Today’s Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is about resolutions. Every year about this time is when New Year’s resolutions fizzle and dissolve, then are forgotten. Last year, I was completely determined to change my behaviors: I read everything about habits, goals, and motivation; I attended an online conference on having my best year; I followed through and did the work; and it worked for a while. But, as usual, life happened, and it all went out the window.
This year, I did not make any resolutions, but I have made a couple significant changes, so is there a difference between making resolutions and actual resolve? Only time will tell.
The prompt for writing the poem is to weave one of five given pieces of advice into a resolution poem.
The Resolve of Despiness
This year there was no reason for a resolution. I poured my mini-bottle of champagne into a long-stemmed glass took it out on the dock into the strangely warm night and truly enjoyed the fireworks reflecting on the water
Something had changed in my constitution as I raised my glass to everyone and no one and said aloud, “I am happy now!” The neighbors came out with sparklers and I yelled Happy New Year, and they yelled it back I didn’t want anything to change, just stay the same
What a frightening thing to think; this dissolution is the state I’ve waited for but it took so long, so many failed attempts so many previous examples that happiness cannot last, the acknowledgment itself dares the universe to take it away.
How was your week? Did you try reading like a writer? Though I didn’t find a lot to apply to my novel from The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill, I did have fun brainstorming unique formats for my novel, and it inspired me to get a copy of S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst from my local library system. I was curious to see how all the inserts worked. They are neatly tucked within the pages of the book and the book comes in a box sleeve that is velcroed shut. Imagine my happy surprise when the first insert is two copies of a letter. The first in Swedish and the second its translation. It was fun to be able to read the letter in Swedish and also see their translation.
The Ship of Theseus, which is the fictitious book in which the characters write in the margins, is also the name of an interesting philosophical puzzle which asks, if every piece of a ship is replaced over time, is it still the same ship when it doesn’t have a single original piece left?
As for the reading experience I haven’t figured it out yet. There are so many different things to read: The translator’s preface and footnotes is one story, the novel, the layers and layers of notes between the students, and the inserted materials. I thought I would read through the novel first, but the notes were too distracting, so I think I’ll have to spend the time on each page to read the novel, the translator’s notes and the students written notes all at once.
I finished reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert for my coursera.org course “The Modern and the Postmodern” through Wesleyan University. In class, it was an example of the Disillusionment. I know I read Madame Bovary as an undergrad, but I really didn’t remember anything about it as I read. It was long and boring and the characters were abhorrent people, but that’s why it’s going to be interesting to discuss for reading as a writer. I found a lot to learn from it and apply to my work.
I liked the note-taking capabilities in Kindle and will talk about that tomorrow. I also found some interesting surprise connections in my other reading that I’ll talk about tomorrow.
This week I found a new-used mirror large enough to create a mirrorworld that has eternal depth, as in mirrors reflecting mirrors all the way to infinity. I’m excited to explore all my new techniques within this space while thinking dialectically. My idea for this week is: if I take an image that includes my shape both right side up, and upside down and backwards, and I use that shape as a filter to take a photo of the shapes right side up, and upside down and backwards, will that get me closer to synthesis? I’ll try it out and talk more about these new ideas of capturing synthesis on Tuesday.
Moon by Maria L. Berg 2023
Using drum beats to create poetic lines
This week’s rhythm I’ve been playing with is: one, two, three, four and. This is the cha-cha rhythm. I looked through my old records and the only cha-cha I found was by Henri Mancini called “Something for Sellers.”(Fun fact: Henri Mancini also wrote the theme song for Remington Steele which I enjoyed as a kid, and is a fun distraction available on Amazon Prime Video.)
The last word of each phrase should be a trochee, having the stress on the first syllable. Until this week I was only looking at the rhythm as syllables not the stress of the words, but with this four & beat, it feels like the trochee vs. iamb(ic) foot is important.
Where is this going? Who’s out there knowing? Can I make something, from all this nothing? two rights come center, once new thoughts enter is the mean better, once her match met her?
After four week of looking at this idea of drum beats becoming lines of poetry, I thought it would be fun to see how the lines work and sound together. Let’s see what happens. First I’ll take four lines from each of the patterns I’ve played with so far in order:
I say I’m good when we meet, but you’re not buying I talk of truth, honestly, I know I’m lying If truth is fine, why do I find yours is ugly? If flaws make rich, why do I wish to be smudge free?
but I was waffling, so I just followed to enjoy the talk and be in the walk but I could not stop my mind from worry we needed to go and be in a hurry
the third unknown point joins in unseen lines to a future hurt that your secrets hide where the haunting blues find life’s conflict caught ache in yearning flesh moves the wand’ring eye
Where is this going? Who’s out there knowing? Can I make something, from all this nothing? two rights come center, once new thoughts enter is the mean better, once her match met her?
