
I considered whether the stall was a problem of form, and whether the sonnet structure was impeding the optimal expression of the poem.
I needed to distill what the poem was really about, so I asked my dreams to help me. This strategy was another version of going for a walk; I had to shake things up. I needed to access a deeper level of my creativity that was not yet flowing through my pen, to go somewhere with the poem where I wasn’t in control of it but simply able to observe and learn from it. In most cases this work can be done in waking life. But when we write, we are free to use every resource we have available, and in this case I asked my dreams to help me understand the soul of the poem.
That night, I dreamed that I saw a snowshoe rabbit near a stand of low bare brush on a snowy hillside. I was looking out at the snow from the perspective of the rabbit. In the morning I wrote two pages in my journal about how to survive in winter. I decided to preserve these fragments: What language winter speaks / when rabbit translates his coat to say: I am snow.
The dream brought out this theme: winter translates us, and animals remind us to embody this translation and not resist it.
If the poem were to be true to the subject, to hiléew’ce, then it had to move at a slower pace. It had to embody the language not only of Niimiipuutímtki but the language of winter. Hibernation’s idiom is slowing down, going deep, getting rest. Snowshoe rabbit turns white to survive on the surface; the fish rest in the river’s slowest groove. The sonnet, while perfect for nature and love and multitudes of subjects, was moving at too fast a pace to arrive in a place of stillness. A conventional sonnet is written in rows of iambic feet, a pattern that lopes along at a clip, then offers up a pithy volta at the end: ta- da! I needed a slower form.
In my revision, I aimed for a form that would imitate the movement of fish and would create a sense of spaciousness and stillness. I also stripped down the themes to language and survival. I retained several of the original lines of the sonnet, and repurposed the first line from the sonnet into the title, “Because our Roots are in Rivers, Not Latin.”
The best way to not write a sonnet is to try to write a sonnet, knowing that all words, lines, and forms are provisional. Trust your instincts about what brought you to get the words on the page, and as you revise, offer every resource you have—other poets, walks outside, dreams, writing and rewriting—to discover what the poem wants to be. Give your whole self to the process.
