The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 11 September 2009

Writer's Digest, October 2008, pages 67 and 68, have an article by Dorianne Laux on poetry with the title, "The Leap." There's an exercise at the end that I will quote, but let me summarize the article first.

Dorianne points out that Spanish poetry often uses a leap into apparently unrelated imaginary material (I was reminded of the magical realism genre, but let's ignore that for the moment). A number of Spanish poets have used this technique, and in the 1960s it was introduced to America by the deep image poets. So there are number of examples of "the imaginative leap" in contemporary poetry.

Next there is an example of such a poem by Ellen Bass. "If You Knew" starts with the simple question, "what if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone?" And then it goes into some examples of what you might do if you knew that someone would die soon after you touched them. The final verse then reads:

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

"If You Knew" by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line, Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

A simple if somewhat unusual question, some consideration of what you might do, and then the fantastic metaphor.

There's another example, a modern-day poetic fable by Joseph Millar, with the title, "Sole Custody." It seems to be a parent and child talking about life, and then swerves into a simile, of sailors and ships and oceans.

OK? So that's the leap, mixing a strong fantastic image or metaphor into ordinary life.

And here's the exercise...

Try a Leap

"Write an imaginative poem where you knew you ask a theoretical question and extend it for as many lines as you can. Choose your examples from different areas of life so that you look at the question from a variety of angles or viewpoints. You could also tell a brief story taken from everyday life wherein you describe many of the various physical particulars and touch on one or two emotional moments.

"From one of these two foundations, allow yourself to leap into metaphor; find an image or a series of images that can contain and expand your extended ruminations.

"This exercise can also be used to resolve and revise an existing poem you feel hasn't yet attained its fullness and power. It may not be easy to find your metaphor at first. Don't be afraid to try anything: a box, a wave, a leaf.... look at your own life and don't rule anything out.

"Another approach might be to begin with the metaphor and find the context for it later. ...

[Skip]

"You might begin by describing an extended action such as weeding the yard, sweeping the porch, or dressing for work. After you've described your actions in minute detail, take a look and see how this description could be a metaphor for something else. Make that the title of the poem"

All right? Three different formats, really, each focusing on using an imaginative metaphor. One poses the question, consider some mundane examples, and then turns fantastic. Another simply considers something about life, and adds the fantastic to it. And the third... what if our mundane life is the fantastic?

Go ahead. A heaping cup of ordinary, and a teaspoon of fantasy. Reminds me a little bit of Peter Pan sprinkling fairy dust. You can fly!

Write?

Original posting 20 April 2009

I can think of three reasons why Japanese favors haiku, tanka, and other counted forms.

The first is... well, when I was first studying Japanese, my teacher recommended that I spend some time practicing speaking Japanese with a metronome. A good Japanese speaking style is for every syllable to be the same length -- the go-ju-on, or fifty phonemes, should theoretically each be pronounced and take one unit of time. English slows down and speeds up, Japanese shouldn't. There are certain words where this becomes very important, as the difference between them consists of a vowel with one unit of time and the same vowel with two units of time. Hospital and beauty parlor is one of those pairs of words that foreigners like me stumble over because the difference is simply how long you pronounce the vowel.

Incidentally, that same teacher recommended and showed me that Japanese can be spoken with a pencil between your teeth. Again, good Japanese speaking style is monotone, lacking the stress that English uses for accents.

This makes counting syllables much more reasonable.

The second reason relates to sentence structure. Japanese is usually considered to be SOV -- subject, object, verb. English is SVO. But even that is deceptive, because English depends on position much more than Japanese does. Japanese uses tags to identify what a word is doing in the sentence, and you can mix up the order of the words more easily. Although final verb is almost always final. The subject or topic is often dropped as implicit, and the other words making up the sentence are tagged to identify what they are. But most sentences end with a verb. And the verbs are very regular -- with tail endings that indicate past, present, future, etc. And those endings are regular. So if someone is writing in past tense, all of the verbs will end with the same ending. Whoops -- rhyming doesn't make a whole lot of sense if most of the words have the same sounds?

So -- counting syllables is easy when each phoneme should take one unit of time, and rhyming isn't a very good tool when most sentences automatically end with the same sounds.

Third is much more speculative. I mentioned you could omit the subject or topic. In fact Japanese conversation often drops lots of pieces. That paring of the sentence down to an essential core -- often just a verb, or a noun and a verb -- is very good style for Japanese. I think this makes counted forms more reasonable. Instead of working with the melody of the language, speeding up and slowing down, with stressed and unstressed syllables, Japanese conversation drops words into a counted matrix.

Kind of like feeding the koi in a pond, watching the ripples bounce away from their greedy little mouths.

