In anticipation of National Poetry Writing Month kicking off tomorrow, I thought I would share my thoughts on a book of poetry I recently enjoyed.
Why I picked it up: I received a free e-book version of One Thousand Good Answers by Sarah Herrin from the publisher through the Library Thing early reviewers program.
My Expectations: I didn’t know what to expect. From the cover, I thought I might read some flowery poetry with dark undertones.
What I liked: This book was a satisfying surprise. Sarah Herrin used poems from her previous self-published collection to create new blackout poems, changing them to positive poems of self-love.
I enjoyed reading the original and blackout poems side by side, showing the complete change in feeling and attitude. The new poems are condensed past the essence of the original poems, as if boiled down to their essential oils, leaving a warm, pleasant scent.
What I didn’t like:
There were a couple of poems that didn’t fit with the feel of the collection in my opinion. I also thought completely blacking out the titles on a couple of the poems were lost opportunities.
Rating: ♦♦♦♦ 4 out of 5
Overall, I enjoyed the idea and the execution of this collection.
Homemade Healthy Halloween Chocolates by Maria L. Berg 2021
How’s that for a trick? I found a simple healthy dark chocolate recipe, and a Halloween chocolate mold (glad I had one skull left, I already ate all the pumpkins). I think those little people are supposed to be cherubs (other chocolate mold), but I choose to see them as people running in terror.
Jack-o-Lanterns by Maria L. Berg 2021
My best trick, in my opinion, is my bokeh photography. For today’s prompt at Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge, “trick,” I made a new filter, so I can now put jack-o-lantern faces on every point of light.
OctPoWriMo
Today’s prompt, Follow you path wherever it may lead was the focus of my August “Pathways” project. I think most of you have already watched it, but if you haven’t, I read two poems about pathways over my original music and a video of bokeh footprints. So I’ll choose a different path and look at the 2018 prompt for Day 5: Denied. “Denied” has a great sonic quality. I used it in a song I wrote a long time ago called “Dry Your Eyes.” Here’s the first verse and chorus.
I feel it building, coming up from deep inside. Imploding bits of yearning, parts of everything denied.
But no don’t do that, girl don’t do that, please, just dry your eyes.
Maria L. Berg from Live Bait Machine 2002
Dry Your Eyes by Maria and the Aftermath from Live Bait Machine 2002
I hadn’t planned on sharing the song, but I’m enjoying listening to it, so I thought you might too. Does it sound like “denied?” I sure think so, but I’m a bit biased.
In 2018 I wrote a short poem called “Denied” exploring all the senses of “denied.” I like the smell I came up with. So I’ve got a sound and a smell (laundry left in the wash overnight). But what is the texture of denied? Slippery, I think. I remember trying to get out of a pool of water that had been a treacherous jump to get into. The rocks were too slick and I couldn’t get out. It took one person pulling me from above and another pushing from below (embarrassing) before I finally found a foothold.
The taste? For me, cilantro. And these days, “denied” looks like rejection letter after rejection letter. The joy of the life of a fiction writer.
So I have my senses wrapped around “denied.” How do I sonically surrender to it? What’s the trick? Bring it back to this love of words and poetry. Accept that being denied is part of the process of the path I’m on. Let’s see what happens.
All the Judgy Jack-o-Lanterns by Maria L. Berg 2021
I opened the washing machine and I faced
forgotten laundry, wet, rotten, and tawdry sodden limp bodies, whirled cotton underthings left too long, waft wrong
a sharp reminder of efforts denied intentions resigned, redefined dallies-dillied, willies-nillied, paths-a-wandered time squandered, thoughts pondered monkeyshined attention bamboozled to other directions
but funkified clothes are but a sigh and an eye-roll a stale-fail waste of soap and water but taken in stride those whites get another ride the flunk undone and a battle soon won
Writober
I did my character sheets: Time-consuming, but fun. I love when the random selections fit the character I have in mind, almost as much as when they create conflict in the character.
All my characters have names now. Harvey is gone. My dead body is now name Reese Tribble. She was the school nurse of the small village, but got murderously greedy. The wheelbarrow man is named Rafael Minghella. He was an introverted ap designer who thought Reese was his best friend. Anouk, the mystical wild boar, protector of the forest, is an egocentric idealist whose destructive flaw is impatience, has a bad habit of snacking, and is afraid of the number four. Anouk is accompanied by Boonam Funk who is also impatient and egocentric and is moved by evil forces.
