The Poets are at Their Windows Again

One of my New Years resolutions is to read more. Of everything--magazines, literary magazines, poetry, fiction. One genre I've seriously neglected over the years is the writer's manual, figuring I could glean all its gems of wisdom from a more entertaining read. Who needs books about poetry when you've got the real deal?

Turns out there are interesting things in writer's manuals. Take this gem from Ted Kooser's The Poetry Home Repair Manual, which describes the balance a poem must strike between speaker and subject in terms of the poet's own reflection in a window:

"While choosing your words it is as if you were at a window looking out into the world. If the light that falls upon what lies beyond is very bright, you see the scene in vivid colors and there is only the faintest hint of your reflection in the glass. If the light beyond the window is faint, as at dusk, the speaker's reflection in the glass is much more prominent. The speaker notices both his or her reflection and the scene beyond. And if it has grown dark outside, dark enough to make a mirror of the window, the speaker, or presence, sees very little other than his or her own reflection."

Fiction writers are always flitting between interior and exterior landscapes. Poets, myself included, often feel the need to choose. But, Kooser says, you can have both worlds at once. In poetry, there is always a double image.