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Exercise: Twenty Two Words from Eliot

Twenty-Two Words from Eliot

 

Burnt, I circumambulate my maisonette
in protozoic stupor,
mulling hollow images formulated
from the sawdust
of etherised metaphysics.

Outside the window-panes,
sun-kist hyacinths
dance with the arboreal shadows
falling across my tea and marmalade,
but I conjure only
broad-bottomed sea-girls
in ragged trousers.

Empty, I whimper
like a fugitive.
                             Empty
is the cruellest word.

 

© 2014 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. Please share, link to, reblog, but do not copy or alter.

 

The prompt (adapted from The Poet’s Companion [Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux; New York: W.W. Norton, 1997]):

Skim several books of poetry by, perhaps, your favorite poets. Without paying too much attention to the context, jot down words that strike your fancy. Go through the resulting list and pick out about twenty of these. Fashion them into a poem, using these words and as few other words as possible.

In this case, I started with a list of twenty words exclusively from T.S. Eliot poems. (I added “burnt” and “tea” as I went along.)

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SunWinks! July 13, 2014: The H.M.S. Metaphor Goes On Extended Holiday

SunWinks! July 13, 2014: The H.M.S. Metaphor Goes On Extended Holiday

Dearest SunWinkers!

SunWinksLogoWe’ve been talking about metaphor in our language (that’s how it’s built) and our poetry (it wouldn’t be very poetic without it). Metaphors—and successful poetry—make us look at things in new ways by making fresh connections among diverse ideas.

An extended metaphor is a comparison that is carried out through an extended part or the entire length of a work. Some writers say it is synonymous with allegory. I think they are two different things, but I don’t have the energy to belabor the point here.

Here is a tiny sample of poems which use extended metaphors. Browse your favorite anthology to find many more. They shouldn’t be too hard to pick out. In fact, it occurs to me this would be a fabulous exercise!

Continue reading →

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SunWinks! July 6, 2014: H.M.S. Metaphor Sails Again

SunWinks! July 6, 2014: The H.M.S. Metaphor Sails Again

Dear SunWinkers!

A tasty confection the metaphor,
As sweet to an ode as a petit four,
A friend to the scribe,
Which, aptly applied,
Your poem will be so much the better for.

Last week, we introduced the idea that our language is built through metaphor. There were so many great stories to choose from, and all from just the one book: Loose Cannons, Red Herrings, and Other Lost Metaphors by Robert Claiborne [New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1988]. (I have half a dozen others.) So this week, I’m just going to throw out a few more word stories and let you either work on last week’s prompt, or a completely different prompt which I’ve supplied below.

Annie Oakley

Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee, a.k.a. Annie Oakley, gave shooting exhibitions in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the late 1800s. One of her most famous tricks was to throw a playing card into the air and shoot a hole in it. In that era, “comps,” complimentary tickets for theater or sporting events, had holes punched in them to prevent them being resold. Ban Johnson, founding president of the American League, took to calling such comps “Annie Oakleys,” and the name stuck. Later on, the nickname came to refer to other freebies, such as a walk in baseball. Alas, the nickname is virtually forgotten today.

Have you ever thought about where the name “cockpit” came from? As you might guess, it’s just what it looks like, a reference to the small sunken pits in which cockfights were held. A metaphorical cockpit is any small space in which intense fighting takes place, hence its application to the pilot’s compartment of a fighter plane. Continue reading →

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SunWinks! June 29, 2014: Aboard the H.M.S. Metaphor

SunWinks! June 29, 2014: Aboard the H.M.S. Metaphor

Dear SunWinkers!

Where are all the haikais? I expected to be inundated with poo-kus. Well, there are no deadlines at SunWinks! Get them in when you can—it’s never too late.

Important note: if SunWinks! and Writing Essential Group are to survive and thrive, it is imperative that you do your part by sharing these columns with your communities on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Google+, whatever. We can’t build a community without your help.

On to today’s topic: Metaphor. That stampeding of hooves you hear is the self-described “non-poets” running as fast as they can in the other direction. I get the same reaction every time I mention that word: “I just don’t understand poetry.”

