language

SunWinks! July 27, 2014: Ars Poetica

Dear SunWinkers:

SunWinksLogoThere are two ways of classifying poems: One is by form: haiku, sonnet, villanelle, quatrain, rubaiyat, cubist, concrete, etc. The other is by purpose: elegy, ode, pastoral, epic, love poem, etc. One of the latter is, I suppose, inevitable: sooner or later, a dedicated poet of any accomplishment will feel the impulse to write about the poetic process, what a poem is, or what it should be. Such a poem is referred to as an ars poetica, which is Latin for “the art of poetry.” Possibly the most famous is Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica” :

(…)
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

 A poem should not mean
But be.

  Continue reading →

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New Poem: Mikvah (formerly: Epiphany)

For those of you, all three of you, who are following my every post with bated breath, this was my initial attempt to write a modern-style* poem about death in response to my own prompt of Sunday. It wasn’t the poem I was trying to write (I succeeded on the second try). Comments welcome.

*When I say “modern-style,” it sounds a little silly, as though I were saying “new-fangled.” What I mean, precisely, is poetry in English in the period 1940-2000.

Update: I’ve been contemplating this some more and decided to rename it “Mikvah.” Mikvah is the Jewish purification ritual of immersion in water.

Mikvah

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SunWinks! July 20, 2014: Where Is Thy Sting?

Dear SunWinkers!

Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.

            Shakespeare, Macbeth

 

SunWinksLogoI find myself being rather emotional these days. Last week, I spent four days in bed with the chest flu. This sort of inactivity and helplessness is very problematical for me as a trigger for depression. After another week, I’m still not my better self in terms of energy and industry.

Add to this… Continue reading →

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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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