What Makes a Good Poetry Collection?

answering the question with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's "How It Is"

Hello, Poetry Friend

In my beloved Artist Way poetry group, we can’t agree on fiction or movies or even Netflix titles. But we all agree on Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poetry collection Naked for Tea.

While we compared favorite poems (among mine is the pearl-clutching “That’s Right”), I mentioned that I was reading the collection slowly, poeming my way through it. That is: writing my own poem every time I’m inspired by one of hers, which happens virtually every day.

“That’s how I know it’s a good collection,” I told the group, “because it makes me write good poems.”

The stares I got in response told me not everyone reads poetry collections this way.

Do you? If not, why not?

A poem is not just something to read and smile over and then turn the page. It needs to get inside you. Slice it up and roast it. Take it out for a walk. Try it on and twirl — like this poem, which we read in our group.

How It Is

Over and over we break
open, we break and
we break and we open.
For a while, we try to fix
the vessel—as if
to be broken is bad.
As if with glue and tape
and a steady hand we
might bring things to perfect
again. As if they were ever
perfect. As if to be broken is not 
also perfect. As if to be open
is not the path toward joy.

The vase that’s been shattered
and cracked will never
Hold water. Eventually
it will leak. And at some
point, perhaps, we decide
that we’re done with picking
our flowers anyway, and no
longer need a place to contain them.
We watch them grow just
as wildflowers do—unfenced,
unmanaged, blossoming only
when they’re ready—and my God,
how beautiful they are amidst
the mounting pile of shards.

– Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I wrote my own poem from this one. It’s a poem I never would have written and never would have thought to write if I wasn’t trying let Trommer’s poem be my guide. In my poem, I stuck very closely to her form and even her line breaks and punctuation. But you don’t have to do it that way. Let her poem guide yours. A good poetry collection should make us a little bit better poets — one poem at a time.

Poetry Journal

• Read “How It Is.” What grabs you in it? The images? The dashes? The turn at the end? Something else?

• Let Trommer’s form inform your own poem. Or adapt one of her images for your words. Or steal her title and write what you need to say.

• Read the poem again . What else is she doing that you can incorporate to make your poem a little better? Revise your poem.

• If you like, email me what you write at megan.willome@yahoo.com.

• P.S. We’ll be sitting with Trommer’s poems all March.

Take care, Megan