Editor’s Note: All the poems printed in this article are a collaboration of the two authors, James Bertolino and Anita K. Boyle. “Hard Candy” first appeared in the print journal Cranky, No. 1, 2004 as did James Bertolino’s instructional essay on poetic collaboration;  “One Day” appeared in StringTown, No.6, 2003 and “On Edge” appeared in StringTown, No.6, 2003.

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am reprinting an instructional essay by Northwest Poet James Bertolino, a sampling of poems he and Anita K. Boyle wrote collaboratively (several of which have recently appeared in literary journals) as well as Anita K. Boyle’s notes on the process. The poets’ ideas about collaborating on poem-writing and their enthusiasm for doing so should inspire you to write more poetry and allow new voices into your work.

****

Hard Candy

“Hard Candy!” my frail
aunt said. “Life
was hard candy.

You had to suck hard
to get anything sweet.”
Myself, I prefer the simple

sour and dill of a single pickle —
nubbly and long, with the curve
that never fails to excite.

Auntie’s making shortbread
and fruitcake. Her white
starched apron is covered

with smears of butter and yellow
flour. “Don’t try this
at the office,” she counsels

her stiff nephew. “Your computers
are too weak!”

****

Notes on Poetry Collaboration
By Anita K. Boyle

Poetry is a unique form of literature. Usually, it embodies an individual’s perspective pinpointed into a poem: one voice, one poem, like a sacred thing. Combining the imaginations of two (or more) people in one poem enlarges the idea of poetry: two voices, one poem, like a celebration of the ineffable and the infinite. Collaborations open up the possibilities like a religion ought to do.

Collaborative poetry is created using several conflicting creative routes: the conscious vs. the unconscious, competition vs. cooperation, and order vs. chaos. When Jim and I write collaborative poetry, we most often just start writing a poem and keep going until it is decided the poem is finished. The results are varied. We start in a journal with a line or two written out of the blue by one or the other of us. The journal is passed back and forth. The choices we make to decide where the poem goes are often surprising, siphoned from the back recesses of the mind. We never know where the poem will go next. We often write as an immediate reaction to what was written in the lines before, picking from the full palette of poetics.

 Other times, the poem is inspired by what is going on at the place where we happen to be, and we make conscious decisions based on observation. Or one of us will tell the other a story about something that has happened either recently, or long ago. The resulting poem will become a collage of the story and our collaborative imaginations. This kind of poem is usually more literal, often narrative, but surprises both collaborators with the places it might go. One, “Under the Surface,” began after Jim told a story from his childhood. It ended up being a poem written in the voice of a child at the bottom of a pond. Another, “Crawl Space,” was written after I told Jim about a wonderful day care center my children attended, where the caregiver’s father had Lou Gehrig’s disease, and used to get down on the floor with the kids.

There are times when our collaborations use order to give them structure. Sometimes, we’ll write a poem from a word list we’ve created or found. Other times, we’ll make up rules as we go along. One poem we wrote is written in couplets using only two words per line. Another poem might use a rhyme scheme. Any rule we make up is easily broken. All of that is worked into the final version of the poem. Chaos out of order is completely acceptable. So is order out of chaos.

When we write collaborations, it is always a little competitive. Who will write the best line? Will the next line measure up to the rest of the poem? Sometimes, one of us wants to go one direction with a poem, and the other goes off on some unexplainable tangent. The poem can contain a tug of war within it. Fortunately, tension hardly hurts a poem. The trick is to work with your “competitor” as though the poem is the entire game. The poets may be on opposite teams, but it’s the game of the poem that’s important. Play hardball. It makes for a better poem.

Cooperation is important only when it comes to editing. Collaborations walk a fine line. Especially since good collaborators are not allowed to cross out the other’s lines. It’s a collaboration, isn’t it? The resulting poem, though, can be a bit wobbly at times, but with proper, cooperative editing, almost any poem can be reworked into something worthwhile–or at least the poem will be somewhat entertaining. Jim and I edit our poems separately, then bring our edited poems together for a final edit. We might edit after that, too, but only to fine tune.

