Welcome back for the twenty-first day of Writober. During this fourth week we’ll be exploring the universal fear of mutilation.
From Wikipedia: “Mutilation or maiming is severe damage to the body that has a subsequent harmful effect on an individual’s quality of life. In the modern era, the term has an overwhelmingly negative connotation, referring to alterations that render something inferior, dysfunctional, imperfect, or ugly.” Fear of mutilation can lead to fear of sharp objects and equipment, and certain spaces and activities. This universal fear has been the impetus for many a horror movie franchise.
We have passed the half-way point of this adventure and are on the home stretch. Congratulations! So many new poems, stories and photographs, and so many new techniques to explore as we write. Last week, we looked at techniques for expanding our lines into stanzas. This week we’ll be looking at techniques for tying our stanzas together. We’ll look at ways to create rhythm and music in your poems.
Rhetorical Device: Perfect rhyme
Perfect rhyme is rhyme in which different consonants are followed by identical vowel and consonant sounds, such as in moon and June. It is also the rhyme of homonyms such as bear/bare, and there/their. In tradition poetic forms, perfect rhyme is often synonymous with end rhyme – the rhyme occurs between the final words of different lines, but perfect rhyme can be so much more (as can end rhyme).
Chad Shank also offers a free course on Rhyme.
The video and course talk about five kinds of rhyme, but today we’re going to focus on perfect rhyme. One of the challenges of rhyme is that it often sounds cliché or forced.
Rhymezone.com is a wonderful online tool for finding perfect rhymes. I’ve always typed in the word I want to rhyme with, but as Shank points out, we’re actually rhyming with a phoneme, so instead of entering the word, we can focus on the sound we want to rhyme.
For your rhymes not to be cliché or forced, pick the rhyme that seems least connected to your word and freewrite in your journal until you see some connections.
Perfect rhyme can play a role in modern and experimental poetry as well as traditional forms. The placement of rhymes can be within a line. Every other first word could rhyme. Every third middle word could rhyme. The possibilities are endless.
Fighting Fear of the Blank Page: How are you feeling about that blank page? Is it still taunting you? What if you relax with some music.
Song Rhymes: Start with your favorite song, or whatever you’re listening to and write down all the rhymes, then find a song that goes with the theme or feel of what you’re writing and write down all the rhymes. Combine the two and see what they inspire.
*Quick Note about links in this post: I am an amazon associate, so most of the links in my post will take you to amazon products. If you buy from these links, I will make some pennies which will help me pay for this site and my creative endeavors.
OctPoWriMo
Poetry Toolbox
These are quick exercises that I hope you’ll do every day. We will build on these exercises throughout the month.
- Word list: Write down the first ten words you think of when you think of fear. Any words at all. Anything that comes to mind. Then choose your three favorite and say them aloud a few times until you hear the accented and unaccented syllables (if more than one syllable) and notice the duration of each syllable. (Inspired by Frances Mayes’ list of a hundred favorite words in The Discovery of Poetry). Today, add the perfect rhymes that seems least connected to your words.
I created this Excel Spreadsheet for you to use to collect and explore your fear words.
2. Sensory Imagery: In your journal or a word processing file, fill in these lines as quickly as you can. Notice they are slightly different from last week. You may want to revisit one or two in more detail if you’re inspired and have time.
I will see
I will hear
I will carry
I will smell
I will follow
The slice of
The pain of
I will taste
The color of
I will witness
I will touch
(Inspired by a week one exercise in the poetry chapter of The Portable MFA in Creative Writing)
3. More Sensory Imagery: Ask yourself sensory questions about fear of mutilation.
4. Choose a poetry collection: Choose a poetry collection to study for the rest of the month. It may be by the same poet you’ve been looking at or a collection by different poets.
As a reviewer for Netgalley.com I was given the privilege of reading two new poetry collections:
Water, Water by Billy Collins (coming out in November available for pre-order. Thank you Random House for the reviewer eGalley): I enjoyed this collection. Collins’s way of observing the daily minutiae and connecting it to life’s broader questions makes for pleasant reading.
