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Poetry Exercise For Those “At Sea”

October 23, 2009

Yesterday, I set forth the rules for a somewhat reductive poetry exercise for the inspirationally-challenged.   (https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/for-the-inspirationally-challenged-writing-exercise-for-harried-poets/)

The exercise mandates the writing of a poem which is really an extended metaphor;  the tension in the poem comes from using a set of physically- charged, action verbs.  These are verbs which describe tasks performed in a particular occupation or craft (and are listed as Column B) .  The poem is put together from a list of these Column B verbs, and a random list of unrelated nouns  (Column A). The poem is put together by making lines which use a word selected from Column A and a word selected from Column B  (and, of course, other words.)

Here is a a poem (a connected pair of poems) which I did a few years ago using this exercise.   Unfortunately, despite spending some time looking through my very disorganized notebooks, I have not been able to find the full Columns A and B that I used;  however, I know that the chosen occupation was “sailor.”  (I’m not sure of the nouns except to be certain that “gutter”, “mother”, and, I believe, “burlap”, and “brick” were among them.)

The “sailor” words went fairly far afield from those that you might at first associate with sailor–they included words like “weigh”  (as in weigh anchor), “spy”, “navigate,” “haul,” “scrub” (as in scrub the deck), “run” (as in run up a flag), “tack”, “man” (as in man the deck), “cast”, “seek”, “spy”, among others.  (If you are doing this exercise, feel free to be similarly wide-ranging in your choices.)

The poem has been edited since the first iteration.  I’m posting it because I like it even though I’m not sure it’s the best illustration of the exercise.  (Tomorrow, I’ll post a less edited poem, that may be a better illustration.)  Still, I hope it gives a taste of how a “set” of verbs chosen as part of an exercise can direct your ideas if you are someone, like me, who is frequently “at sea.”

At Sea

I.  Brother

The boy hauled the roses like burlap sacking
that scrubbed his arms with prickle.
Navigating the bunch through kitchen door which he kicked
to the side for noise value,
he hated his mother.  What he wanted was to man
the road, casting his day by the side
of the long green wood where he
could lurk and spy and brick up
hideouts with clods of dirt and brush and never lean
to any whim or wish except
of sky and guttering stream
to whose wills he’d willingly tack
his whole young life.

II.  Sister

The girl rigged her skirt to
the base of her hips,
tacking the elastic waist
to her pelvis, a convenient gutter
for fabric that would run its own course.
Bottling lips into an appraising O,
she weighed her chances, spying out
navel and the smooth flat skin of her belly
like the long sought shore, distant
yet within reach.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

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For the Inspirationally Challenged – Writing Exercise for Harried Poets

October 22, 2009

For those, like me, who want to write but have limited time and mental space, inspiration can be difficult to come by. 

In large part, this is a “limited mental space” problem.  Your “free” moments may be free of immediate obligation, but your brain may still be tangled in worry, chores, regret, lonliness. 

The problem is that you don’t want to just whine.  Whining in print may offer some relief to the writer, but it’s  a  lot like the relief that vomiting offers to a person who is sick to their stomach.  It’s not all that great for the person doing it;  it’s even less appealing to their audience.

 So how can you make good use of your writing time when inspiration is otherwise engaged? 

 Here’s a trick:  try something that’s both completely arbitrary, and yet carefully defined.  In other words, a writing exercise!  The arbitrariness of the exercise can nudge you out of your over-trod groove, while the structure turns into something like a game, reducing both decisions and ego-involvement.  (It’s only an exercise!)

 In July and August, I wrote about exercises aimed primarily at prose writers.  This one is for the inspirationally-challenged poet.

 Before reading on, please set side aside snobbery.   The exercise below is a bit stupid, but it is offered as a springboard.  It relies on the fact that many poems involve tropes (a wonderful word I hardly ever get to use), that is, metaphors.  The exercise sets up a structure which is intended to turn an extended metaphor into something resembling a poem.  And it’s intended to make you think about verbs. 

