Even YOU Can Write Like Washington Snow!!!

        As you can probably imagine, my status in the poetry world causes me to get a lot of questions from people who want to know my writing process. These questions come in various forms: from my peers, something like, “Snowy, old fellow, how DO you manage to convey such energy in your pieces?”; from the unpublished, “Mr. Snow, I would love to learn how you give your work such abandon”; and from the very young fan-types – “Mr. Snow! Duuude! How come your poems Rock. My. WORLD?!!!”
        Frankly, to almost all of these persons, my trying to advise them on a phrase-and-word basis, in efforts to raise their poetic level toward mine, would be akin to an eagle giving flight tutelage to a flying squirrel. Success in flight, for an eagle, is to rise swiftly and soar majestically; for a flying squirrel it is to plummet in the right direction and avoid injury.
        However, there IS a method I have long established as a means to put myself in a mental state that is conducive to producing energy and, indeed, even dynamism, in a work of poetry – or what one prominent critic called my “lusty, rock-and-roll poeticism.” I believe that by using this method a poet at any level might confidently anticipate a noticeable “spike,” as the youngsters like to say, in their poetic gusto.
        First, place your computer keyboard on a standard-height table or desk. Now, here’s the important part – push your computer chair COMPLETELY OUT OF THE WAY! Now, step to the keyboard close enough that one leg is touching the traypad, with your crotch teasingly near enough to brush against it, as well. Pull the other leg back from the keyboard slightly. Finally, reach down and place your fingers on the keys.
        And there you have it! Any lover of music will immediately recognize this position as the classic Little Richard rock-piano stance. Just picture Little Richard, standing at his Steinway, banging the ivories as he belts out “Long Tall Sally” to the audience. Now picture yourself at your Dell, in the SAME stance, banging out lines of an aubade or rondel. Is there any way this attitude would not vitalize ANY output, regardless of genre?!! Why, I think not.
        I have carried this method a step further, in order to simulate the feeling of a live rock performance. I purchased a five-foot-tall step ladder, which I then placed to my right side and slightly ahead of me. Atop this, I placed my computer monitor, which means I see my words at eye-level. By this clever arrangement, I look at my lines bouncing onto the screen as I strike the keys in the same dynamic position as that with which Richard looks out at his fans, bouncing in their seats, as he hammers the chords to “Tutti Frutti”! It was in just such an electric mood that I composed “Lamar, to Autumn” and “Elegy Written in a Fit of Pique” – two pieces which a noted reviewer characterized as being “…spat with such passion, they surely were written with the author’s very sputum.”
        But, as you now know, they weren’t. Ha Ha Ha.
        A variant on this method is one that I employ for poems that have a mood change – sonnets, for instance. For these pieces, I will begin seated, left foot under the desk, right foot, well back from it. I type in this position until I reach the dramatic mood shift of the volta, and then I suddenly rise and emphatically bump the chair away with my behind – just as Jerry Lee Lewis would do when he reached verse two of “Great Balls of Fire.” I go on typing exuberantly in this fashion right through the final couplet. When I am really composing well, especially after crafting a powerful metaphor, I always shake my head and shout, “OOooOooooo!!!” in my finest Little Richard falsetto, or I give my keyboard the “Killer’s” signature rock-glissando with my elbows.
        Of course, later I have to erase that part, because, after all, it’s just gibberish. Ha Ha Ha.
        But it’s well worth the trouble for the energy it provides me, and, therefore, my work. Those of you who know my sonnets by heart, especially the potentially oft-anthologized “Meth-less,” should not be surprised to learn that they were written in just this manner. Will you be capable of writing your own “Meth-less” if you employ my method? Well, perhaps the question that is more apropos is, what chance do you have if you don’t?
        Please go to my website for MORE video demonstrations of my poem composing methods, on DVD or VHS, for only $19.95, plus S&H. Also available, for just $29.95 each, are my two volumes of poetry, “Hi Ho, Hey Hey! Poetry Is Here to Stay”, and “’Poems’ and Other Poems”, both from Vanatee Press.

© Washington Snow