A Poet's Perspective for Writers: Charles Rafferty's "Maxims and Observations"



A Less Fabulous Infinity
by Charles Rafferty



In keeping with our conversations on creativity, our  guest this week is poet Charles Rafferty, whose insightful and elegant prose stirs the creative soul.  A National Endowment for the Arts grant winner in 2009, Charles offers much wisdom to writers:

• There is a difference between the predictable and the probable, between the vague and the mysterious, between deviation and variation. The poet must learn when each is acceptable. Reading widely helps.
• Exclamation points are too often a cry of wolf. I prefer people to scream when they are actually on fire.
• Some poems end like surgery—the problem solved, the pain a memory, the stitching so tight that nothing leaks. Other poems end like a diagnosis.
• We respond to clichés the way we respond to form letters and junk mail — something the writer didn’t bother to craft, a kind of boilerplate for the soul.
• Having too strict a meter can be like having the bass up so high on your stereo that you can’t make out the harpsichord. Too loose a meter can be like static.
• There are no five-leggers. Nature prefers symmetry.

Charles' books are available on Amazon.