 The specifics:

 First, choose an occupation, preferably one that involves some physical craft.  (Carpenter, fisherman, cook, for example, not stock analyst.)  Now, list all of the verbs that are particularly associated with that chosen occupation.  (Usually, “crafty” occupations have strong verbs.  Cook, for example: “braise, broil, boil, peel, sauté, fry, deep-fry, mince, cube, slice, skewer, stab.”)    List at least ten of these verbs.  This list is called Column B.

 Second, make a list of nouns which will be called Column A.   These nouns should be fairly randomly chosen and NOT specifically associated with your Column B verbs.  (For example, if you’ve chosen “cook” as your occupation, you can choose “mother” as a random noun, but not “chef.”) 

 While it’s nice to choose some specific nouns – such as “lilac” rather than “flower”–choose at least a couple that are very flexible  (examples:  “mother,” “father”,  “ocean”.)   You should list at least ten.

 NOW,  imagine you are at a Chinese restaurant ordering a luncheon special in which you are allowed to mix and match items from Column A (egg rolls or dumplings) with items from Column B ( bean curd homestyle or General Tso’s chicken.) 

 And NOW,  write a poem of at least five lines, using a noun from Column A and a verb from Column B in every line.   (Example:  “the ocean braised the shore.”)  (Sorry!) 

 Clarifications:  (i) Verbs from Column B can take any tense;  (ii) you do NOT need to use every word listed in Column A and Column B, just one from each Column in every line;    (iii)  line length is up to you (meaning you can use some long lines with lots of extra  uncolumned words.)

Finally, remember the two most important rules of any writing exercise:

 1.  Follow the rules.   

2.  Cheat.  (Remember that you’re trying to write a poem, not an exercise.)  

And, NOW, get going. 

Tomorrow, I’ll post some samples of my own.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing exercises
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After the Sestinas–Why Bother?

October 14, 2009

As I wrote down the rules for a sestina in the last couple of posts, I have to confess that the question “why bother?” went through my head with the regularity of the six repeating “end words” of that form.

Why bother writing formal poetry?  (Much less blogging about it?)

Seriously, isn’t poetry supposed to be about free expression?

So why bother with all the restraints and requirements of a poetic form?  Why not just write free verse all the time?

Ten reasons:

1.         Writing formal poetry limits your choices.  (If your form requires rhymes, you are limited to words that rhyme.)  This is a big help if you don’t know exactly what you want to say (and if it doesn’t involve oranges.)

2.         Writing formal poetry defines your choices (i.e. once you decide to write a villanelle, you know your poem will have two repeating lines that have to work as a couplet at some point, and will probably not end in “orange”.)

3.         Writing formal poetry terminates your choices.  (If you write a sonnet, you’ll be done by line fourteen.)

4.         Poetic forms provide inherent music and, if you can manage it, rhythm.  This is great if you don’t have a good ear; even greater, if you do.

5.         Sometimes the music of a poetic form, and the cleverness of its dance, can substitute for profundity (which is wonderful if you never found out what exactly you wanted to say.)

6.         Writing formal poetry is fun; there is a game-like quality to it.  (It has rules!)

7.         Even failing at the chosen form makes you more conscious of language, and, it is to be hoped, a more musical and adventurous writer.  (Oh Orange!)

8.         Even bare success at the chosen form puts you in the company of some of the greatest poets of all time.  You, like Shakespeare, will have written a sonnet; like Dylan Thomas, a villanelle; like Elizabeth Bishop, a sestina.  This sense of camaraderie, and the understanding that arises from even a brief turn in the trenches of prosody, will make you a more appreciative and attentive reader.