The story so far:
Every year on Halloween night, the people of a small village by an ancient forest bury the body of someone recently deceased deep in the forest as an offering for Anouk, the mythical wild boar that protects the forest. This year, however, no one has died and people are beginning to worry about Anouk’s wrath. Raphael Minghella, this year’s designated body burier, doesn’t believe in Anouk, and gets in an argument with his friend Reese, the school nurse who has been offered a lot of money to “come up with” a body. Reese doesn’t like the way Raphael is looking at her, and assumes his lustful pass at her is an attempt to strike first. She evades him in such a way that she slips and impales herself on his high hat stand. He decides to bury her in the forest and try to collect the money she was offered. On his way out of the forest, he sees Boonam Funk, the man with Anouk, approaching.
As you can see, the micro-story has expanded, but I still haven’t gotten to the real story. What happens to Raphael? To the village? Where is the fear and horror of the story?
At the moment, I still think the story is from Raphael’s point of view and starts as he is leaving the forest. Maybe it starts with his thoughts as he is burying his friend, and the turn of the story is when he sees Anouk and Boonam approaching. Since everything with Reese happened because he didn’t believe in Anouk and she did, his world view would completely change.
Okay, I think I’m getting somewhere. Rafael’s main fears are separation and dying which are pretty universal fears, so I’ll dig into those fears as my themes. Now that I have my themes and my turning point, I can get started on a chiastic outline. This article “The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot” does a good job of explaining chiastic structure and has a great example created by Susan Raab using the story of Beauty and the Beast. I created a similar worksheet for myself to print out and use to brainstorm my story outlines. Hopefully I’ll have a completed one to show you tomorrow
Ghosts of judgy jack-o-lanterns by Maria L. Berg 2021
Today’s theme for #tshalloweenchallenge is Skeleton. I’m so glad I found this challenge yesterday. I’m finding it very inspiring. Yesterday, I started looking through my Halloween fabrics and today, I started playing with my Halloween decorations. For once in a long while, my Halloween might not feel rushed and last minute.
OctPoWriMo
Today’s prompt is about the turning of the season. In the word prompts “change of direction” speaks to my interest in forces (In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object – Wikipedia) and peripeteia (noun – a sudden turn of events or an unexpected reversal, especially in a literary work). I also like “fresh starts” and “cool nights.”
The suggested form is Pantoum. I enjoyed how Michele Vecchitto used the form to talk about the comfort of traditions in her poem Change of Season, Change of Heart this morning.
In 2018 the prompt was “_________________ and other strange animals.” In my journaling this morning, I remembered it as wild animals and for some reason I’ve decided my skeleton is a wild animal. The poem I wrote back in 2018 “The Guilty Man and Other Animals” also removed the word strange, and the imagery is definitely more in the wild, or feral category.
I don’t think I explored the prompt much back then because I’ve never read My family and other Animals by Gerald Durrell or seen the film. I watched the first ten minutes this morning and I think I will enjoy it.
The suggested form was Kennings which will be a great compliment to sonic surrender. A Kenning is a two-word phrase describing and object through metaphor. The example given often is “whale-road” meaning “sea” from Ezra Pound’s The Seafarer.
What a great way to get the mind thinking metaphorically and to generate imagery. I’m so glad I came back to this prompt and really played with it.
So much to play with: surrender to sound, repetition of the Pantoum and metaphor-fun of Kennings. Here we go!
The Bone-train Symphony
I listen for the tones of my X-ray-whites the meatless-me meanders along the tracks the bone-train, pops and grinds when gravity fights groans and moans, creaks and cracks
the meatless me meanders along the tracks a shell of elemental elegance sketched groans and moans, creaks and cracks a schism, a radiation-picture etched
a shell of elemental elegance sketched rattling, prattling, tattling organ-armor a schism, a radiation-picture etched why does action bring on such a clamor?
rattling, prattling, tattling organ-armor the bone-train pops and grinds in gravity’s fight why does action bring on such a clamor, a cacophony of tones from my X-ray-whites?
Writober
So far I came up with an idea: A man coming out of the forest with a wheelbarrow and a shovel passes a man in dark goggles and a leather trench-coat, carrying a large suitcase and leading a tusked boar by a sheer scarf. Okay, that’s not really an idea, more of an intriguing image.
Then I did some research and found that there is mythology around boars as protectors of forests and that they are tenacious and hard to kill (especially if supernatural 😉). They may symbolize luck and fulfilling desire for some, but betrayal for others which fits well into a story.
