Simon Pell

When somebody asked Simon Pell,

The leader of the first workshop

I wanted to be a part of, if writing a poem

Could be compared to a voyage of discovery,

He said he thought the figure too grand,

A fancy way of saying it’s often hard

To tell where your poem is headed

Until you get there and look around.

Simon Pell, old traveler among books,

Who said, when one of us asked

If a poem had to be true to the facts of history,

That being true to the probable was close enough,

The probable on a lucky day

When you’re more observant than usual

And more open to something unexpected.

As for changing your mind in the midst of a poem,

It only worked, he thought, when you discovered

The subject to be more significant than it seemed at first,

More worth your investigation, not less,

So your readers don’t feel you’ve wasted their time.

Such rules were based on experience, which meant

He had found them useful much of the time,

Though not always. No way to be sure

In advance whether breaking one

Will help a poem, though after you break it,

He added, the answer ought to be obvious.

This was one of the lessons that Simon Pell

Told us he’d learned in the “Somehow School”

Of writing that he belonged to.

According to all the rules, the poem

Under discussion this evening

Can’t work, yet somehow it does.

So let’s stop a moment to ask why.