Editing Resolutions for the New Year 2009

Lana Myers of Newton has been writing a biography of Kansas poet May Williams Ward, who edited The Harp, a national poetry magazine in the 1930s. These are her guidelines for poets submitting to the magazine, and I think they hold up well in 2009. I resolve to polish, polish, polish. DL

HINTS TO WRITERS by May Williams Ward:

Do polish. There is nothing sacred about the first draft which you write. Change, improve, to give your exact shade of meaning.

Do emphasize climax, dramatic arrival somewhere.

Do be brief if your theme allows.

Do read aloud in decided sing-song to discover places hard to pronounce and faults in meter.

Do try for rich sound-texture by varying the vowels. The liquid consonants l, m, r, n, are pleasing; k, t, b, etc., harsh. Too many s sounds hiss or buzz.

Do leave something to the imagination. The best poems have an inner meaning, unexpressed, parallel to the outward meaning.

Don’t use threadbare rhymes such as love—above.

Don’t spoil your climax by failing to stop; and point no morals.

Don’t use too much the hackneyed 3-4 meter. It is hard to overcome the handicap of having your poem go to the tune of “Mary had a Little Lamb.”

Don’t use the old-fashioned “thee,” “e’en,” “ere,” etc.

Don’t invert the order of words. “Serene sky” is better than “sky serene.”

Don’t be Victorian with flowery words and phrases. Modern poems are simple, direct, nearly like speech.

Don’t fail to give thought to your title. It is your show-window.

Don’t think your poem is clear unless the idea can be stated in one short prose sentence that makes sense.

Don’t be too tender toward your poem because it is yours. Weeds may grow in any garden. Finest blossoms come from careful pruning. Robert Graves says: “When in doubt, cut it out.”

[from unpublished MS “Notes Toward an Autobiography,” pp. 33-34, WSU Collection]

Kansan Lana Myers is working on a book of May Williams Ward's poetry. Here is a springtime description she found written by Ward. This is a charm to bring springtime closer:

"A wide, tall sky the more impressive for the flatness of the plain, great free winds sometimes rising to tornado crescendo, a subtle color scheme of green and tauny gold with sage-grey, and a people salty, racy, and individual . . . the Kansas prairie provides these varied stimuli for her poets. Then if any Kansan writes verse that is limited in outlook it is not the fault of our sky; if pettiness shows, it is not the fault of our winds. Blatant color could not truly reflect the aspect of the plain, nor conventional characterization indicate the flavor of her people."

—May Williams Ward
From the foreword to Kansas Poets, edited by Henry Harrison (New York: House of Henry Harrison, 1935)

Kansas Poet May Williams Ward Describes Carry A. Nation

Lana Myers in Newton, Kansas, is working on a book about Kansas poet May Williams Ward. She sent this quotation from Ward about meeting Carry Nation in 1901 at a fraternity house in Lawrence. This is from unpublished manuscript in the Wichita State University collections:

• She was a large tall woman but had a rather motherly look when not engaged in one of her tirades. She had her hatchet in one hand and a Bible in the other, part of the time, but laid them both down on a table to walk up determinedly to two boys who were coming in the door just starting to douse their cigarettes. She snatched them from the boys’ mouths and held them up and out as if vermin, while she talked about their harmfulness and sinfulness. She told the girls that it would injure our children-to-be if we should dare to smoke, and we should even not marry a man who smoked, for heredity’s sake. . . . At one point, looking tired, she sat down momentarily and asked for a drink of water. "Nothing stronger, mind you," she said, almost with a twinkle.