9.         Finally, it must be understood, and grudgingly accepted, that a good sonnet, sestina, villanelle or pantoum is not good because it follows the rules, but because it’s a good poem.  That said, it’s hard to write a good poem.  Maybe you don’t have it in you one day, maybe not any day.  However, if you follow the rules, which can be done by simple diligence (if not always inspiration), you can write what qualifies as a sonnet, or one of the other forms.  You may not have achieved a good poem, but you will have achieved a sonnet, a sestina, villanelle or pantoum, which itself deserves a modicum of pride.

10.  “Orange” is supposed to be one of the few words that, allegedly, has no perfect rhyme in English.    But it works just fine in a sestina (or mid-line.)   And, if you do manage to rhyme it, well….

If you prefer counting elephants to counting syllables, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at link above.

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First Sestina (Posted as Encouragement) – “Vacuum”

October 13, 2009

In this morning’s post, I explained the rules of writing a sestina, a fairly complicated 39-line poem, which involves six repeating “end words” in a rotating/interlocking stanza form.   I also posted what I consider to be my best sestina.  (See, post re “Changing Gears – a Sestina – “Pink” both for the better sestina and an explanation of the intricacies of the form. )

As encouragement to beginning sestina writers, I’m now posting the first sestina I ever wrote (and definitely not my “best” one.)     Although the poem follows the form, you can see the compromises I made – choosing generic words  – “talked, over, up, mother, vacuum, when” as my “end words” so that I’d be able to easily repeat them in accordance with sestina rules.   (The two posted sestinas are on different subject matters, but I wrote them one after the other, so there is a kind of relationship.)

A tip here:  if you are ever doing a writing or poetic exercise, and need to choose a prompt, and you’re feeling dried out, burned up, and  stumped for inspiration, try something like “mother” or “father”.   Believe me, the words will flow.

As always, pause only where punctuated.

Vacuum

When my aunt came to visit, they talked
of old times, my aunt hunching over
her cigarette, her heavy breasts held up
by an arm across her middle, my mother
smoking as well, her cheeks like a vacuum
cleaner, puffing out.  She only smoked when

her sister came, then she became like a teenager when
folks are away; her gestures sullen, she talked
with a thoughtless sneer, the kind that filled the vacuum
of her youth, a time she thought she’d never get over
all the obstacles they’d set up, her own mother
not understanding, no wonder she got fed up.

She loved them, yes, but everything was up
from there.  Farm life.  Especially then, when
owning land was something but not, like her mother
thought, everything.  You were still talked
about, looked down on, passed over,
a farm not bringing cash to fill the vacuum,

nor nice clothes, nice furniture, nice rugs to vacuum.
Though the time they remembered that night when they stayed up
was when the government took their land, building over
their farm, a munitions plant for the war, and when
their father went north to rawer land; and they talked
of joining him, but only when their grandmother, my mother’s mother,

was stronger.   She was a favorite of my mother,
and favored her in turn, filling a vacuum
in the heart of the middle child, the one who talked
in such maddening ways, sticking her nose up
the others thought, the grandma protecting her when
they mocked, but sick now, her life nearly over.

They worked shifts at the plant, then each took over
the grandma’s care, my aunt, my own grandmother, my mother.
‘But who was with her,” my aunt asked suddenly, “when
she died?”  My mother thinking, “I had out the vacuum,
I remember that.  I pulled it out after ringing up
the doctor,” my mother, smoking hard as she talked.

“So it was you,” my aunt said, “when—” “I tried to vacuum
fast.”  But slowly my mother spoke, the smoke rising up
like traces of what could not be done over, slowly she talked.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Changing Gears – The Sestina – “Pink”

October 13, 2009

 I am retreating from the world of politics today  to the more ordered world of formal poetry. The sestina is an extremely “ordered” form of poem with a strict line structure that focuses on six repeating “end words,” (that is, the last word in each line.)  Thankfully, these end words do not have to rhyme.

There are six six-line stanzas, and six repeating end words.  At the end of the six six-line stanzas, there is a three-line stanza (the “envoie”), in which the six repeating words are used again, two per line.

