The Donut Theory of Poetry

On writing around substance

The Donut Theory

French literary critic and theorist Michel Riffaterre published his influential Semiotics of Poetry in 1978. It's a difficult book to wade through, but it does provide helpful guidance on how to distinguish poetic language from prose writing. Riffaterre strongly makes the point that poetry is not simply 'cutting up prose’. It's a different form of language altogether.

The simplest way to understand Riffaterre's theory is to view a poem as a donut. Whereas prose directly speaks to the point the writer is trying to make, poetry is purposefully indirect and makes use of the suggestive power of language. The actual subject or central idea of the poem is never directly stated.

Interior of the Pantheon, Rome by Giovanni Paolo Panini (1747)

Invisible God

It is poetry's indirection that allows it to operate in a separate dimension compared with other forms of writing. And this is something the writers of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Lamentations understood well. If God is Spirit and is therefore unseeable and unfathomable, trying to define God in literal terms is nearly impossible. The work of the poet, as opposed to the theologian, is to revel in the mystery of God and find ways to point to Him with the imperfect tools of human experience and language.

Poetry as Inception

Another way to think of this idea is that a poem is a form of 'inception'; it's a subtler way of planting ideas and images in the reader's mind, by taking an indirect route. I often hold this approach in my mind when I'm writing poetry. What is the central image or images I want to conjure in the reader's mind? How can I lead the reader to where I want to take them, without them seeing the path I am laying?

There is a dream-like quality to poems, but the danger is that in trying to share the experience of my dreaming, something vital is lost, something that is very difficult to express in words.

Robert Frost

Let’s apply the 'donut approach' to a well-known poem. Say you wanted to write a poem about the fall of humanity and its consequences for creation, and how nature retains a memory of original sin. A poem about the fleeting perfection of Eden which is lost but still echoes down throughout the eons. How would you go about it?

Well, if you were Robert Frost, you might write something like Nothing Gold Can Stay:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Notice that Frost never mentions Adam and Eve or their temptation by the serpent. He foregrounds nature itself, and begins the poem paradoxically. In the natural world, we know that the first green is not gold. But we also intuitively know what Frost is getting at — there is a fleetingness to the beginning of things, a flashing transition between the budding of a plant and its maturity. You blink and you miss it. So too with humanity. There is an aching desire within all of us to stay forever young, or for our children to stop growing up so fast. Dawn breaks through the night and it is glorious and golden; too quickly, however, it is over and the sun is rising fast. The day is already on its way to being finished. We live in a fallen world, and the brief tastes of heaven that we receive through nature are momentary and cannot be held onto for long.

Worked Example

Let's say you wanted to write a poem about the loneliness of kings, the desperate solitude that comes with absolute power. Instead of writing directly about kings and loneliness, poetic language approaches the idea by way of suggestion and references. What words/images can we link to the concept of 'the loneliness of kings?' I can think of a few:

• hard thrones

• whispering courtiers

• manic jesters

• unfeeling wealth

• humiliating impotence

• blurred feasts

• empty halls

• dull swords

From the above we could write a poem with the intent to bring the reader to the concept of 'the loneliness of kings' without ever directly saying it, such as:

Jestering

Who is the true jester?

The manic clown racing through empty halls
His cackling laughter unabashed before
The dulled blades of the guards?

The red-faced minstrel strumming love ballads
And singing of epic romance
Before banquets of concerned courtiers?

The one-legged joculator performing bawdy pranks
On the bored concubines who drape
Their bodies over the hard edges of the throne?

Or is it the man gazing deep into the mirror
Tucked in a silent chamber
Lit by thin moonlight
A crown resting heavy on his temples?

Conclusion

In my opinion, one aspect that can separate a good poem from a great one is how well it manages the tension between distancing itself from, and suggesting itself to, what the poet is actually wanting the reader to experience. So if there’s a poem you have sitting in your drafts which you want to try the ‘donut theory’ on, I suggest finding the center of the poem (the key image or theme or idea) and removing it. Instead, let your poem dance around it and nod to it, and see if your readers can work it out for themselves. This can lead to real poetic magic.

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About the author: A. A. Kostas is a Canadian-Australian writer and lawyer, currently based in Singapore. His poetry, fiction, essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Clayjar Review, The Rialto Books Review, and Ekstasis. You can read more of his work on his Substack:

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