The Thousand-Mile Beast

At length I'd trafficked lengthy thoughts 
that, like the thousand-mile beast,
could not be beheld in one glance.
If you had looked to either edge

you’d seen I hadn’t finished him.
But knowing that you wouldn’t take 
a second look, I only made 
the middle part; with fraying ends

digressing into nothingness.
Yard waste of an intellect—
long-winded breezes scatter it;
thought recently, my rake in hand 

the pile begins to correspond.
By bringing things together here
the thought, though shorter, does cohere.

Explanation 

From Aristotle’s poetics, in which he describes the ideal length for the plot of a play:

Neither would a very small creature be beautiful—for our view of it is almost instantaneous and therefore confused—nor a very large one, since being unable to view it all at once, we lose the effect of a single whole; for instance, suppose a creature a thousand miles long. As then creatures and other organic structures must have a certain magnitude and yet be easily taken in by the eye, so too with plots: they must have length but must be easily taken in by the memory.¹

This poem is a personal poem about my own writing. When I began writing poetry about 7 years ago, I wrote very complicated poems. Sometimes, in fact often, they were very long as well.

But a long poem is not necessarily the same as a long play; a poem can be “long” in the sense of density as well. Density is complexity, and appears in short poems where the topic is very difficult to understand. 

I think that Aristotle’s principle of the thousand-mile creature applies both to long poems and to poems that are needlessly difficult. 

Nowadays, perhaps for 2 years now, I have tried to write simple poems. My first attempts at writing coherent, short poems were failures. It was a surprise to me that I had ostensibly been able to write very difficult things, yet I was unable to write very simple things. 

Now that I have been writing simple poems for a while—and now that I am employed as a writer in the business world as well—I understand perfectly well why I could not write simple poems. Simply put: it is harder to write simply.

There are more ways to communicate an idea poorly than there are ways to communicate it well. And on the level of thoughts, there are more unclear thoughts in one’s head than clear ones. Making their thoughts clear, and then capturing those thoughts in clear writing, is the most challenging thing a writer can do.

Writing this poem was actually a step on the journey to beginning this newsletter, the goal of which is to make poetry accessible. Note that, while “simple,” the poems you read in this newsletter still benefit from their detailed explanations. Poetry, for better or for worse, will never be as easy as reading directions on street sign.

Lesson

If you want to write, write as simply as you can. Writing is communication; even poetry is communication, though raised to the level of art. Literature’s unique distinction from non-verbal art forms is its ability to communicate literally. 

Note that this does not mean using only simple words. I am a sucker for sophisticated diction. Just, when using a complicated word, try to use it elegantly.

Poem stats

15 lines

Iambic tetrameter

Rhyme scheme: 5 unrhymed lines, then aabbccddee

P.S.

Do you want to read one of my old, complicated poems? They’re good for a laugh. Let me know in the comments!