The collective noun for boars is a Herd, a Singular, or a Sounder; as in how did this boar get separated from his singular? Or why did this boar choose the company of a man over his sounder? Yeah, anything other than “herd” would probably just confuse the reader.
Then I started to develop my characters. I need another day to develop these characters, so I’m going to put off theme and outline until tomorrow.
Any of you working on fun spooky story ideas for #Writober?
Since I missed Pumpkin and monster, here’s my pumpkin that has a parasitic monster (again):
It might already be a zombie vampire. Watch Out!A colony of bats in the window by Maria L. Berg 2021
Today’s prompt Bats reminded me of a poem I wrote during NaPoWriMo 2018 called “Be Forewarned: Expect Vespertilian Behavior.” I really like the word vespertilian (adjective – of, relating to , or resembling a bat), so I thought I would try a sonic surrender poem around it.
The Darkest Night with the Most Stars
vespertilian magician whisper when aeolian again though never panglossian portend an elysian end before returning to your den
obsidian musician of the night observing through your own echoes in flight, repeated, reflected, frequencies I pen this pleasure as I remember lightlessness, sitting tranquilly
singing wild in the field to the stars when you swooped and smacked, whacked me in the forehead, little confused, amusing fruit bat you sit in my memory still.
Jacob M. Appel is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Education at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, where he is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry. He is also the author of four literary novels, nine short story collections, an essay collection, a cozy mystery, a thriller, a volume of poems and a compendium of medical dilemmas.
Once I had the pleasure of chatting with a well-known sculptor whose preferred medium was marble—and I couldn’t resist asking her what happened if she made a mistake. I had expected her to respond with an earnest observation about the planning required to prevent such a calamity: measuring with calipers, modeling in plaster, etc. Instead, she laughed and replied, “Why do you think the Venus de Milo is missing her arms?”
Fortunately, writing is far more forgiving. A loose plot line can always be tightened or a more original rhyme found to end a stanza. Would-be authors are taught early on that Hemingway wrote forty-seven different endings to A Farewell to Arms and Fitzgerald continued to revise The Great Gatsby even after it had been typeset, that Auden had the audacity to alter “September 1, 1939” after publication and Moore grappled with the text of “Poetry” for five decades. In contrast, writers publicly (although falsely) believed to eschew revision—Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara—are often derided accordingly. One can still hear the disdain of Capote’s quip about Kerouac, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
In modern western culture, and particularly in the United States, revision has claimed a hallowed position. Nearly every writing course I have encountered incorporates an emphasis upon revision, a belief that multiple drafts are essential to the writing process. Maybe this reflects the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, or the Edisonian notion that genius is 99% perspiration. Unfortunately, many aspiring writers take the wrong message from these lessons. It is certainly true that revision has a valuable place in the writing process. However, that does not mean that vision isn’t also necessary. Nor does it mean that, just because great works require revision, revision necessarily leads to great works.
Grace Paley frequently observed that she did her best writing in the bathtub. Her point was not, of course, that she had to worry about getting soap suds on her writing pad. Rather, she was suggesting that she thought through her stories in depth before she put pen to paper. Having a sense of where you are going in advance helps you get there—both in life and on the page. Anyone who has ever planned family vacations with young children surely knows this: It is far wiser to book a hotel room at Disneyland or Yellowstone prior to departure than to hop into the station wagon and drive until one finds an appealing destination. For John Wayne and a few inveterate literary explorers, the open road may be alluring. For many writers, it is the sure path to hours before a blank computer screen. That is not to say that a writer cannot change paths or make discoveries as she writes—for the creative mind, that is inevitable. But choosing the Goldilocks moment to transfer words from one’s soul to one’s hand—not too soon, not too late—is one of the skills that separates the skilled writer from the amateur. And, fortunately, it can be cultivated.
I urge my students to take time to reflect upon what they want to say, and how, long before they consider saying it. It is easier to erase a sentence in one’s mind than on one’s parchment. (There are a few exceptions, like Dostoevsky, who managed to weave his revisions and even his mistakes seamlessly into his prose without any undoing.) Either Will Rogers or Head & Shoulders once warned: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” That is as much true regarding the impression you make upon yourself as the impression that you make upon others. Once you’ve committed yourself to a word or idea in print, you’ve often moored yourself to a particular course. Needless to say, there are limits to how much one should wait before setting down your internal epics. As either Aristotle or Voltaire or my Great Aunt Sadie once warned, “Don’t make the perfect an enemy of the good.” But the good, thought through in advance, can prove the mortal foe of the mediocre.
