Tom C. Hunley admits a preference for say it how it feels clearly in layman’s terms. He was asked by Robert Lee Brewer “In your opinion, what makes a good collection?”
“Arranging poems into a collection is a lot like arranging lines into a poem. I think there should be the same kind of movement, from problem to solution, from buildup to crescendo, from exposition to denouement, whatever it may be. ”
The concept of what is beside what, the order of revelation, the relationship between small bits, each with their own amplitude wave and the collection as a whole taking on a distinct curve interests me now. Whether the small bits are poems, songs, paintings, photos, anecdotes, facts or whatever, they should stand alone and become differently interesting when they work in concert in a larger context into something also coherent.
Each part adds some new angle yet chimes melodiously and melds somehow, as ingredients in well-prepared food don’t struggle against each and by being together spoil or overpower the other. Similar enough to fit, distinct enough to add layers without becoming discordant.
Each element is like a haiga, or a news illustration, or an image with a caption. Each singly should hook. They shoudn’t wholly repeat one another. It has to have some element in common, some way to relate to the other elements so it can be understood. Our brains understand the world in terms of a sense of story and transitions through rhythm.
Even with no words and only a drum beat, some connection from sound to sound, some commonality helps us sort and organize and convey the elements for us to make context and therefore sense. If that is done with too much commonality it feels oppressively controlled and our sense of agency is frustrating. We can’t engage with something that we are entirely the passive receiver of. We need in some way to stretch to be the builder.
This idea of an overall movement comparable to a novel’s story in emotional ride is interesting. Our cut off line for how much work we want to put into, and how much hand-holding, spoon-feeding we need varies with where we are at, how much overlap our life has with the communication.
If the orientation to understand what we are seeing is already in us, then we have the range to make large leaps. It is already speaking our language. If there’s a rapture between what we know and what is being communicated, we need more interim steps to come forward to gather and lead us. The connection points are culturally embedded knowledge.
When a cluster of ideas (verbal, visual, auditory or a combined narrative pieces) are put together, for it to feel like a quilt, depends on what connections we can make ourselves. It is part of the job of the curator to put compatble pieces together that show off the other pieces and make an overarching piece.
How similar? How different? Some magazines have the fit so tight that an issue feels like one voice. The net effect sedates. Some collections of best of poems are bound best of anthologies without an eye to it being one work. It feels incidentally in one place by one person but doesn’t feel complete. The balance is to make something that has a sense of greater arc of story or can run as several parallel weaves as well to feel cohesive, tongue in groove.
Whether arranging a collection of my own or of others’ work, I give a lot of thought to the sequence, trying things this way and that until I’m satisfied that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – and then, when reading a new book (or magazine) of poems, I dip in anywhere, sometimes start at the back….
lol, me too. that’s ironic of us isn’t it. rebels to the cell, we are.