Writing About Time Without Writing a Clock Poem

Time is the most abstract subject in poetry and the most likely to be a cliché. A judge on the three moves that turn a time poem into a real one, the test that tells you if the poem is about time or about you, and the one image that always works.

Time is the most abstract subject in poetry, and it is the most likely to be a cliché. Every contest pile has a stack of time poems that are about the clock, the calendar, the seasons, the way time passes. The poem is a clock, and the clock is the thing that every other poem in the pile is also about.

The time poem that works is not about time. It is about the person who is in it.

The clock trap

The clock poem is the one that tells you what time does. The passing, the changing, the fading, the way it moves. It is accurate and it is flat, because the time is the subject and the subject is the one thing the reader already knows.

A poem about time should not describe the time. It should describe what the time does to the person who is in it.

The three moves that turn a time poem into a real one

Move one: put a person in it. The time poem that works has a person in it, a self, a parent, a child. The time is the stage; the person is the play. The poem is about the person in the time, not the time itself.

Move two: give the time a body. The time should be doing something to the body, the hands that are slower, the eyes that are weaker, the way the body changes. If the time is just sitting there, it is a backdrop. If it is doing something to the body, it is a subject.

Move three: let the time change you. The best time poems are the ones where the speaker is different at the end than they were at the beginning, and the time is the thing that changed them. The time is the agent; the poem is the change.

The question that decides

Here is the question I ask when I am judging a time poem: is this poem about the time, or is it about the person in the time? If the answer is the time, it is a clock poem. If the answer is the person, it is a poem.

The clock poem says 'this is what time does'. The real time poem says 'this is what time did to me'. The difference is the difference between a clock and a life.

A worked example

Bad: 'Time passes and the seasons change and the years go by and I am getting older.' The time is the subject; the speaker is absent.

Better: 'I have learned to tell the time by the light on the wall, and I have become the person who knows when it is four in the afternoon without looking at a clock.' The time is the agent; the speaker is the person who is changed by it. The poem is about the person who has been changed by the time, not the time itself.

Where it goes wrong

The trap is the poem that is a meditation on time. The meditation is not a poem; it is a thought. The poem is the thing that the time did to the person who was in it, and the doing is the work.

If you want to see a time poem that is about the person, the prompts library has a set on time and the self, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The time is the stage. The person is the play.

Keep reading

For the craft side, the time collection covers the deeper method. The volta module is the page to read next, and the metaphor module is where the work goes when it is done.

By Writory Editorial, for Writory.

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