In this collection, I noted his use of negation to create contrast as in the opening line of “Crying in Class,” “This is not a weeping board,” and the poem “If/Then” starting with, “Let’s just say there is no expanding universe,” and “Against Longing” which begins with, “One of the things I would not write is.”
As a poet who lives on a lake and loves to swim, I related to the titular poem, “Water, Water.” I was drawn in by the opening, “I do some of my best thinking when standing on the bottom of a lake, up to my chin in lake water.” I recommend this collection for everyone.
The Best American Poetry 2024 edited by David Lehman and Mary Jo Salter (Thank you Simon & Schuster for the eGalley) : Because I was reading Billy Collins’s new collection, it was fun to see one of his poems in this collection. I appreciated Mary Jo Salter’s introduction giving some explanation of her process and choices as guest editor. Presenting the poems in the order of the poet’s last name makes for an eclectic collection in which each poem is a separate experience. This collection gives the reader an overview of contemporary poets and the journals that publish them. I recommend this collection for all submitting poets, and lovers of contemporary poetry.
Poetry Building
Perfect Ryme
Example poem: Today we’re looking at “The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, copied here from poetryfoundation.org for educational purposes.
“The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish”
The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish
Upon the coals, exuding odorous smoke
She knelt and blew, in a surging desolate wish
For comfort; and the sleeping ashes woke
And scattered to the hearth, but no thin fire
Broke suddenly, the wood was wet with rain.
Then, softly stepping forth from her desire,
(Being mindful of like passion hurled in vain
a similar task, in other days)
She thrust her breath against the stubborn coal,
Bringing to bear upon its hilt the whole
Of her still body. . . there sprang a little blaze. . .
A pack of hounds, the flame swept up the flue!—
And the blue night stood flattened against the window,
staring through.
I’m not a big fan of the sonnet, but Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnets are different. They’re surprising, not sing-songy or sappy. What makes them work? What is she doing that makes her sonnets uniquely her own?
Today’s prompt: Write a poem exploring the fear of mutilation using perfect rhyme. Look through your wordlist, any perfect rhymes? Might be a good place to start.
Form: If you’re looking for more of a challenge, write a sonnet in the style of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Write your poem and post it to your site (blog/ website/ other), then post a link in the chat. You may also post your poem in the chat if you do not have a place to post it. If you are posting as “someone” or “anonymous,” please put your name at the end of the poem. Throughout the day, please check back when you can to read and encourage other poets, to learn from each other, and enjoy each other’s efforts.
Writober Flash Fiction
Write a story with a beginning, middle, and end with conflict that leads to change in less than a thousand words (no minimal word count) inspired by one of the images in the Mutilation file of the Writober 2024 Pinterest board. How does fear of mutilation affect your character?
NaNo Prep
How’s your outline coming? After brainstorming all those moving through act two scenes, do any stand out as life-changing events for your MC. Pick out three scenes: one that could be the end of act one, one that could be the midpoint, and one that could be the middle of act three (or end of act three if following a four act structure). For each of theses scenes, brainstorm how you can increase the stakes.
In Writing the Breakout Novel and Workbook, Donald Maass guides writers to increase both personal stakes and public stakes. To increase personal stakes identify the MC’s main problem, conflict, and goal in the scene. Then ask yourself what could make this problem matter more? What could make this problem matter more to your MC? What could make this problem matter more than life itself? Find the inner motives that most powerfully drive your character and put your MC in such terrible situations that s/he must use all of them.
To increase public stakes think about the novel’s outward central problem. Then ask yourself, what would make this problem worse? Then, ask yourself what are the circumstances that would make my MC fail to solve the problem? “The only way to keep an ending in doubt is to make failure possible.”
Brainstorm scene ideas in which your MC fails, putting some worry and doubt into the reading experience.
Halloween Photography Challenge
Take a photograph that depicts fear of mutilation and link to your photo in the chat.
Get Moving
Now that you’ve read all the prompts and have all these ideas running around in your head, it’s time for motion. Some suggestions:
Stretch out or do some yoga on this skeleton yoga mat.
Or enjoy a game of spider ring toss.
Experience Writing 
Writober – Self-mutilation – Ladyleemanila
LikeLiked by 1 person