Now let’s try one line from each in a row to make the quatrains:
I say I’m good when we meet, but you’re not buying but I was waffling, so I just followed the third unknown point joins in unseen lines Where is this going? Who’s out there knowing?
I talk of truth, honestly, I know I’m lying to enjoy the talk and be in the walk to a future hurt that your secrets hide Can I make something, from all this nothing?
If truth is fine, why do I find yours is ugly? but I could not stop my mind from worry where the haunting blues find life’s conflict caught two rights come center, once new thoughts enter
If flaws make rich, why do I wish to be smudge free? we needed to go and be in a hurry ache in yearning flesh moves the wand’ring eye is the mean better, once her match met her?
*I think I like that. This second one has some interesting connections happening.
I guess I’ll be moving on to a slightly more complicated drum beat this week. I’ll have to figure out how that works with this idea of drum beats and poetry. Maybe I’ll see how a simple drum fill works with this idea.
I chose “(I’m Afraid The) Masquerade is Over” by Herb Magidson and Allie Wrubel as the song to work on this week as I continue working on my second call to action, “To find the ugliness in beauty and the beauty in ugliness; uglify the beautiful, or beautify the ugly.”
The Meeting the Bar prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is a new to me poetry form called “Memento.” The Memento form “created by Emily Romano is a poem about a holiday or an anniversary, consisting of two stanzas as follows: the syllable count should be 8 beats for line one; 6 beats for line two; and two beats for line three. This is repeated twice for each stanza. The rhyme scheme is: a/b/c/a/b/c for each of the two stanzas.” Here’s my attempt at my first Memento:
sky lighting
we gather, heads tilted, eyes wide as pyros, born of flame alight each explosion elicits cries of fright then quickly came delight
brilliant color blossoms fall wide Boom! rockets rise again free flight when lights sparkle in hopeful eyes we bathe in warm ash rain tonight
How was your week? Did you try reading like a writer? I really enjoyed applying the things I learned from The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny to my short story. This week I’ll be talking about The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill.
I’m enjoying my coursera.org course “The Modern and the Postmodern” through Wesleyan University. I really like how my study of contradictory abstractions overlaps with philosophy. This week’s section “From Enlightenment to Revolution” talked about Hegel’s dialectic thinking. I’ll talk more about that on Tuesday.
This week’s images were inspired by painters from the Northwest School, that emerged in the late 1930’s, especially the work of Mark Tobey. In Modernism in the Pacific Northwest by Patricia Junker, there’s a photograph of lights on US Navy ships in Elliott Bay during Fleet Week, July 1937, on the opposite page from Tobey’s painting “White Night, 1942. One can see how the overlapping spotlights could be the energy Tobey tries to capture in the painting. I played with creating the overlapping spotlights with light-forming photography and enjoyed the results.
Enlighten by Maria L. Berg 2023
Using drum beats to create poetic lines
This week’s rhythm I’ve been playing with is: one, two, three and, four. It made me think of the cha-cha, but when I looked up some cha-cha videos it turns out the cha-cha is actually next week’s beat: one, two, three, four and.
The first lines that came to mind for one, two, three and, four:
she is always late; she has fifty dates
sweet treat healthy fruit; brown round wrinkled suit
time to go-to bed; Mis-ter sleepy head
time to go-to work; he’s a soda jerk
Here’s some of a draft of a poem idea I wrote the other day:
a triangle from two connected points the unknown third point making invisible lines of connection to future hurt to future revelations the invisible lines of secrets and lies one of those fine lines is the line between love and hate a triangle of love betrayed and hidden where the deceit in truth is found, where the haunting blues find soul where song after song find life’s conflict the wandering eye caught attention grabbed by the new and in motion the yearning flesh aching knowing there’s a good ache that frees the mind from form
Let’s see what happens when I try to put it into the rhythm:
the third unknown point joins in unseen lines to a future hurt that your secrets hide
where the haunting blues find life’s conflict caught ache in yearning flesh moves the wand’ring eye
*I really like how the rhythm helped me condense the ideas. I think this is an intriguing opening.