Finally, collaborations influence the poetry one writes as an individual. After writing collaborative poetry, one’s poetic sense expands and encompasses new ideas, sounds, line breaks, and other aspects of poetry in ways one wouldn’t have written before. Collaborations work the imagination into accepting strange tangents as usable and can create a certain focus in the poem that surprises even the poet. The act of creating a poem with someone else opens poetry to a wide variety of possibilities.

****

One Day

One day, after
I’ve healed,
I want to boil eggs
without any cracks,
without eruptions.

Then I’ll be ready
to see my family again.

My red sedan
has been parked at the curb
for months, and
I’ve climbed a boulder
I can’t get down from.

I think the starlings
could help me, but they’re
busy, busy listening
to the voices
on the wires they cling to.

****

Notes on Poetry Collaboration
By James Bertolino

There are several approaches to poetry collaboration that I’ve found effective. Most poets are familiar with the “exquisite corpse,” which is a process of poetry collaboration that emphasizes the random and, in exciting cases, synchronicity. In composing an exquisite corpse poem, two or more people take turns writing lines, or groups of lines, passing a sheet of paper back and forth. What ensures a high degree of randomness is that, after one writer pens their lines, they fold the paper over so the next person cannot read what they’ve written. Once the paper is unfolded, and all the lines are revealed, the leaps from one passage to another can be hilarious non-sequiturs or, sometimes, display surprising connections.

The poet Robert Duncan, who in the 1960’s began to work with random systems in generating his poems, concluded that while intention does allow us to express ourselves, randomness invites the universe to speak.

Another form of collaboration, which allows for randomness, but also supports a developing sense of the poem as an intentional work, has the writers reading the prior passages before adding their own new one. Each subsequent writer may take the poem in a new direction, but will do so in a manner that utilizes the lines already composed. My friend Anita Boyle and I have been collaborating in this way for several years, and a number of our works have been published in magazines, chapbooks and in a forthcoming anthology. We take the process further by doing our own revisions, then getting together to agree on which changes improve the poems. Our collaborations always carry both of our names.

An approach to collaboration I feel is fairly unique is one I’ve used in my graduate poetry writing courses at Western Washington University.  Two or three poets pass a journal back and forth until they have what seems to be a complete draft. Then they each take a copy of the poem to revise later. By prior agreement, they focus on the esthetic models of very different poets in their revision process (such as those of Anselm Hollo, Frank Stanford or Anne Waldman), and feel free to make any changes or deletions that best serve their objectives. What results are poems which have some images and phrases that are recognizable, yet are significantly different from each other. Structurally, the poems may use the page, and the white space, in very different ways. One poet might add rhyme and use conventional stanzas, while another working with the original version may move it in the direction of field composition, where words and phrases are spread all over the page. The collaboration element is no more important than the individual revision element, and I advise my students they can reasonably claim their final version as their own poem.

Using lines written by two or more collaborators, you can construct one of the traditional forms that are built on repetition, like the Pantoum and Villanelle. In an undergraduate poetry workshop I taught last year, I had the entire class write Villanelles using the same two rhymes. Then I took one line from each student’s poem and built a new Villanelle–the process worked well because there were the same number of class members as there were different lines in a Villanelle.

****

On Edge

We sat on the edge
a long time, but
didn’t fall in,
didn’t feel like it.

That changed when we heard
the loons from down
the street. Crazies
we never meant

to know. They had six
kids, all of them afflicted
with a brain fungus, two
already bald as old men.

That didn’t matter much.

It was the eerie noise they made
just before dawn. The defrocked
pastor down the alley said it was
their way of prayer, but we

are non-believers who
don’t put much stock
in what he says. No.

But there is redemption
in the humid thrust of air
just before the quick slap
of the cold, sane river.

****

Beneath the Surface

It’s 1955, I am 13, and in eighth grade.
The school principal has warned
my parents about prison. I’m writing this

from the bottom of a pond where the water
is dark, yet clear. Something just shifted nearby
and I’m suddenly terrified of the snapping

turtle who guards the exit. But the water lilies
steady the surface and there’s nothing, really,
to hold me here. The bullfrog croaks, the water bugs

jump, and then all settles again into evening.
There’s no way I’m going to prison, Mom. A cell
would be my end. I need flow. Don’t you love

the way these tiny larvae wiggle down here?
Someday, I’ll be a dragonfly. Someday I’ll bring home
a treat. You’ll see, Dad.