T HE G O - TO -H ELL B OYS BY D AVID K IRBY
When my students can’t figure out how to write their poems, I tell them the go-to-hell boys are in the building, that you can hear them even now on the staircase, shouting “Go to hell!” and letting off rounds. “Go to hell!” say the go-to-hell boys. “This Dr. Kirby is a very bad man! We are going to suicide him, also his students—no one will survive!” By now they’re on the second floor, and we are on the fourth. What next? Our weapons are imaginary, and we’re nowhere nearly as angry as they are. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to write the poems. At the very least, let them be written in English, not only a rich sea fed by two rivers, one Latin and the other Anglo-Saxon, but also an ocean in which we splash happily, poet and reader alike. After that, let the poems consist of complete sentences, or, if fragments are used, let that be for emphasis or special effect. Let the poet use sound mechanics, including standard grammar, punctuation, and spelling, for, as Ezra Pound said, a poem should at the very least be as well written as prose. Let the poems be paraphrasable, for the poet should be able to tell a six year-old what his or her poem is about. Further, let the poems rely more on images and concrete language than abstractions and argument—on brick and mortar, that is, not the architect’s idea. Let the poet control line and stanza using enjambment, end stops, meaningful breaks. And now let the poems use repetition for poetic effect: rhyme, assonance, consonance, anaphora, and so on.
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