Radiating by Maria L. Berg 2023
And the Real Work Begins
Today’s the big day! I’m putting the first draft of my novel I wrote in November into a PDF and I’m going to read it through on my tablet as if it’s someone else’s e-book. From now on, as I’m reading like a writer, learning and writing rhythms, and studying contradictory abstractions it is all toward my novel revision.
The poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is to “write a poem inspired by a vision, dream, or both.” I tried to do the spoon in the bowl trick to induce a dream state, but all I saw was a big orange square of color with a read shadow moving around, so I decided to sleep on it and I’m glad I did because I had very vivid dreams last night.
The Body of the Dream by Maria L. Berg 2023
I am a group of three women going to a writing retreat
but I was waffling, so I just followed to enjoy the talk and be in the walk but before we left, we needed relief we arrived upstairs and entered the booths but they crammed in mine, their laughter was bright and throwing a card up in the thick air it defied logic and surprise! froze there she threw a whole pack of colored small cards they tumbled then froze in patterned tableaux I needed to go, I squeezed through the mess to the booth next door glad for a rest, but card woman followed, black straight hair shining she revealed a new pack, and sent those cards fly- ing into the air, creating structures like bridges Venetian, cov’ring canals eyes flashing from one amazing wonder to land on the next joy to discover but I could not stop my mind from worry we needed to go and be in a hurry because time moved so unlike the cards and we would miss the bus to their ferry
Today at dVerse Poets Pub it’s quadrille Monday which means we are writing poems of exactly 44 words and today, De Jackson has offered the word “bold” to inspire and be included in the poem. “Bold” is also a great word to inspire today’s images.
Life of the Party
I want to be bold a grand story told if only it were so easy along the fold I rolled in gold shimmering and breezy never cold and never old the whirl lost hold fruit lost to mold and I fell dizzy and queasy
How was your first week of the year? Mine was busy and fun. I love how writing down what I want to do, here at Experience Writing, motivates me to do it. With all of the new things I’m trying, I have to remind myself that I’m just getting started. I need to be patient and give things time.
I did read a novel this week. I finished The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. Tomorrow I’ll have a post about how I plan to start reading as a writer and applying what I learn from reading novels. Then later in the week I’ll have a post about what I learned from The Manual of Detection and how I can apply that to my work.
I was inspired to look at my contradictory abstractions study in a new way and will share that on Tuesday.
This week’s images were inspired by early abstract painters, Kandinsky and Mondrian. I used different size sharpies to color and draw on clear plastic then cut shapes out of black paper to represent large brush strokes, or paint blobs. I like the effect. I’m still trying to figure out the arrangement of my mirror room, but I think I’m getting results.
After realizing last week that my motivational issues are due to fear, I decided to face that fear by facing myself. I set up a chair and fabric drape in my office and have started taking self-portraits every day just as I am, no make-up, messy hair. So far it’s great practice. I’m hoping after a while, I’ll loosen up and get past trying to pose for the camera. Over time I’ll play with different looks: wigs, make-up, costumes, etc. It’ll be fun (I hope).
I finished up my chapbook for the Writer’s Digest NovPAD Challenge and sent it in, I entered a Sony Photography contest, and sent images to two literary magazines. I like that I’ve started the year submitting my work. I want to keep that up consistently this year.
I got a fun e-mail from the editor of Heron Tree. They are looking for submissions of found poetry, and one of the text options this year is Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. I am so grateful she emailed me and turned me onto this fabulous text from 1826 with color plates of drawings of the different herbs, and text of how Mr. Nicholas Culpeper used them in his work. I’m going to start by putting sections of the text through the Mesostic Poem Generator and see what comes out.
I started a new (to me) Coursera.org Course, “The Modern and Postmodern (Part 1)” through Wesleyan University. One of the texts led me to Project Gutenberg and now my Kindle is full of philosophy and aesthetics books from the early 1900s. I will never run out of things to read.
I also started my first SloPo mini-course with ModPo Penn. We’re studying Joan Retallack‘s poems.
I Got It Bad and I Think That’s Good by Maria L. Berg 2023
Using drum beats to create poetic lines
This week I started something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’m working on my drumming and applying it to writing poetry. To do this I found some videos from Music College TV on Youtube. This is the video I’m starting with:
I practiced playing four beats of quarter notes, then four beats of eighth notes in different combinations of cymbals and drums. Then I thought about how to represent that with words as a line of poetry. Thinking only of the rhythm, I came up with:
cat cat cat cat, kitty kitty kitty kitty
fox fox fox fox, vixen vixen vixen vixen
Easy right? And fun to say, but not exactly poetry. So then I took a section of a poem I wrote this week while thinking about finding the bad in good and the good in bad, and attempted to keep the meaning of the line while changing it to my new rhythm.