The hard part is not just repeating the six words, but repeating them in the right order; each stanza turns itself partly inside out for the next one.  The music of the poem comes from the shifting, and sometimes surprising, echo of the repeating words.   If the meaning and tone of the words can also shift through the poem, a kind of irony can be found.

Here’s how the form works:

For notation purposes, I’ll assign each end word a number  – 123456.  That is the order of the first stanza.

The second is 615243.   The third is 364125, the fourth 532614, fifth 451362, and finally 246531.    You’ll notice that the last line of each stanza becomes the first of the next, the second- to-last line, the third, etc.  It helps to think of the stanzas as interlocking or clasped hands, with the clasp between the fingers moving up the hands with each stanza.  (I guess they’d have to be Anne Boleyn-style hands – six fingers.)

There are different forms for the order of the words in the last three-line stanza;  my favorite puts the words in reverse of their original order, meaning 65,43,21.

The form is hard, yes.  A tip:  once you’ve decided on your repeating words, write them down in the prescribed order for the entire poem.  (This means that you’ll have a nearly blank page or so, with just a column of numbers and words on one side.)  This list will not only help you keep your focus; it will also avoid the frustration of having a nearly finished poem that, you suddenly realize, did not quite follow the rules.  (If it’s a great poem as is, terrific.  But if you wanted to write a great sestina, this can be upsetting.)

It is useful to pick end words with flexible meanings and usage (meaning words that can be either nouns or verbs, even homonyms).   Commonplace words are easier, but less interesting.

I have to confess I have only written a couple of  sestinas.  They are long poems;  beginning one is a big commitment.  But a completed one is really quite satisfying.  Here’s one of mine:

(As always, keep in mind that pauses are intended to be taken only at punctuation breaks, not at line or stanza breaks, unless punctuated. )

Pink

Trees full of blossom, the night smells pink
though it’s black, a thick summer darkness
barely held back by window screen.
I hear dishes in the sink, a familiar clatter,
and think of the summer kitchen
of my youth (my grandma’s), where the women wiped

the dishes, too many for the rack, wiped
the oilclothed table too; the men, skin pink
from glossy food, escaped the kitchen
glare, slinking into the darkness
of the den, the chatty t.v. clatter
a sound fluorescence against the dim screen.

There too, we were protected by a screen
from bites, buzz, wing, and the wind that wiped
that stretched-flat land, a soft clatter
of night and grass and damp that blew towards the pink
edge of dawn, an engine of chill darkness
that was only truly blocked by the glow of kitchen

yellow.  I watched one aunt in the kitchen,
amazed that she never even tried to screen
her keen sense of life’s darkness.
When she looked at my grandmother, she often wiped
her eyes, and sniffing, face too pink,
cleaned with a banging clatter.

Though she was always a center of clatter,
that aunt.  She had a kind of two-walled kitchen
in her own house, open; and wore hot pink,
played jokes, charades, a half-hearted screen
of despondency, still, the good housewife, she wiped
the smallest speck from her counters.  Her own darkness

seeming inevitable, it was a darkness
she hurried towards, smoking, drinking hard, the clatter
of uncertainty (as to timing) wiped
her out.  In the meantime, she cleaned-—my grandma’s kitchen
after her death, and, at the Funeral Home, made a quick screen
of the corpse.  “That lipstick’s way too pink,”

she hissed, then wiped my grandma’s lips like a kitchen
stain.  Despite the clatter in my brain, I served as screen,
a guard in the blossomed darkness, as she rubbed off pink.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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“Home”

October 8, 2009

Home

Her cheekbones, Cherokee, she’d told me
when we were younger, have
reasserted themselves.  Last visit
her face was swollen, foreshortened by
pink scarf, but hair has grown
what with the end of the chemo
into small feathery clumps,
and her features, that web of
intent-filled bone, have resurfaced.
You look so beautiful, I say.  Smile
flickers until she turns again to
trying to sit up, though we have
to catch and lift and
her husband
to support her,
which she cannot
bear for long. But
I have to get up, she says,
I have to get out of this place.