The fetishization of revision often leads writers to forget one of the craft’s most important principles: Quit while you’re behind. I firmly believe that anyone with the passion and commitment can write valuable and inspiring poetry or fiction. Yet that does not mean that every particular poem or story can be transformed into a work of value and inspiration. Sometimes, the materials themselves don’t cohere: the author had chosen the wrong structure or genre for this particular idea or the underlying plot simply isn’t compelling; other times, the material is worthwhile but the author is at the wrong point in her journey to share it most effectively. Knowing whether a story or poem is working is a talent. But recognizing whether a story or poem can work is a far more crucial skill.
So how does one know whether a story or poem can work? One question to ask is whether, as you are writing, you find yourself with too many or too few ingredients. An analogy I often share with my students is self-assembling an exercise bicycle—inevitably, one of life’s greatest challenges. If you try multiple times and find yourself with excess parts and wheels that don’t spin, or too few parts and a hollow pole for a seat, you might consider repackaging and returning to the supplier. The same is true with writing. Sometimes, the pieces just don’t fit together. Accept that. Move on. Live to fight another day. I say this as a writer who has spent thousands of hours writing manuscripts that should have been scrapped after fifteen minutes. Revision is often necessary, but it is rarely sufficient. No writer wants to be lauded as a “revisionary.”
It has become a trope in creative writing to place original drafts and revisions of famous works side by side to admire the radical changes imposed by the authors between drafts. That is often a rewarding exercise. But I exhort students that they should admire the vision of the original as well. Exceptions do exist: The Ray Carver-Gordon Lish Complex, for instance. (Editor Gordon Lish is often credited with line editing Carver’s stories to create the spare, crystalline prose we now know as Carveresque.) Yet it is usually the magic of the original draft that still enchants in the final form.
Revision, in other words, is an essential tool—but it shouldn’t be a crutch. I am very wary of writers who plan on revisions at the outset, of students who assure me, “I’ll fix that later.” To my thinking, that is like planning for a second marriage at your first wedding. The responsibility of the writer is to get it right the first time. And then, in the revision, to get it even righter.
The dVerse Poets Pub prompt for Poetics is Blue Tuesday. Sarah challenges us to write Blue poems which gave me an idea for another redraft, “Put a color on it.” This a great way to think about revising to emotion as well. When you’ve identified the mood and emotion you want your poem to convey, ask yourself what color that is and use that color as a filter for redrafting your poem. The Sherwin-Williams paint colors site is a great tool for exploring color families and color names.
Put a color on it
For this poem, I imagined using a blue lens on my camera and using it to tint my poem. I used some of the draft from the thesaurus game below and made it blue.
Seeing in Blue
An atmospheric perception after the rain in the steam of warm rain captures contrary smoky-azurite wings those wings just can’t agree pulsating rhythmic reflections in a poll the rhythm’s inverted beats in a pool’s still, faded-flaxflower waters
Rapture jammed with glacial conceits fancy whims chilling beneath mid-cloudburst like ebbtide in advance it will advance the tide of the swimming, sense of falling falling, falling into this dive maneuvering eviction from a wondrous whirlpool
The outlook grows lake-water crisp Ow! It bites, clarity after a meditative rainstorm’s punctuation all those taps, droppy drips untimately leads to discovering the fountain, finally find, what’s to find transmitting blissful moonmist
Seeing Blue by Maria L. Berg 2021
I thought of a couple more quick and easy redrafting techniques over the weekend. I am a huge fan of my thesaurus and thought what fun it would be to use my thesaurus to come up with replacements for all of the main nouns and verbs. I’ll call this exercise Thesaurus Game.
Thesaurus Game
Here’s what I came up with using the first stanza of the original short-centered line poem “Indelible Marks” for demonstration:
Permanent Symbols
a perception captures contrary wings flittering in range of a basin’s elbowroom
jammed with glacial conceits mid-provocation like ear-ringing in advance of the swimming, sense of falling, maneuvering eviction from a coil
the outlook grows crisp as if ultimately discovering the fountain transporting pervading corruption saturation
While reading the Back Draft:John Murillo interview, the two versions of “Mercy, Mercy Me” made me think of another, somewhat simple redraft I can do. I can turn it upside down. I think I will add that to my process at the beginning of redrafting.
