Series Installment #2, Featured: Morrie Creech
I had not seen Morrie Creech—one of my favorite mentors—since graduating from the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program, so when I had the chance to attend his workshop at the 2023 North Carolina Writers Network Fall Conference, I took it. I’m glad I did. Morrie is best known as a writer of formal poetry, for his lectures on Yeats, and for his close brush with Pulitzer fame in 2013, when his third collection, The Sleep of Reason, was a finalist for that prestigious award.
Morrie is highly skilled in both formal poetry, which has prescribed rhyme and meter—sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, etc.—and in non-formal poetry, often called “free verse.” Note “free” does not mean anything goes; just that free verse is not bound by the rules that govern forms.
The workshop at the NCWN conference turned out to be a much-needed refresher in the importance of sound in poetry. Here’s the key focus:
PAY ATTENTION TO SOUND AND METER, EVEN IN FREE VERSE POEMS.
When handwriting, I often write first drafts as blocks of prose then tinker with line breaks on the second and subsequent drafts. When composing on the computer, I do tend to “lineate” as I write. Either way, I almost never set out to write in rhyme. If a few rhymes show up, I’ll consider keeping them, more so if they’re internal—as opposed to end rhymes. I am wary of rhymes that come off as juvenile or singsong. Thus, I’d rather use a slant rhyme than a true rhyme. In short, I am cautious because I’m not very good at it.
By contrast, Morrie’s rhymes never come off as silly, predictable, or ill-conceived. His rhymes are sophisticated, artful, and always the result of his unrelenting and patient search for la mot juste. I recall hearing Morrie say that he wrote nothing but sonnets for two years, to force himself to master the form. Alas, he did not make a sonnet-writer of me—nobody could do that—but he did teach me to attend to sound and meter.
To hear Morrie expound on the distinguishing characteristics of the English language is fascinating. He points out that English is a stressed language, as compared to say, French, which is unstressed. He has, no doubt, indoctrinated hundreds of poets in the dynamics of meter—dimeter, trimeter, pentameter, etc.—and types of poetic feet—iambic, trochee, spondee, and some you’ve never heard of—as well as assonance and consonance. Morrie has certainly impressed my approach to sound and meter in my own poems. For example, I try a five-stress (pentameter) line as a base and see how well it works. I may lengthen lines to air out more expansive ideas or shorten lines to boil down or minimize, depending on the effect I want to convey.
This is not to say I always know what effect I’m shooting for. Sometimes, the poem arrives at a station not originally on the itinerary, and that’s a good place to stop. Or not. Either way, I’ve learned from Morrie to pay special attention to sound during the revision process. For instance, I may have the word “learned” on one line and “tilt” on the next. I could change “tilt” to “lean” to render a learn/lean combination that laps liquid on the lips. (Well, maybe that’s overstating it, but you get the point.)
I describe here only a thin slice of what Morrie has taught me yet hope I do him justice in conveying the importance of paying attention to sound in your poetry.
Morrie Creech teaches in the MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte. In addition to The Sleep of Reason(2013), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, his other poetry collections include the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize–winning Field Knowledge (2006), and the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize–winning Paper Cathedrals (2001). His honors include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, and a Southwest Review Elizabeth Matchett Stover Memorial Award.
Richard Allen Taylor, Poet 