He talks of brushing her hair first,
fingering brief curls.  This
brings a nod.  She has been naturally
beautiful her whole life,
but also a beauty who brushed hair first.
But I’ve got to get home, she insists
suddenly, arching away.
You are home, he tells her, in
your own room, your own bed,
but she pushes now so hard
that we have to turn
her legs, gather her arms, lift and walk
her to a chair, its chintz print
roses on vines, then, when she can’t sit,
walk her back.

Did you call the car? Tell him
to come right now?  You’ve got
to call it.
I called it, her husband lies
as he holds her head close to slide down drops.
But I’ve got to go home, she cries, pulling away
from body, pain, still air.
Just stay for a bit, he whispers.

 

***************************************

I originally posted this for National Poetry Day 2009 in the U.K. on a theme of heroes and heroines, but I am relinking to the Trifecta Writing Challenge on the topic of home.  Trifecta has very cool challenges that look to the third meaning of the word – here, “a familial or usual setting: congenial environment, also focus of one’s domestic attention.” 

This poem was published in my book GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). Also check out l1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, or Nose Dive, a very fun novel that is perfect for a pool or beachside escape.

 

 

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“Cautionary Tale” – Another One – A Villanelle

October 5, 2009

One more poem came to mind when thinking of the Roman Polanski affair, a villanelle.  This is not one of my best villanelles!  (Sorry–check out prior villanelle posts.)   But I hope you find it interesting in light of the current debate.

This follows the basic villanelle format, though there is some slight variation in the repeated lines.  (Again, see prior posts on villanelles both for a rundown of the form, as well as for a discussion of the virtues of cheating in writing any formal verse.)

As always in my poetry,  it’s the punctuation (and not the line breaks) that are intended to mark the pauses.

Cautionary Tale

“It’s hurting me,” she said in half belief,
as he freed her passing hair from a button’s play.
He offered nothing else for her relief

except a smile agleam with shiny teeth
and eyes flecked with intelligence and grey.
“It’s hurting me,” she said in half belief,

about a life that had grown spare, deplete,
while casting him as knight to save the day.
He offered nothing else if not relief–

opened doors, used credit like a thief,
assured her “no” each time she tried to pay.
“It’s hurting me,” she said in half belief,

but smiled inside at all that seemed in reach;
her smooth-skinned youth would certainly hold sway;
she offered nothing else for his relief.

Game over when he pinned her underneath.
His weight, his age, his wealth, would have their way.
“It’s hurting me,” she said in half belief.
He offered nothing else for her relief.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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Beneath It All

October 5, 2009

After writing post yesterday about Roman Polanski and Beef Inspections, thought about some poems that might connect.  Here’s one:

Beneath it all

Beneath the red over blue sky,
she walked a beam, its wood dark
as charcoal; just below it, gravel.  Still,
she held arms out
to her sides
as if balancing on a narrow ledge, in
a harsh wind,
pretending.  Pretending too
that she was still a little girl, while
also pretending to be older.
To be younger and older both
felt cute, like wearing,
with conscious insouciance,
a too-short skirt over legs
that had learned allure.
Sure of the man watching, she
pretended to slip, then
caught herself, smiling in mock
relief, the feel of control surging through her
like growth itself.
She had much to learn and
would have a hard time at it.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Father Sonnet

October 1, 2009

The last few days I’ve written about parenting–engaging young kids and encouraging “make-believe”–and sonnets.  So today, I thought I’d combine all subjects.  (I don’t mean the “make-believe” comment to refer to the religious aspects of the poem, but the bedtime story.)   The sonnet is Shakespearean in rhyme scheme (and attempted meter.)

