Writing Problems: Freedom

Jastrun, Lorde, Miłosz, Gunn

W.S. Merwin used the term untrammeled to describe a poem’s innate right to freedom. A trammel is a kind of fishing net consisting of three layers, designed so that a fish entering through one of the large-meshed outer sections will push part of the finer-meshed central section through the large meshes on the other side, forming a pocket in which the fish is trapped.

Lindsay G. Thomas, Trammel Net, 1893

The real goal of a poem is the opposite of being trapped in a net. It’s about the poet using language to free the language—and therefore the self—from nets, slings, snags, tendrils, and barbs.