I hope some of that makes sense. Yes, I think haiku and tanka are probably easier and somewhat more suited to Japanese. At the same time, it's a lot of fun trying to transplant these forms and see what happens.

Original posting: Wed, 22 Dec 1993 10:31:05 JST

[no idea now what provoked this, but it's kind of interesting]

randy?

the great pretender

tink

pretends...

Poems have to
stand on their own.

but
    words
          may
                l i e   h e r e
or there

          dance
some even dance
          dance

echo romance!

and prance, prance, prance until the end of time
(or at least until your quarter's gone)

lyrical bouys just waive to the music.

poems gotta go.

me too.

HI!

<tschiku...tschiku...tschiku...tschiku...tschiku...tschiku...>

TAKE THE NEEDLE OFF!  Let's hear some Fleetwood Mac!

Original posting: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 16:31:55 JST

This is one way to sing the tribal lay [Mr. Kipling, I presume?]

Usually I start with a phrase, often one that has been resounding in the noisy echo chamber of my mind for a while. When I notice these, I write them down.

After a while or at the time, I listen to myself, playing with the phrase. Its internal beat, imagery, and random thoughts bring forth other raw bits. These I put down as they occur to me, often with some variations, until I have a good stack of jackstraws.

Now I start polishing pieces, fitting them together, turning them inside out, backwards, tossing them back on the stack, suddenly pulling a new straw out of thin air. I read them out loud, try out variations, scratch and pound to hear the sound.

At some point, this warm cauldron of super-critical solution usually starts to crystallize, with a lurch and a drone, into blocks. [Be careful, it can just boil over and make a mess of your clothes, but that doesn't happen too often.]

Now comes the final polishing for this stage. I clear away the extra straw, and look closely at the crystal formed in the middle. I read it, testing each word, and each image, looking for weak spots and flaws. Sometimes it's as small a thing as adding a comma, or switching tenses, sometimes I rip out a whole section or toss the whole mess aside, but at this point I'm as critical as I can be with myself. Sometimes the whole mess goes back into the cauldron and gets stirred again.

Next comes a cooling phase, just as in tempering metals. If you have a handy friend or writer's discussion group, you might try the ice water plunge - let them rip it. But you need someone who won't pull punches for this. [Why is it that immediately upon submitting to such scrutiny, tinny spots, gaping holes, and sheer idiotic goofs become vividly evident to your own idle review? Should be a murphy's law about that.]

Lacking that, or preferring a more gentle tempering, set it aside. I find that I need at least two weeks, with a month better, and even longer is best, to let the echoes of the forging fade away. When you've forgotten it, then pick it up again, and read it with the eyes of a stranger. Does it demand your attention? Do the words, the phrases, the images pulse and beat with life as you read them? Does it make you stop and read it slowly, aloud, listening to your own voice bring tears to your eyes? Do you feel as though you should stop strangers in the street and read it to them, just for the joy of seeing their eyes open as the words carry them out of everyday life and into nirvana?

If it does, congratulations. Put a copy in your files and start sending it out. Otherwise, either toss it in the scraps file to try again later, or polish it again in the same glowing heat, then temper again.

What always amazes (and somewhat irritates) me is when someone glances as something that has been through this process and says something about how natural and simple it is. I've almost learned not to jump on them and scream about how much effort went into making it read that way, but it's still hard to realize that this is one of the highest compliments, that you've gone beyond studied artfulness into the craft of Art. Think of bonsai - years of effort to make a tree look "just like the tree growing on the cliff near my house."

Make sure your poetry isn't noticed, just enjoyed. [oh, oh, he's trying for subtleness. Get ready to catch him, he always trips himself when he does this...]

I wish I knew enough about rhythm and blues to help with the technical side of things, but maybe this description will help a little. Guess I'm just a guy who grew up with hard rock and leaves of grass, and knows (sometimes) what he likes, but doesn't know all the right words. One last advice - keep belting 'em out, anyway you can, and someone will hear echoes of themselves resonating in your words.

['zat's about enough of that, boss man. go have a cuppa and let someone else have the drum for a while, ok?]

Original posting: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 20:31:00 -0400

Recently, I saw a plaque that consisted of four relatively short chunks of writing (I hesitate to call them poetic, although others might).

The first consisted of several statements about "Life as a rainbow."  The second talked about "life as an unsung song."  Then it ended with two simple lines:

"the beauty of a rainbow may be contemplated in solitude.
The mystery of a song begs to be shared."

I think of this as basically two extended similes (Life is like a cracker, crispy on the outside, dry on the inside, and crunchy when broken...) and then a pair of metaphorical implications (a cracker tastes better with salt [and the silent echoing thought about whether a life also needs a little salt])

Hokay?

So, your job:

1.  Pick two little bits of reality (rainbow, song, tree, pebble, river, hurricane, etc.)
2.  Pick a general thing (life, love, peace of mind, justice, etc.)
3.  Stretch those similes!  Make lists of characteristics of the reality chunks.  You might make a list of the characteristics of the abstraction, too.  Mix and match, compare and contrast, and pick out the ones that really feel powerful.
4.  Arrange into two extended similes and a pair of observations.
5.  Polish, tighten, and make the words twinkle.

Write!

Original Posting: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 21:18:00 -0400



take a few moments and read these four lines.  What do they call to your mind?  Does the timbrel (a tambourine by any other name?)  remind you of anything?  What about the clarion (an adjective pretending to be a noun?  aha, that's merely a confusion by the Oxford American Dictionary, the OED has a shrill-sounding trumpet with a narrow tube, formerly used in war.)  Anyway, what does that call to mind?

And the Love with streaming hair?

The "loneliness of yesterday?"

What did these words bring to you?  What did you bring to these words?

Let your self respond.  What words, phrases, scenes do you want to put together?

Feel free to write a lush and lengthy essay, a rather diverting little tale of tawdriness, or even a sparse and thought-provoking poem...

Or just a few scattered thoughts, without direction, and wandering where they will?

But write!

Original posting: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 22:50:42 -0400

Okay, here's the ploy.

Take a series of some kind.  Something borrowed, something blue.  Alpha and Omega.  Anna one, anna two, anna three, four, five...louie, louie, louai!

Got your series?

Frame a story, a poem, a fragment with that series interlaced.  For example, use the words of the series as the headings on poetic bits.  Or consider weaving the series into the beginning lines of each paragraph/stanza.

Now, as the words tumble along, consider a twist on the series.  Instead of one, two, three, infinity, perhaps you want to use one, two, three, mathematics!  Or alpha, beta, gambling?

Start the reader along a path, then provide a little shift that shows them
some magic...

Write, okay?

original posting: Fri, 10 May 1996 10:23:56 EDT

[Fryday, when fish are filleted and beef delayed. Out of the pan and into the flames, it's time for writing!]

Let me see. How about a poetic extravagance?

[those who don't do poetry--just skip the parts that don't please you, and go right ahead and do your exercises anyway.]

First, let's toss in a definition:

portmanteau word: A word formed by combining two or more words. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll referred to his own inventions in the poem "Jabberwocky" as "portmanteau words": "You see," says Humpty Dumpty, explaining to Alice that slithy means lithe and slimy, "it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word." James Joyce made extensive use of portmanteau words in Finnegans Wake, as, for example, "bisexcycle."

(p. 213 in Literary Terms: A Dictionary by Beckson and Ganz)

[I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but it seems innocently intriguing, at least until the penny drops in.]

Second:

ottava rima: In English, a stanza consisting of eight lines in iambic pentameter rhymed abababcc. Used by such noted writers as Boccaccia, Pulci, and Tasso, it was a favored stanza for narrative and epic verse. Adapting the form for his mock epic, Byron uses ottava rima in Don Juan, which opens:

I want a hero: an uncommon want
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one:
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan--
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

(p. 187 in Literary Terms: A Dictionary by Beckson and Ganz)

[pssst? What's an iambic pentameter, again? A brand name for pens that are five meters long?

Close, but no poetry. Pentameter means five feet, iambic means each foot is unstressed syllable followed by stressed. So we got ah thump, ah thump, ah thump, ah thump, ah thump in each line. Leastwise, that's what the book say.

Oh. I thought maybe we needed nickel loafers.]

And, last but not yeast, pick a number from one to six.

1. Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down. Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)
2. With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much. Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1833-34) 2.7
3. The heaviest baggage for a traveler is an empty purse. English Proverb.
4. The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost. Murray Ray Kempton, quoting Lane Adams' daughter, "Is This All?" America Comes of Middle Age (1963)
5. Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. William Dement, Newsweek, Nov. 30, 1959.
6. Society is now one polished horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored. Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), 13.95

(Quotes from The International Thesaurus of Quotations by Tripp)

[knead that! Work it, roll it around, and let the little grey cells brewed over it a while.]

That's likely enough stimulation, if not too much, for the fevered fingers of our poets (who knowits?). A thema, a schema, and a portmanteau, mon dieux!

So give it a try--after all, it is Friday, and you've got fish to fry, right?

[a single sentence starter? Unrelated to the iambic pentameter, since my thumping in the night seems to have an arrhythmic urgency to it?

The music was a wash of purple in the dusk, the gunshot a flash of white.

Suitable for framing or whatever tales wag your puppy's butt. You are welcome to bend, staple, mutilate, and even fold this sentence, but don't stop until the words come.]

a thump in the night
and a hearty keyboard clicking
it's...

a writer at work!