My Father

My father knelt beside my bed; his round head
reflecting the bedside lamp with the look
of lighting within.  “And the genie,” he said,
“came out of a big blue jar.”  Not from a book
were the stories he told me at night.
Always of genies who were big-blue-jarred
and did fairly little, only the slight
magic of minor wishes, often ill-starred.
Though the stories were just a warm up to
the bedtime prayer.  “Our Father,” that would start,
then straight out head for “hallowed”, “trespass” too,
unknown words, to me a spell he knew by heart,
invoking, croakingly, a wished-for will
that the blue genied jar could never fulfill.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Pantoum – Hard hard hard: “Overheard on the Esplanade”

September 27, 2009

I’m tackling a different poetic form today – the pantoum.

Pantoums are sometimes compared to villanelles because they too involve repeating lines.  But pantoums are, to my mind, much harder to write.

As explained previously (see e.g. post comparing villanelles to banana pudding), writing a villanelle is largely a matter of assembly.   It takes preparation time, but once you get two reasonably resonant, flexible, lines (the ones that will be repeated), you can just kind of layer them.   (Like your pudding, your wafers, your bananas, your whipped cream.)

Writing a pantoum is more like setting up a house of cards–a house in which the same cards are used to build both the lower and higher levels.  (My attempts sometimes remind me of a clown stacking boxes to reach some high place; because of a shortage, the clown keeps putting the bottom boxes on top, until, slowly, she realizes she’s just not getting anywhere, at least anywhere transcendent.)

Pantoums also make me think of some Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin schtick in which the same coin or flower is recirculated (tied to his pocket etc.)   My brain here keeps picturing Roberto Benigni as waiter in Life is Beautiful, re-serving a light fish dish (abandoned by another customer) to the Nazi commandant with an ulcer by emphasizing the “fritti fritti fritti” quality of the mushroom omelette previously ordered by the commandant.   (Comparing a pantoum to recycled fish is probably not fair.)

The problem and also the magic of a pantoum is that all the lines are repeated.  The form is made up of quatrains.  Traditionally, it involves a rhyme sequence, though some writers dispense with rhyme.   Frankly, it is a type of poem in which “slant rhyme” or near rhyme works well to avoid a sing-songy quality.

It sounds more complicated than it is.   I’ve included a line-by-line breakdown, after my sample, below.

A note:  in reading, pay close attention to punctuation, which trumps line breaks.  (Meaning that pauses are only to be taken at commas, periods, dashes, etc. and not at line breaks unless punctuated.)  Sorry to sound churlish, but punctuation is particularly important in pantoums as it is one of the few tools for sculpting the repetitions.

(Sorry also for grim subject matter of poem.)

Heard on the Esplanade, a Pantoum

The woman cries
that she doesn’t believe it.
“Don’t tell me lies.”
She pulls away from him.

“That she doesn’t believe it—
Is that what you’re telling me?”
She pulls away from him
in the sun of the walkway.

“Is that what you’re telling me?”
Sky overbright on sleeves
in the sun of the walkway
twists the fall of fall leaves.

Sky overbright on sleeves
he holds onto.  Her, she tries to tear,
twists, the fall of fall leaves.
All pretend not to hear.

He holds onto her.  She tries to tear.
“Tried to rape me,” rings out.
All pretend not to hear.
“How can she, how can she not—”

“Tried to rape me,” rings out.
“Don’t tell me lies.
How can she, how can she not?”
The woman cries.

(All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson)

Now for the truly curious, here’s the breakdown:

For notation purposes, “A” and “B” refer to the end rhyme of the line.   “A1” refers to a specific whole line (which is repeated) and which uses the A rhyme;  “A2” refers to another specific whole line which also uses the A rhyme. “B1” is a specific B rhyming line; “B2” another specific B rhyming line.

A1
B1
A2
B2

B1
A3
B2
A4

A3
B3
A4
B4

B3
A5
B4
A6

A5
B5
A6
B6

B5
A2
B6
A1

A pantoum can have any number of quatrains as long as the patterns are maintained.

If you’d rather count octopi than repeating lines–check out 1 Mississippi at link above or on Amazon.

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