National Poetry Month: Guest Post from A.L. Sonnichsen: Why Poetry?

A question I’ve been asked over and over again since my novel in verse came out is, why poetry?

I didn’t always write this way.

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, February 2015.

I didn’t even know novels in verse existed until a few years ago when I participated in a verse novel challenge on Caroline Starr Rose’s blog. Her debut, MAY B., was about to be released and she was excited to introduce her blog readers to the genre. The challenge she gave was for each of us to read five verse novels.

I started with Karen Hesse’s OUT OF THE DUST. And I was hooked.

You can tell you’re hooked on verse when simply walking around your house, a place you inhabit every day, gives rise to inspiration. Verse swirled in my head. Every detail became a poem. If I dared step outside, the words only bubbled faster.

That’s the thing about poetry. It’s life and detail and metaphor. Not complicated at all.

Perhaps I always thought like a poet, though I didn’t realize it. I give all the credit to my mother. When I was a child, she matched my steps. Outside, we’d stop to linger over a flower, watch the slow crawl of a centipede across our path. When I became a teenager, her fascination with detail irritated me. I had places to go! My mom always seemed to be ten steps behind, calling after me, “Amy, look at this!”

But now that I’m an adult, I realize my mom gave me a gift.

I notice.

Water droplets.

The exact color of soap scum.

Fire in the sunset.

How long it takes for warm breath in frigid air to disappear.

Poetry gave me permission to capture those details, those intricacies of life that slip away too quickly.

And I found, through novels in verse, that I could tell a whole story through details.

Schwartz & Wade, January 2012.

Back to Caroline Starr Rose (because she’s a brilliant author and poet, to whom I’ll always be indebted) … she likens writing a novel in verse to piecing together a quilt. I love that analogy. Bits and pieces of fabric, sewn meticulously. These are your individual poems. Now the work begins of organizing them into a cohesive story.

Verse requires a gentle touch. It’s not the heavy brush of an oil painting, layer upon layer. It’s the tap of tweezers, fitting that sliver of glass into just the right spot in a mosaic. It’s the stepping back, taking in the whole, while admiring the unique glimmer of each shard.

This is why some writers choose poetry to tell their stories. Poetry offers a light touch. We take on tough subjects: abandonment, fear, isolation. Poetry allows us to frame those difficult subjects in beauty, to create art with them.

It’s not so unlike the mosaic master’s hammer, breaking pottery to bits in order to create something profound.

I barely consider myself a poet. I don’t rhyme. I rarely handcuff myself to form or meter. But I love language, the sound of words, the details: the grainy surface, the collection of dust, the finger smudge on glass.

Honestly, anyone can be a poet if she will but pay attention.

A.L. Sonnichsen.

Raised in Hong Kong, A.L. Sonnichsen grew up attending British school and riding double-decker buses. As an adult, she spent eight years in Mainland China where she learned that not all baozi are created equal. She also learned some Mandarin, which doesn’t do her much good in the small Eastern Washington town where she now lives with her rather large family. Find out more at http://alsonnichsen.blogspot.com.