In Praise of the Humble List Poem
Who doesn’t make a list at some point in life? There are shopping lists, bucket lists, gratitude lists, lists of books to read, movies to see and things to do or one (possibly pointless) list that recently came across my transom, “24 Fun Lists to Make in an Empty Notebook.”
And then there’s The Humble List Poem. Also called “catalog poems” or “catalog verse,” list poems are, yes, lists. But they’re also lists with themes, lists with surprises and emotion, rhyme and reason. I like them because they’re an accessible entry into the Big Scary World of Poetry and Creative Writing. They harness the ordinary, the everyday and elevate them. Non-intimidating, yes, but also a way to experiment with poetic form. In the introduction to his book, The List Poem: A Guide to Teaching & Creating Catalog Verse (Teachers & Writers Press, 2000), poet and list-maker Larry Fagin notes that the list poem “allows one to develop a heightened awareness of the creative process: details (exactness of observation and language), variety, variation, surprise, action, imagery, patterns of sound and rhythm, continuity and repetition.”
The trick for list poems is to connect the words and ideas. They need to hang together. True, this is a lot like commonplace lists, but poems also need to include some kind of twist or turn. “Surprise in the sequence—a poetic bump in the road—is often desirable,” writes Fagin. “The inclusion of something that doesn’t belong will appeal to the eye, the imagination, and hopefully a sense of humor.”
Typically a list poem will start with a context or a theme and even grocery lists, carefully constructed, can become poems. Here is a list poem written by M.D., a young man in prison, about the weekly delivery of goods from the prison commissary. It’s called “Commissary Bag”:
Pay week in prison
Big bag of commissary
2 chocolate chip cookies
Peanut butter wafers
Munchies cheddar mix for football this weekend
Coffee, sweeteners and the expensive French vanilla creamer that costs $2.20
Not that cheap 90 cent shit
2 bags of Tang
It's good to have vitamin C when you have a cold
It's hard getting medicine in here
Shit, 2 of them chocolate donuts
A case of soups and crackers for hard times
20 stamped envelopes
30 dollars in tokens
2 phone cards
Soap, toothpaste
Irish spring and Crest
The good shit, well, as good as it gets in here
Hell, yeah, it's pay week.
The poem provides insight into the quotidian aspects of an extreme environment. The author manages to bring in details both prisoners and freeworlders can relate to (“cheddar mix for football”) but also includes others unique to the context (“It's hard getting medicine in here”). And notice how he beautifully brings the end right back to the beginning: “Hell, yeah, it’s pay week.”
Here’s a list poem from A.L., another prisoner:
crime
warrant
hiding
arrest
handcuffs
bars
big bad cop
no more rights
fingerprints
holding cell
anger
regret
self disappointment
coulda
shoulda
woulda
never again
population
cold nights
home sick
hard floors
nasty food
no freedom
no privacy
Dear God
seeking help
spirituality
changed man
courts
prayers
second chance
release . . .
crime
warrant
hiding
arrest . . .
There are several major turns in this piece. One is when the poet moves from the external symbols of punishment and incarceration (“handcuffs,” “big bad cop”) into inner “regret” and “self disappointment.” Another is a few lines from the end when the devastating cycle begins anew, despite the best of hopes and intentions.
For people who are marginalized (for lack of a better word), this is a low-key way to enter the world of creative freedom. Once written, once committed to paper, once typed and registered, perhaps even published, once shared and certainly remembered, there is the knowledge that you have accomplished something, that you have contributed to the great human dictionary of cultural literacy. And that could be the start of a whole new list.
So go ahead, make a list. Make it a list poem. Think about content and context. And indulge me while I provide a list of resources and examples:
Writer and artist Joe Brainard wrote an entire list book called I Remember. Every line starts with that phrase, from page one with I remember the first time I got a letter that said ‘After Five Days Return To’ on the envelope, and I thought that after I had kept the letter for five days I was supposed to return it to the sender. He’s still going on page 115—I remember little white fingernail spots—and ends on page 267 with I remember a dream of meeting a man made out of a very soft yellow cheese and when I went to shake his hand I just pulled his whole arm off.
Lisa Funderburg published “What Bad Owners Say at the Dog Park” in Brevity Magazine. Some choice morsels: He never does that/That’s his way of playing/Usually he likes kids. Funderburg wrote an accompanying essay about list poems in which she shares that while “[l]ists are an efficient way to give a broad sweep of information about a character or place or time . . . they [also] have an internal integrity that should be respected and carefully built.” In her dog-park poem, she explains, she organized the sayings so that readers felt “an increasing sense of threat and consequence that could result from the dog owner’s obtuseness.”
In his book The List Poem (above), Larry Fagin suggests listing body parts (to build your own Frankenstein, for instance) names of places, insults, characteristics of a pet, images from the neighborhood.
Early in my time teaching at the jail, I introduced list poems in the form of Saul Williams’ song/poem “African Student Movement.” (First, I had to wheedle a CD player from another pod down the hall.) Williams’ piece is, in essence, an elaborate list poem opening with Freedom, ignorance, jealousy, belligerence/Anger, self-control, tolerance, to and fro/Wisdom, ecstasy, addiction, dependency/Discipline, counter act, pray for peace, then attack/Dominance, contradict, upper class derelict/ Downgrade, downsize, upstate1, uprise. It includes the refrain: African People. African people. African People. African People./Shotgun. Shotgun. Shotgun. Shotgun.
Try a list of rules or regulations. Here’s a piece I wrote for Icarus journal, “Rules for Riding the PATH Train” (not a great reproduction). A list of rules at the Albuquerque jail might begin No gum, no guns, no cell phones, no recording devices. Lip balm okay, other cosmetics not.
How about Paul Simon’s song, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”?
Or beat poet Gary Snyder’s “Things to Do around Seattle.”
In New York, “upstate” is often code for prisons.