In recent decades, the braided poem has opened dynamic possibilities for writers and readers. The current wave of braided poems began with the work of Larry Levis in the mid-1980s in books such as Winter Stars.
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| Larry Levis (1946–1996) |
I trace the origins of the braided poem back to Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” In that poem, Whitman described the widespread mourning in the wake of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and crocheted that together with images of lilacs, birdsong, and a star that signaled the start of spring:
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
What is a braided poem? A braided poem twines together disparate strands of narrative and imagery, connecting them metaphorically. Usually a braided poem restlessly moves from one topic to another, at first perhaps jarringly. As the poem progresses, the reader gradually comes to understand what ties together the different braids, on a figurative level. When done well, the braided poem is electric, following the jumps of the mind and the heart as they come to grips with complex emotions and thoughts that are difficult to fit all in one strand. The braided poem evolved alongside the braided essay, which uses similar techniques in prose, combining different threads to explore how seemingly independent topics intertwine.
One of the most successful braided poems, to my mind, is Mark Doty’s “Fog.” Mark Doty braids together three distinctive subjects in the space of only a couple of pages. The poem begins with an account of plants taking turns blooming in the speaker’s garden. Already in the opening lines, the description foreshadows fatal possibilities, as the flowers last only a few days, and the white peonies have a “blood-color…ruffle”. The second element in the poem, a Ouija board belonging to the speaker and his partner, echoes this theme. Spirits of dead children use the planchette to communicate with the couple. It’s not until line 45 that we come to understand all these hints about blood and death:
Though it [the blood] submits to test, two,
to be exact, each done three times…
The reader becomes aware that the speaker and his partner are being tested for HIV at the crest of the epidemic that killed tens of millions of people worldwide. Gradually we learn that the speaker is negative, but his partner has antibodies indicating the presence of the illness. The speaker is so stricken by the news that he can’t even use the word “positive.” Nor do the acronyms HIV or AIDs appear in the text. Those omissions reveal that the speaker does not want even to voice the possible outcomes for his beloved. The poem is terribly moving, and uses a device similar to Whitman’s elegy for Lincoln, evoking the cycles of life and death in spring to highlight grief. With incredible skill, Doty braids together the poem’s three strands—the garden, the Ouija board, and the HIV tests.
During the time when Mary Doty published “Fog” in his dazzling collection My Alexandria in 1993, the braided poem arrived as a revelation. It was a period when much of the poetry in the U.S.A. was taking paths that had become a little too well travelled: the “I do this, I do that” poems of the New York School, the Beat Generation stream of consciousness howl, or the personal-as-political autobiographical poems of identity. The braided poem allowed for a complex and nuanced exploration of myriad awakenings taking place in North American society, changes that were upending Victorian morality; as well as challenging dominant cultures in class, gender, race, and sexuality.
To my mind, the braided poem works best when the varied strands have a strong rubber band holding them together, and the different braids strengthen the poem’s emotional fibers. The strands have to twist together organically, and not arbitrarily or gratuitously. Braiding very different strands in the same poem can feel gimmicky or forced if parts of the poem strike the reader as added on for no compelling reason. Those added parts can then dilute the impact of the poem’s core.
Here are a few of my favorite braided poems that beautifully combine multiple strands:
Jorie Graham: “Salmon”
Brenda Hillman: “The Spark”
Lynda Hull: “Utopia Parkway”
Dionisio Martinez: “Bad Alchemy”
Frank Paino: “Each Bone of the Body”
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Zack’s memoir, Hugging My Father’s Ghost
Other posts of interest:
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle
