Coffeehouse: Nov. 3

Our first coffeehouse is Nov. 3. Students who attend and read will gain extra credit. This is not a required event, but we'd love to see you there! Coffee and refreshments will be served! Bring your family and (of course) your writing!

Beginning a Story: Ways to Start a Story

Please read this blog entry and take appropriate notes concerning the advice found here. You will be expected to know this material for our quiz next class.

A beginning promises more to come. It should hook our attention, allow us entrance into the world of the story. Beginnings need to be full of potential for the characters (and the reader). Some simple ways writers do this is the following (taken from The Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich)

Setting: setting sets the stage and raises our expectations, introduces us to location, time, and supports character, tone, mood and POV.

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half-way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.

Ideas: While this can sometimes be dry or essay-like, it can also characterize a speaker, a place, an important motif or tone of a story.

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them…”

Imagistic or Strong Sensations: Imagery invites your reader to experience your narrative, giving you a good start. It also helps establish setting, usually.

1956. The air-conditioned darkness of the Avenue Theater smells of flowery pomade, sugary chocolates, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

A Need or Motive: Need is essential for all major characters. It is usually what drives the
conflict and characterization, also the plot in a story. Starting off with a motive or need is
the fastest way to learn what characters want.

On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Their first words always were as they ran to greet him, “What have you got for me, daddy?” and he had nothing.

Action: Action catches our attention.

The pass was high and wide and he jumped for it, feeling it slap flatly against his hands, as he shook his hips to throw off the halfback who was diving at him.

Scene: Usually in one sentence, combines action, setting, and character.

Card-playing was going on in the quarters of Narumov, an officer in the Guards.

Symbolic Object: Describe an object that has significance to your story, characters, plot. Usually a reader will recognize the importance of an object if mentioned in the first paragraph of a story.

An antique sleigh stood in the yard, snow after snow banked up against its eroded runners.

Sex: Sex sells. It also gets our attention.

After I became a prostitute, I had to deal with penises of every imaginable shape and size.

Character portrait: Introduces a reader to your protagonist or an important character.

The girl’s scalp looked as though it had been singed by fire—strands of thatchy red hair snaked away from her face, then settled against her skin, pasted there by sweat and sunscreen and the blown grit and dust of travel.

Character’s Thoughts: Like a portrait, this one’s internal.

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Question: A direct way to motivate the reader, who often wants to know the answer to a posed question.

“Well, Peter, any sign of them yet?”

Prediction: Creating an ominous tone, a prediction foreshadows or hints at the ultimate ending of a story.

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.

Anecdote: an anecdote (a short story) can introduce an important idea or theme, create a symbol, or set a particular tone.

The village of Ukleyevo lay in the ravine, so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the cotton mills could be seen from the highway and the railroad station. When passers-by would ask what village it was, they were told: “that’s the one where the sexton ate up all the caviar at the funeral.”

Lab Activity: look through a collection of short stories (for example the one we are reading) and note how the author opens his/her story. What technique is the author using. Post your response to the forum by the end of this class.

Activity: Continue writing your story. If you haven't started yet, choose one of the beginnings and use it to start a story.

HOMEWORK: Read any of the horror writers in the compilation and post your response to the story or the author's style on the forum. You must do at least one forum post for this book. Finish reading various stories on your own time. Forum post due by end of next week (Thursday, Nov. 3)

Short Story Project #1

Let's complete our genre presentations, then go next door to write.

Lab Work: Fiction baseline. Brainstorming. Use any of the following prompts to start a story:

A. Start immediately with a scene. Write the opening page of a story in which a party or special event is in progress.
B. Start with an intriguing problem. Start a story with a question or decision that must be made now.
C. Start a story with a crisis. Start a story where the protagonist recognizes a serious illness or disease or health problem.
D. Start with something unusual or odd. Start a story where a protagonist witnesses a strange or unnatural event.
E. Start a story with an emotional event. Start a story where the protagonist suffers public humiliation or embarrassment.

Your story can be any genre. You should specifically choose a genre (one we learned about during the presentations) and recall what readers expect from a story in this genre. Knowing this before writing will help you write the story.

HOMEWORK: Read one of the stories in the collection and post a response to the forum. You may do this as often as you'd like for extra credit. Please complete at least ONE post by Nov. 1.

Read the article: "Breaking Ground" and take notes in your journal/notebook on key concepts for next class.

Fiction Beginnings & Genre

Reading: "Interim" by Ray Bradbury and "The Stupid Joke" by Edward Gorey.

The Gastlycrumb Tinies

Genre & Beginnings

At our level writing is a great way to express yourself. But make no mistake. Writing is a business.
Readers often select books similar to previous enjoyment. If a reader enjoyed a fantasy, the reader is most likely to continue reading fantasy, for example. Last year we covered the three typical types of readers (remember that most people combine these to various degrees):

• Fantasists: readers who read to escape the tediousness of ordinary life, seeking new frontiers and imaginative fiction
• Realists: readers who read about contemporary life to learn about or reinforce personal experiences
• Pragmatists: readers who read for a specific purpose--from cooking to learning history or science

Readers also become loyal to writers so that once you read Stephen King, for example, you might devour as much of his work to make you sick of his style before tearing into another author's work. Publishers count on this to occur.

In today's writing market there are a variety of genres that writers tend to write. Knowing what readers expect from these genres will help you as a writer give your audience what it wants. So let's learn about them!

Please sign up for a genre group. You will read about this genre, take notes, and present what information you can to the class.

When (and if) we return to the lab, please begin a beginning for your first fiction draft:

Lab Work: Fiction baseline. Brainstorming. Use any of the following prompts to start a story:

A. Start immediately with a scene. Write the opening page of a story in which a party is in progress.
B. Start with an intriguing problem. Start a story with a question or decision that must be made now.
C. Start a story with a crisis. Start a story where the protagonist recognizes a serious illness or disease or health problem.
D. Start with something unusual or odd. Start a story where a protagonist witnesses a strange or unnatural event.
E. Start a story with an emotional event. Start a story where the protagonist suffers public humiliation or embarrassment.

HOMEWORK: Read any of the stories in the collection that include: Ambrose Bierce, Crawford, Blackwood, Bradbury, Bloch, Campbell, Collier, Dahl, Hartley. (Do not read Churchill or Gorey...we'll read them in class). Do not read past authors with last names after "G"--and post at least one forum response to the story on our classroom forum.

Read the article: "Breaking Ground" and take notes in your journal/notebook on key concepts.

Fiction (more Poetry) and Contests

Okay, not the end of poetry just yet. We have been asked by the RPO to play around with poetry and music. The two often go together as you probably figured out by now.

During 7th period, please work on the project posted below this post. Begin playing around with ideas and a draft. I'll give anyone who completes a draft of this poem and turns it in, extra credit. I'll give MORE extra credit, if you are willing to work on a second or third draft of your poem. I'll give EVEN MORE EXTRA CREDIT to any poet whose poem is selected by the RPO.

There are a variety of other poetry and fiction contests coming up as well: SOKOL (deadline Jan. 27) and Hollins.

During 8th period, let's go next door to begin looking at some fiction stuff.

HOMEWORK: Keep workin' on the RPO poem and other poems you want to complete. Feel free to read Ambrose Bierce, F. Marion Crawford, Algernon Blackwood, and Ray Bradbury in the suspense/horror collection. Please refrain from reading the other authors at this moment. We'll get to them.

RPO Project

RPO Project and Contests

The next RPO project/contest is for the November concerts. These have a Spanish/Latin theme.

Please listen to the following recordings and think about creating poems inspired by the music. The winning poems will be read at the concerts, just like the postcards in September.

 

 Arild envisioned the poetry to flow off of Ravel's Bolero and/or the Gabriela Lena Frank Three Latin American Dances (Spanish/Latin elements).

Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins. The term is also used for some art music. In all its forms, the bolero has been popular for over a century.

 

Bolero

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

WRITERS: step one: listen to Bolero. Close your eyes (I'll darken the room). Listen to the music and the rhythms. When you have finished listening, jot down images or memories that came to you when you listened to the piece. Make a list of images and memories you had. 

Then listen to the piece again. What strong image or idea forms in your mind? Focus on this topic or theme.

After listening (at least twice, although you can keep listening...which may become maddening) and brainstorming, select an image and write about it using imagery. Feel free to organize your poem into stanzas or keep a fluid rhythm going (cadence). See: all that learning is helpful for something...

 

Some facts and info: Bolero rhythm.

The bolero is a 3/4 dance that originated in Spain in the late 18th century, a combination of the contradanza and the sevillana. Dancer Sebastiano Carezo is credited with inventing the dance in 1780. It is danced by either a soloist or a couple. It is in a moderately slow tempo and is performed to music which is sung and accompanied by castanets and guitars with lyrics of five to seven syllables in each of four lines per verse. It is in triple time and usually has a triplet on the second beat of each bar. 

A triplet in poetry is either a three line stanza (tercet) or the anapest or dactyl. See LINE AND METER (post below).

 

What might a sample poem look like? Take a gander at this free-verse poem by Jane Clark:

Interpretation: Ravel's "Bolero"

Softly, slyly, flute and drum begin to weave their net Of notes; the slow seductive beat evokes the stomp of gypsy feet Inside some smoky dim cantina, where a woman's silhouette Is dancing with abandon to the pulsing, pounding the Of the flamenco or fandango...the bolero or beguine. It's unremitting rhythm, darkly sensual in tone, Restrains a fierce and frenzied spirit in it's own Measured meter...persistent and alone Beneath the sultry overtones Of the trumpets and trombones, Echoed closely by the throbbing of the strings In which the melody continuously, sinuously sings A refrain that is almost overcome By the passion and the power of the drum, Of the drum. Now, in the same obsessive cadence, and without accelerando, It mounts to it's finale in a thunderous crescendo With the crashing of the cymbals and the gong! And the hot, erotic beat of the drum, Of the drum, of the drum.

Bolero by Gerald Stern b. 1925 Gerald Stern

 

So one day when the azalea bush was firing

away and the Japanese maple was roaring I

came into the kitchen full of daylight and

turned on my son’s Sony sliding over the

lacquered floor in my stocking feet for it was

time to rattle the canisters and see what

sugar and barley have come to and how Bolero

sounds after all these years and if I’m loyal

still and when did I have a waist that thin?

And if my style was too nostalgic and where

were you when I was burning alive, nightingale?   

 

In "Bolero," for example, the rhythm of the dance is duplicated visually on the page, with one extremely long line followed by two short lines in an approximation of the "slow / quick-quick" of this very slow and sensuous dance. I wanted the reader to be stretched out to the limit of the page, and only then snapping back to the left margin--to reality? back to earth?--where he is allowed to take a breath (i.e., the stanza break) before returning to the fray. 

Bolero 
 
   Not the ratcheting crescendo of Ravel's bright winds 
   but an older, 
   crueler 
 
   passion: a woman with hips who knows when to move them, 
   who holds nothing back 
   but the hurt 
 
   she takes with her as she dips, grinds, then rises sweetly into 
   his arms again. 
   Not 
 
   delicate. Not tame. Bessie Smith in a dream of younger, 
   (Can't you see?) 
   slimmer 
 
   days. Restrained in the way a debutante is not, the way a bride 
   pretends she 
   understands. 
 
   How everything hurts! Each upsurge onto a throbbing toe, 
   the prolonged descent 
   to earth, 
 
   to him (what love …) 

Poetry's End & Awful Poetry

We are closing our poetry unit. If you failed or didn't learn those poetry terms from the test, please learn them. You will not be able to master writing if you don't know what kinds of tools a writer can use.

Today, during 7th period, please finish any poem drafts you've been working on. I'm not collecting these for grades--that ship has sailed, but you can give them to me to put in your portfolio. You will be revisiting all your poems next semester.

Feel free to continue writing poetry. You don't need my permission. Just write it. If a poem comes to you during a fiction assignment task, feel free to write the poem draft and put it in your portfolio. Want to write a thousand and three poems? Do it. We'll come back to any drafts you write between now and the next time we see poetry in workshop.

During 8th period, please go to room a238. Let's read some advice about awful poems. Then, let's read some awful poems for the fun of it.

HOMEWORK: None. You are free to write and complete any poetry drafts you'd like before we move on to fiction Thursday.

Poem Assignments: Portfolio

We have done a variety of poetry exercises and should have a variety of drafts in our portfolio by now. These include:

1. The Ordinary Things drafts (x5)
2. Sound Imagery draft
3. Gwendolyn Brooks draft (character or setting or cycle)
4. Imagery draft (lyric)
5. Closed form draft

And a variety of revisions--specifically the imagery revision, the sound revision, the diction/tone revision, and the line break revision. The lyric and narrative poems, along with Li-Young Lee optional poem are additional. If you did them, please make sure they were in your portfolio.

That's 9 required assignments and at least 3 optional ones. The optional ones took the place of missing required drafts.

Your portfolio this marking period is based on effort rather than skill. During the second semester your portfolios will be graded on skill and whether or not you are crafting your work and revising.

Some advice:

• Many students are spending far too much time either chatting and avoiding work (this includes surfing the internet) or getting stuck, unable to come up with an idea for a draft. Remember that the Enemies of the Artistic Process are looming everywhere. The only way to defeat them is to sit down and take your writing seriously by...writing.
• The time given to you in lab is to give you time and opportunity to write. If you find yourself unproductive during a class, it is your responsibility to complete the work at home or during a study hall or after school. This is not the place to complete your homework for other classes.
• The writing process works. You NEED to brainstorm when you get stuck. You need to finish a draft in a timely manner so that it can "bake" before we scramble it up again. Throw perfection out the window with the baby--it only comes after several failed drafts. Don't get frustrated if things don't flow. They will--but you might need more time and life experience.
• This marking period includes a lot more reading than we have been doing. I check your reading by giving you quizzes and reading your posts on the forum (apart from class discussions). I am not going to be chasing you about getting your work done on the forum. It is a requirement for this class.
• If you keep missing assignments or don't know what's going on, please make sure you read the blog. I can't stress this enough. Even when you're absent--check and read the blog! Write down deadlines and assignments. Keep track of your assignments. Your mother (or teacher) should not have to do this for you....

Quiz & Closed Form

Contemporary poets spend 9/10th of their time writing in free verse. They often have an informal tone, as if your best friend is speaking directly to you. This informality is fine, particularly if we want poetry for the masses (poetry for everyone to enjoy). But what happens when you want a little structure to your art?

Welcome to closed form! Some of these may be familiar to you, as you are generally introduced to them in elementary school. They are not elementary in the least, though--being rather difficult to master. They are very easy to screw up.

Samples of Verse (closed form):

The Stanza (break your ideas into parts, like paragraphs. There are many types:)

• Tercet (Terza Rima) – 3 line stanza (terza rima, rhyming aba)
• Quatrain – 4 line stanza (most common form of stanza)
• Quintain – 5 line stanza
• Sestet – 6 line stanza
• Chaucerian (used by Chaucer) – 7 line stanza, rhyming ababbcc
• Ottava Rima – 8 line stanza, rhyming abababcc
• Spenserian (used by Spenser)—8 iambic pentameter lines, followed by a hexameter line, rhyming ababbcbcc

Closed Form Verse: Verse can be lyric (20 lines or less usually), or narrative (more than 20 lines, etc.) They can even be both!:

• The Villanelle (Lyric, narrative) (5 tercets rhyming ABA, followed by 1 quatrain, ABAA)
• The Sestina (Lyric, narrative) (6 sestets & a tercet)
• The Pantoum (Lyric, narrative) (unspecified # of quatrains (ABAB), beginning and ending with same line)
• The Sonnet (Lyric, dramatic) 14 iambic pentameter lines (3 quatrains and a couplet)
• Petrarchan (abba abba cde cde (or cd cd cd))
• Shakespearean (abab cdcd efef gg)
• Spencerian (abab bcbc cdcd ee)
• The Ballad (Narrative) Quatrain stanzas, rhyming ABAB or ABCB
• The Heroic Couplet (Epic, narrative, dramatic) couplet in iambic pentameter or tetrameter
• Epistle (a “letter” in heroic verse)
• Epigram (an aphorism, usually written in couplets)
• Blank Verse (Epic, narrative, dramatic) unrhymed iambic lines
• Limerick (Narrative) 5 line poem, rhyming aabba – often sexual or ‘rude’ subject matter
• Haiku (Lyric) 3 line poem, fewer than 17 syllables; usually about nature
• Triolet (Lyric) Octave with 2 rhymes; first line repeated, second line repeated as eighth
• The Rondel (Lyric) 13 lines in 3 stanzas with 2 rhymes, first 2 lines form refrain at end of 2 & 3 stanza

 LAB: Try one, two, eight, sixteen, a million of these forms. Write at least one closed form poem.

Poetry Unit: Quiz

Friday, you will take the poetry unit quiz.

What should you know?

The Complete Writing Process: brainstorming/generating ideas, composing a first draft, editing, revision (drafting), publication.

1. How to begin a poem
2. Imagery: the five senses, simile, personification, metaphor, allusion, universal images or symbols.
3. Figurative language
4. Diction, tone, connotation, denotation
4. Elements of sound: onomatopoeia, assonance, consonance, alliteration, euphony, cacophony, liquids, mutes, vowels, consonants
5. Line: length (short vs. long), metrical lines (particularly pentameter, tetrameter, and alexandrine.) Iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, caesura, enjambment, stanza
6. Meter & prosody
7. Open form; Closed form
8. Lyric, narrative, free verse 

Line & Meter

Metrical Feet:

Two classifications of poetry: open forms; closed forms.

A closed form (traditional poetry), cadence groups form a pattern.
An open form (free verse, mainly), cadence groups do not form a set pattern.
Poetry in open forms tends to stress meaning over versification.

Syllables: individual units of rhythm in a word or line.
Stress: this class. Also, the emphasis placed on a syllable in a word.
Unstressed: lighter stress, not so heavy as the stress above.

Metrical feet:

1-foot = monometer
2-foot = dimeter
3-foot = trimeter
4-foot = tetrameter
5-foot = pentameter (the meter used in sonnets and blank verse lines; very common)
6-foot = hexameter
7-foot = heptameter
8-foot = octameter
9-foot = nonameter
10-foot = decameter

2 Syllable Feet:

Iambic: stress is on the second of two syllable words: ex. reTURN, beCAUSE, atTACK, etc.

Trochee: reverse of the Iambic, stress is on the first of two syllables: MOTHer, SISter, BORing.

Spondee: Both syllables are stressed.

3 Syllable Feet:

Anapest: stress is on the last syllable of a three syllabled word. Ex. Chevro-LET, rockandROLL

Dactyl: stress on first syllable followed by two non stressed. Ex. BU-da-pest, FOR-tu-nate

Other lovely poetic terms you need to know concerning rhythm & line:

Caesura: (plural: caesurae) a pause separating cadence groups (however brief) within a line. If the pause is a result of the end of a line pause, then this is end-stopping.

Enjambement (enjambment): If a line has no punctuation at the end and runs over to the next line, it is called run-on or better yet, enjambement (enjambment).

Sound and Rhythm Elements in Poetry

Prosody is the study of sound and word choice in poetry.

Poems originally emerged from songs and music. Lyric poetry, for example, started as a "poem" spoken with the beautiful plucking of a 3-stringed harp called a lyre.
We hear poetry sung or spoken daily when we listen to the radio or to our favorite band.
Poems often have a distinct rhythm or pattern to their rhythm.
The rhythm of poetry includes: beat, meter, scansion

Rhythm (also called beat, metrics, versification, etc.) is the comparative speed and loudness in the flow of words spoken in poetic lines.

Words in poetry are selected, not just for content, but also sound or “musicality” of a line.
Placement in a line is also important.

Large units of words make up sentences and paragraph in prose; smaller units make up phrases or cadence groups. In poetry this is metrical feet.

Words are not read in isolation, but in small groups (cadence groups). Think about how cadence groups work in your own poetry.

Ex. When lilacs last// in the dooryard bloom’d
And the great star// early droop’d
In the western sky// in the night.

Lines

A quick and easy guide to line breaks

• The longer the line, the slower the action or the movement of the poem. 
• Use longer lines when you want the reader to slow down or the speaker in the poem is taking time to breathe.
• Longer lines can also indicate ranting
• The shorter the line, the faster the action or movement of the poem.
• Use shorter lines when you want the reader to speed up or the speaker in the poem is in a hurry or excited.
• Shorter lines can also indicate a simple mindset or persona.
• Combine line lengths to speed up or slow down. When combined, the shorter lines become heavier and weighty with meaning. You are putting emphasis on the shorter lines because they stand out on the page from the longer ones.
• This works the same way in reverse. A longer line will have emphasis in the midst of a lot of shorter lines.

LINE BREAKS and SPACE

The ends of your lines will emphasize the last word in the line of poetry.
Usually, the last word in a line is a noun. (Most lines end with nouns.)
Poetry without punctuation usually has nouns as end words in their lines so as not to confuse readers. (Most readers stop at the end of a line.)

In poetry that HAS punctuation, make sure you read to the period--do not pause at the end of a line or you will be confused.

Lines can also often end in a verb.
(lines ending in verbs stress the action happening in the poem)
Or an important word that the poet wants to stress

Space, in general, is used to show ‘emptiness’, scattered thoughts, parenthesis, and pausing.

Activity: Choose 1 or more poems that you have written the first draft of, rearrange the lines in a drastic way.
(If they were all together in one stanza, break them apart. If they were long lines, keep them short. If they were short--long....etc. Use spacing to show disjointedness or separation, etc.

Overall, play.

HOMEWORK: Please read the article "The Line" for Friday. 

Imagery Exercises & Revision

Imagery depends on memory and imagination. Try to recall images and sensory details that go with them.

Try these to write more poems:

1. Write a poem rich with imagery
2. Revise one of your already written poems using the techniques you have learned about imagery.

LAB: write poetry, complete forum posts, rewrite poems using sound, imagery, and diction. Read poetry.

Imagery Rich Poetry Examples

A bunch of Robert Frost poems. Check out this web page for examples.
Imagery is usually broken down into the five senses, but can also include temperature and the sense of pain. Here's a web page that you might find helpful. Check it out!

But today, some examples:
Elizabeth Bishop's narrative poem In the Waiting Room.

Here are some others:

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke  

	MY PAPA'S WALTZ
 
 	The whiskey on your breath
 	Could make a small boy dizzy;
 	But I hung on like death:
 	Such waltzing was not easy.
 
 	We romped until the pans
 	Slid from the kitchen shelf;
 	My mother's countenance
 	Could not unfrown itself.
 
 	The hand that held my wrist
 	Was battered on one knuckle;
 	At every step you missed
 	My right ear scraped a buckle.
 	
 	You beat time on my head
 	With a palm caked hard by dirt,
 	Then waltzed me off to bed	
 	Still clinging to your shirt.

From: The Eve of Saint Agnes by John Keats 

I.   ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told	5
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

Preludes by T.S. Eliot

I THE WINTER evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

5

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

10

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

II The morning comes to consciousness

Of faint stale smells of beer

15

From the sawdust-trampled street

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades

That time resumes,

20

One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

Imagery & Metaphor

Imagery comes in a few flavors: figurative language, metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, and then sound techniques (alliteration, assonance, consonance, cacophony, euphony, onomatopoeia, rhyme). These techniques help create sound and sight in a poem (two of our most important senses). Using diction, a poet can also recall senses of smell, touch, and taste, but these are harder to do. Here's an example:  

Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

The reason poets rely so heavily on metaphor and simile as the common currency of poetry is that it relates to imagery. Metaphor and simile say with pictures and specific objects what abstract nouns cannot. They help clarify, focus, and bring an image to the foreground of a poem. This is necessary to communicate an idea.

"Metaphors set up precise identities between two halves of a comparison" - Ted Kooser

However, we don't want our comparisons to be either A). too obscure and difficult to understand or B). too obvious (bordering on cliche).

Its a fine strand of web the poet scuttles across to anchor two dissimilar points of space. When working with metaphor and figurative language in your own poems consider the relationship between the subject and the object (or setting, event, etc.) The most beautiful metaphors/similes are subtle ones that are both fresh and new, while also being familiar.

Pick words (particularly verbs and adjectives) that correspond to the main metaphor/simile working in your poem. This helps to create tone as well as picture the subject in an effective way. Try to extend your metaphors through at least a stanza, if not the entire poem.

Example:
Martin Walls' poem "Snail" is about a snail. There are a series of "snail-appropriate words found in the poem"

Snail
It is a flattened shell the color of spoiled milk, a bold
Swirl slowly stirred that charts the age of what's
Curled inside with the tension of a watch spring. A creature
That embodies the history of metaphysics: first it exists,
Then it doesn't, then it emerges once again, unrolls
One, then another, eyestalk, like periscopes breaking
The surface of its wet-life. And here's the tongue body
The petal-body, molding its shape to the world's shape.

The snail is compared to: spoiled milk, a horoscope, a watch spring, periscope, flowers, tongue, and the world. By writing about a snail, we consider it in its proper function as a comparison/contrast to other life, particularly ours. If a snail has purpose, then so do we.

Spoiled milk gives us a negative image, but the words bold, stirred, and curled (curdled) all seem appropriate word choices for the comparison. The snail furthermore encompasses the world in an orderly way. It is both a watch spring (human made and intelligently designed) indicating the spiral shape of a snail shell, but also a tongue (natural object) that goes along with wet and unrolls.

All in all there are snail words: eyestalk, swirl (the shell), shell, slow.
It moves slowly, and the pace of the poem is also slow: words like slowly, emerge, unrolls, molds (also connected to the smell in the first line as a double meaning), recall the movement of a snail, leaving a wet slime trail behind it. This disgusting invertebrate is compared to the function of the world--giving this little animal a metaphysical meaning that compares its life with ours.

Note that this is a small poem. It doesn't function as a grandiose political idea or earth-shattering observation. It compares (metaphor/simile) us and our human made world to its natural world linking us with nature, reminding us of our own value and worth. Sometimes that's all that's needed.

Filling Up Our Portfolios & Imagery

After our poetry exercises today, please continue to write the next poem for your portfolio. You may put any other drafts of the poetry exercises in your portfolio as well.

Gwendolyn Brooks assignment:

Poem option #1: Write a poem about your neighborhood or family or a fictional neighborhood or family. Don't like neighborhoods...? pick a theme and there you go...

Poem option #2: Write a poem centered around a specific character or person. Real or imaginary. Write. Create a draft. Complete the draft. Call it draft #1.

Poem option #3: Repeat the process (writing option #1 & #2) as often as you'd like. Try to link your series of poems dealing with one place or character in a poetry cycle.

HOMEWORK: Please read Mary Oliver's advice (handout) on Imagery. Complete the 10 questions to hand in on Friday, Oct. 7.

Advice on Beginnings & Brooks' A Street in Bronzeville

Period 7: Please continue writing your sound poem (late), or your Revision exercise: take one of your previously written poems and write a SECOND draft using sound devices and/or diction to create tone. See previous post for help.

 A note about beginnings:

Beginnings can be daunting for a writer. There's that blank page and a whole lot of potential. Just like a baby, your writing (story, play, poem, etc.) needs encouragement; it needs nourishment in the form of lots of specific words, character development, description, and ideas that help it grow. If you don't spend time with your baby, it'll never grow to be the "adult" piece. It will grow up needing therapy, and never get a job (i.e., published), sitting in your bedroom drawer or computer folder until its in its thirties. Not a good start.

Sometimes the first few lines or pages of a longer work is really just the scaffolding that holds up the idea. The REAL beginning might happen in another draft.

Don't worry: once you work with a piece, you'll ultimately find the right opening. In any case, an opening for a poem or story is a reader's "entrance" into the piece. Just like your home, you don't want your front hallway or foyer to be cluttered with furniture and junk that guests have to risk breaking their neck over. It should be an inviting space, promising lovely new sights and people to meet who dwell inside.

Enough with that metaphor.

The most important thing to remember is that writing is a process. It is a promise you are making with your reader. An opening should hook or grab a reader's attention. Poetry and fiction and scripts alike.

Today's class:

After reading this advice, please get into groups of 1 or 2. Together (or alone) read Gwendolyn Brooks' poem cycle A Street in Bronzeville. Gwendolyn Brooks was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and is known throughout the world for her poetry. She knows what she's doing, so she's a good role model for us as young poets.

Please read the poem: A Street in Bronzeville. OMG! This poem is made up of eleven poems! Taken together it is what we in poetry circles call A POEM CYCLE. The poetry cycle form has been around since the Ancient Greeks. The poems in a poetry cycle are thematically linked. In some cases, dealing with the same characters or personas. In this case, a neighborhood (a street in Bronzeville!) Remember to always read and consider titles. There's nothing tricky about a title.

Brooks based this poem on her own experiences and those of her family. Here's a little help with references and lines:

The Madam: Beauty schools or colleges were run by women. It was one of the standard occupations for women in America before 1980. The others were secretary, teacher, nurse, and housewife. Not a broad (forgive the pun) occupational list. Madam, by the way, also is a term used for a woman who runs a brothel.

Hunchback girl: bad posture indicated bad behavior. One's carriage, especially for young women, should be proper, straight (yes, there's another meaning there for Gwen), and appropriate. All things in their place.

Charity children: the poor. Bad woman: a 'ho. A tramp. A...you get the idea. Makeup or "paint" was used by women who wanted to attract men for some reason.

Hosanna is a prayer, a praise to God.

Lincoln: Gwendolyn Brooks was from Chicago. The community of Lincoln Park includes Lincoln Cemetary (and Lincoln Park Zoo). The cemetery is on Blue Island. It was a "black only" cemetery in Chicago.

After you read these with your partner and discuss the poem, please post a response to the cycle on the forum. If you haven't yet posted a response to the Sound/Diction poems from last blog post entry (see below), please do that now.

Lab Writing/Homework:

Poem option #1: Write a poem about your neighborhood or family or a fictional neighborhood or family.

Poem option #2: Write a poem centered around a specific character or person. Real or imaginary. Write. Create a draft. Complete the draft. Call it draft #1.

Poem option #3: Repeat the process (writing option #1 & #2) as often as you'd like. Try to link your series of poems revolving around one place or character in a poetry cycle.