• How Poems Mean
• Laura C. Stevenson (bio)

Vermont Poets and Their Craft originated as a ten-part lecture series delivered three years ago at Vermont bookstores and other venues under the auspices of Sundog Poetry Center, an organization founded by co-editor Tamra Higgins to promote poets and poetry throughout the state. The lectures, televised by Vermont Public Television, were subsequently revised for publication, and seven other Vermont poets were invited to submit pieces for an anthology. The result is a substantial collection of essays, all but one of which (Chard DeNiord's mainly analytical "Suspense, Suspension, and the Sublime in the Poetry of Robert Frost") are concerned with the question classically worded sixty years ago in John Ciardi's title How Does a Poem Mean? (1975).

A reader searching this excellent anthology for common threads will find them less in the poets' different answers to Ciardi's question than in the similar success of their careers. Many of them teach or have taught at Vermont's colleges and universities; several are associated with the Bread Loaf Conference; two are present or past Vermont Poet Laureates, one a past Poet Laureate of Maine. Their professional reputations extend well beyond Vermont's boundaries: several of them have been awarded fellowships from Guggenheim and the National Endowment of the Arts, many have received national poetic awards, and they have been published in presses widely distributed throughout the US. They are, for the most part, seasoned professionals: thirteen of the seventeen speak about their craft on the basis of thirty or forty years of practice. Behind their different styles and interests also lie common assumptions. The forbearers they revere—"our great grandparents of American poetry," as Neil Shepard puts it in "The Art of Concealing and Revealing in Poetry"—are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Baron Wormser's essay "The Irony and the Ecstasy" dwells upon the intensity of Polish poets who take poetry out of "the precincts of amiable sensitivity" and make it a "desperate call for fair play"; David Budbill's witty "Poetry: Special or Ordinary" draws on Taoist poets; but in the main, the poets they choose to quote and their own works reveal their debt to are Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and other modernists of the previous century. Above all, they share Sundog Poetry Center's desire to reach out poetically to Vermont's present general audience.

In any state, such a general audience encompasses a variety of auditors, but it may be presumed that among them are experienced or nascent poets seeking fresh perspective or advice on their craft. To those seeking advice, several articles mix technical discussions with sophisticated literary understanding that raises them far above the level of "how-to." David Huddle's "Technique, Tradition, and the Lucky Lot of the Poet," the most Ciardian of the essays, discusses the techniques that makes certain lines in well-known poems by Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Bishop overwhelmingly powerful. Beautifully crafted poems like these, he argues, open the door for new poems: "one poet teaches another, one poem helps another make it into the world." Stephen Cramer's "Making the Road: Tools for the Poet's Journey" starts by describing an exercise that encourages the "curiosity and investigation" that are necessary parts of poetic craft, then moves on with an excellent discussion of poetic diction. Sydney Lea's "Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems" argues for clarity in poetry, offering a rule of thumb that he applies to his own poems: "who, why, what, where? If my poem can't answer at least some of these questions, I feel I need to work on it further." At the opposite end of the spectrum, Martha Zweig's "Gnarly" opens by asking "how can readily accessible communication possibly be a goal of poetry?" She prefers "flirtatious" poems that begin by teasing the ear; and she suggests engaging in verbal calisthenics ("Roughhouse, rough trade, roughshod, roughage, ruffian, ruffle, kerfuffle") with the confidence that "meanings will suggest themselves...

• 诗的意义
• 劳拉·史蒂文森（生物）

佛蒙特州的诗人及其工艺是三年前在佛蒙特州的书店和其他场所（由Sundog诗歌中心主持）组织的十个系列讲座的源头，该组织由联合编辑塔姆拉·希金斯（Tamra Higgins）创立，旨在在全州推广诗人和诗歌。由佛蒙特州公共电视台电视转播的讲座随后被修改以出版，另外七名佛蒙特州诗人也应邀提交了选集。结果是大量的散文集，其中几乎全部（Chard DeNiord主要分析性的“罗伯特·弗罗斯特诗歌中的悬念，悬念和崇高”）都与60年前约翰·贾尔迪（John Ciardi）的书名“ How How”有关。一首诗意味着什么？（1975）。

在这种出色的选集中寻找共同线索的读者会发现，在诗人对齐亚迪的问题的不同答案中，发现他们的方式要比在其事业中取得的类似成功要少。他们中的许多人在佛蒙特州的大学任教或曾任教；数个与面包会议相关；佛蒙特州的诗人桂冠得主有两个或过去，缅因州的诗人桂冠得主一个。他们的专业声誉远远超出了佛蒙特州的范围：他们中的一些人获得了古根海姆大学和美国国家艺术基金会的奖学金，许多人获得了国家诗意奖，并在美国各地广泛发行的出版社中发表。他们在大多数情况下是经验丰富的专业人员：在十七年或三十年的实践基础上，十七位中的十三位谈论他们的手艺。它们的不同风格和兴趣背后还存在着共同的假设。他们崇拜的忍者是艾米莉·狄金森（Emily Dickinson）和沃尔特·惠特曼（Walt Whitman），它们是尼尔·谢泼德（Neil Shepard）在“诗歌中的隐瞒与揭示艺术”中所说的“美国诗歌的曾祖父母”。沃姆瑟男爵（Baron Wormser）的论文“反讽与迷魂药”充斥着波兰诗人的热情，他们将诗歌从“和sensitivity可亲的敏感区”中剔除，使其成为“迫切要求公平竞争”。大卫·布迪尔（David Budbill）的机智“诗歌：特殊还是普通”借鉴了道家诗人。但总的来说，他们选择引用的诗人和他们自己的作品表明了他们对罗伯特·弗罗斯特，伊丽莎白·毕晓普和上世纪其他现代主义者的欠债。最重要的是，他们共享“ Sundog诗歌中心”

在任何状态下，这样的一般听众都包括各种各样的审核员，但可以假定其中有经验的或新生的诗人正在寻求有关其手艺的新观点或建议。对于那些寻求建议的人，几篇文章将技术讨论与复杂的文学理解相结合，使它们远远超出了“如何做”的水平。大卫·哈德勒（David Huddle）的散文中最讽刺的诗歌是“技术，传统和诗人的幸运之地”，讨论了使弗罗斯特，迪伦·托马斯和毕晓普的著名诗中的某些诗句具有压倒性的技巧。他认为，这些精美的诗歌为新诗打开了大门：“一位诗人教另一位诗人，一首诗帮助另一位诗人走向世界。” 斯蒂芬·克雷默（Stephen Cramer）的《走上道路：诗人的旅程的工具》首先描述一种鼓励“好奇心和研究”的练习，这是诗意工艺的必要组成部分，然后继续进行有关诗意辞典的精彩讨论。Sydney Lea的“邀请读者：叙事价值，抒情诗”主张诗歌的清晰度，并提供了一条适用于他自己诗歌的经验法则：“谁，为什么，什么，在哪里？如果我的诗至少不能回答我其中一些问题，我觉得我需要进一步处理。” 另一方面，玛莎·茨威格（Martha Zweig）的“多纳利（Gnarly）”开始问：“如何容易获得的交流可能成为诗歌的目标？” 她更喜欢从戏弄耳朵开始的“轻浮”诗。并且她建议从事口语健美操（“毛坯房，毛坯贸易，毛坯，毛坯，r子，