Here are the original lines:
I tell everyone I meet that I’m a good person, but I’m not. I talk about honesty and truth, but I’m lying I recite poems that equate truth to beauty, but I think they’re ugly I expound on the value of flaws and natural beauty, but seek perfection
And here are the new lines in my simple drumbeat:
I say I’m good when we meet, but you’re not buying I talk of truth, honestly, I know I’m lying If truth is fine, why do I find yours is ugly? If flaws make rich, why do I wish to be smudge free?
The new lines in rhythm felt like they needed to rhyme which I think is interesting. It’s challenging, but it definitely makes me write and think in a new way.
No Rush
I’m happy that I’m making progress, so I’m not going to rush things. I’ll stick with finding the good in the bad and the bad in the good while continuing to work on the song “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” and playing around with my simple drum beat. I may stick with this song and beat for one more week or two or through the end of the month, as long as I am continuing the work and feeling inspired.
I do plan to stick to a novel a week though. This week I’m reading The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny.
How are you diving into the New Year? I look forward to hearing about it in the comments.
I woke up in a winter wonderland. It started snowing yesterday evening, and the snow stuck. There was about a half foot of snow when the sun came out. I was so excited to try my reflection balls in the snow. What a great way to celebrate finishing my draft.
I Did It! I wrote THE END on my novel draft. Over 100,000 words in one month. I’m so excited and happy: not only because I pushed through to the end, but because I get to put it away while I read books, and work on revising my poems for the Chapbook challenge, and then I get to come back to it to start the new year off right.
Contradictory Abstract Nouns
Last month I looked at a different combination of abstract nouns each day, however each of them was related to the big five: beauty, truth, wisdom, love, or happiness. So this month I’m going to sort them back into the big five and review what I’ve learned. It’ll be interesting to see if collecting the images back into their big five counterparts leads to different ideas for the what their contradictions are, and what their unification looks like.
For today’s Meeting the Bar prompt Laura challenges us to look back over our recent poems and make a poem out of twelve of our last lines to celebrated the twelfth month. What a great way to start my review of the poems I wrote in November for the Poem a Day challenge.
Forgetting Every Ending Leads to No Beginnings
You can’t be disappointed, if you have no expectations perhaps forgetfulness is the cleanse so cross that bridge over and over in the glow of morning
as serious as life and death that sweet resolve to defraud the people pretending to live the blue bottle in the icebox waiting to warm the way down
I knew that my dream holiday repast had finally come and gone when I was given a cup of cocoa, and told to go upstairs on second thought I see it like it is nothing promised, no regrets
So that’s it. November is over. It was an amazing month. I’m looking forward to reviewing everything I created, and polishing it in the future. For now, I am going to get lost in some reading, exercise, and cleaning the house. Have a great weekend! I’ll be back some time next week.
Today I’m looking at finding the failure in success and the success in failure.
It is finally here, the final day of November: the last day of NaNoWriMo; the last day of prompts for the NovPAD challenge; and the last day of this extended study of the big five abstract nouns and their contradictory counterparts. This month has been huge for me in terms of creation, invention, and discovery.
I now have yet another novel draft, and thirty new poems, and a ton of new images, all successful failures and failed successes. Luckily, they don’t end there. November succeeded as a month of creation. Now it’s time to spend as much time in review, and to find the failures, examine them and learn from them; to sort through and find what I still like after letting time pass, and see why I think it succeeded and how to use that successes to transform the failures. I plan to let the novel completely rest, while I focus on the poems and images in December.
Today I will write until this draft is finished, no matter how many words it takes, even if I have to write through the night, I will get to “The End.” I’m very excited. I’m so close. I won’t let myself down.
The draft is a complete mess. I know most of it is garbage, but the whole story is there. I have used the process of drafting to get to know some really interesting characters, create a small town world, and create and resolve conflicts. In this way, this NaNoWriMo has been a complete success. The words flowed, and I wrote more in a month than I ever have before. But what I really succeeded in doing was creating more work for myself.
I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about my plans for the dwindling days of this year and what to expect in December, but then I’ll be taking a break, at least for the weekend.
Experience Writing 