The inescapable fact is that you pretty much cannot write a poem without using metaphor in some form or fashion. But here’s the thing: you also pretty much can’t talk without metaphor. Metaphor is one of the building blocks of language. Teachers and public speakers know the value of metaphor. Our speech is chock full of metaphor whether we’re aware of it or not. “Stampeding of hooves” above is a metaphor—so is “running as fast as they can etc.”. Metaphors are the stock in trade, the coin of currency (there are two more metaphors!), of any writer who strives to be more colorful than dishwater (that’s a simile).

Continue reading →

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SunWinks! June 22, 2014: Go Take A Haiku, Part Deux

Go Take A Haiku, Part Deux

Dear SunWinkers!

We’ve been talking about haiku, that ancient Japanese party game. Instead of gathering together to play Twister or Grand Theft Auto, 12th century Japanese poets would get together and write renga, collaborative poems of verses in syllables 5-7-5, 7-7, 5-7-5, 7-7, etc., going around the room, each person contributing another verse, ultimately running to hundreds, even thousands of verses. It was quite an honor to be chosen to contribute the starting verse, called the hokku.Poets would come to renga parties prepared with dozens of hokku, and would inevitably go home with lots of leftover hokku. So they would publish books of hokku, and hokku became an art form unto itself.

About the 16th century, various art forms became the province of the hoi polloi rather than just the royalty; these included Kabuki theatre, woodblock prints, and hokku. The popular hokku degenerated into something very much the equivalent of the bawdy limerick. They called these haikai, which means “unusual fun.” Basho (1644-1694) is credited with raising the art of the hokku/haikai once again to something more sublime. What’s easy to overlook is that Basho and others did not always have their heads in the clouds. They were not above writing personal, droll epigrams and even getting scatological. Continue reading →

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Story: The Honey Badger

The Honey Badger

from The Golden Books
Copyright © 2012 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

Then Gus noticed something right behind Tucker. “Don’t move!” he whispered

Tucker heard the maraca sound. “It’s a rattlesnake, isn’t it?”

“Oh my God, Tucker, what do we do? I’ll get a stick.”

“Don’t you move either. Either one of us moves, I’m dead.”

“Okay.”

A minute went by. Then two. It seems like hours. Then Gus noticed Tucker had moved imperceptibly. “You’re moving,” he whispered.

“Shh.” Tucker was moving so slowly, Gus couldn’t even see him moving. It was like watching grass grow. He could only tell Tucker was moving when he realized he was in a different position from a minute before. Slowly, infinitesimally, Tucker was turning to face the snake. Gus had never seen anything like it.

Then Tucker made his fatal mistake. His tail twitched. That was enough. The rattlesnake struck.

Kree-k-k-k-kree! Continue reading →

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SunWinks! June 15, 2014: Go Take a Haiku

Dear SunWinkers!

Happy Father’s Day! I just want to say that it’s been an unalloyed privilege to live with my four children for the 28 years from when I married Nevada’s mother to when Hannah moved out. They are four of the sharpest, brightest, most beautiful and interesting human beings I’ve ever met. Yes, they could be infuriating. Yes, the challenges were overwhelming at times. But I treasure every single second because all of that made those children the people of whom I am so deeply proud and admiring today.

 

I’m on a new kick right now, taking pictures and writing haiku to go with them. Did you notice? This is not my first haiku kick. Actually, I think it’s my second. During my first poetry phase (c. 1998-2001), I wrote one haiku, and that was a spoof. My first haiku kick was less than a year ago—you can see them in my new book, Papa Doug’s Light Book of Little Verse.

Kick #2 started a week ago on a bike ride. I was greeted with an extraordinary sky as I was coming out of Value Village thrift store. I was greeted with another stunning vista halfway home. Thanks to my smartphone camera, these became SkyKu 1 and SkyKu 2. I love taking pictures because it’s such an undepressed thing to do. You have to have a sense of inquisitiveness and wonder, and to want to capture the image for future enjoyment and reflection. For me, it’s not just a pleasure, it’s a bellwether.

Going back to a picture, especially one I took myself, and writing a haiku, exploring the mystery and wonder of what I was looking at, is an additional pleasure. In fact, I have little interest in writing haiku about a picture I did not take. The point of haiku is to reflect on one’s own experience, on one’s own tiny movement of the soul produced from one’s identification with the natural.

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