Turn It Upside-Down
When I took the full, long lines of the current draft and turned them upside down, I didn’t find a lot of inspiration, but when I took the short, centered lines and turned them upside down, I found some interesting lines. That inspired me to completely reverse the words which also revealed some interesting lines.
Drag center line to the right or left to reveal each poem
This comparison block makes me happy! I liked how Back Draft on Guernica was comparing their first draft and final draft poems using JuxtaposeJS, so I created a Juxtapose on the knightlab site, but the HTML wasn’t working with WordPress. I found a work-around which included downloading a plug-in and writing more HTML, and I was planning on trying it for the final poem reveal, but now I don’t have to. Yay for comparison block. Thank you WordPress.
After all my redrafts, I plan to make my final choices and send a draft off for some feedback. I plan to try both Scribophile and Poetry Free for All. Both of these sites expect you to give feedback before you post asking for feedback, so I thought I would get started. The main writing page of Scribophile is mostly novel excerpts and short stories, however, I found active poetry groups, joined, and gave some feedback. I joined Poetry as Craft and Poetry Critique Circle.
I took a look at The Poetry Free-for-all, but I think I’ll see what happens with Scribophile first. I like the inline critique format there.
Quick Review
I started the day by printing all of the drafts so far to get a good look at the choices I’ve made. Through free-writing, mind-mapping, and writing a narrative poem, I was inspired to make some large changes to the first two stanzas.
I played with form. I tried past tense. I played the opposites game to come up with an opposite poem, and I combined the opposite lines with the original. Let’s keep going.
Cut each line in half. Write a new beginning and/or ending for each line.
I’m going to go ahead and use the final poem from my last post that included the opposite lines for this draft. As I read through, separating each line, I decided to put my arsonist line and its opposite back in to play. I broke some of the longer lines into four parts. I’m using lines and ideas from my narrative poem to fill in some of the lines which I think is working well.
A Fruit Fly-Sized Thought Changes Everything
An impression arrests fruit flies mid-flight, specks in eye corners before the cracked pane among the pitiful, stained porcelain in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation An ignored cry for attention like reddened, sore hands scouring or tinnitis of Meniere’s recognized or diagnosed frees a cougar from a shower of ineptitude leaping from empty thought on fire before dizzying vertigo while in fruitless and futile meditation, I don’t hear the tractor like hearing you clearly, I step from my spiraling a voice of truth whispers from miles away the view becomes clear, his sweat on her behind the bale as if finally finding the source, the teasing hidden cruelty of wafting, permeating decay after the ground falls away and I embrace the free-fall letting my arms, and my dress, fly freely above my head, my pinky-toe the stoicism of a point a heart slammed closed kills confusion, how small my worries, each a fruit fly in the sink A solution, so long obscured by chores and basic needs, unlike instantly losing a copy of each daily exercise toward demise over the vast, yellowed field of placid, dry existence
Contentment empties the song of passion, the hips of sway what good is the stick in rubber cement if it leeches the glue of flavor? time steals the scissors, so sharp and shiny, sheathed in brown leather, treasured and hides them whenever desperately needed for artistry Restlessness fills pockets with bland slime, lacking sparkle or elasticity, only a blob with weight like a stomach full of rocks someone who gifts some screwdrivers of incompetence but constant irritation and itching desire keep me in motion juggling the stomach rocks though insatiable hunger remains creating irregular comfort, making a pet of each stone swallowed though the scratched, tender throat needs be constantly quenched with clarity, I drink the elixir truth brings, purple and sweet as grape Kool-Aid I set the faded flower curtains aflame, a self-fulfilling responsibility the arsonist of bridges, can’t choose to turn around with nothing I’ve left, clean of any sticky coating a fire fighter for chasms needs a very long hose the charred frame remains absent everything you’ve saved fleeing obscures the crackling and the smoke the path ahead holds the divots and clawing roots of many whims what indelible marks will stay on my raw skin? which curses will topple to the tongue? your erasable touches won’t last through the first rain and I’ll take with me this lesson~stand away from an ass
Refreshment wriggles like worms in the garden blindly boring among the moles making mountains under the tent, my temporary shelter of turquoise and lilac, not offering camouflage against the deep forest greens however, its thin nylon walls offer the illusion of solitude Thirst sits in the grass picking dandelions and dreaming so far, I am camping, not homeless having vacated the house without a plan knowing there is no way back, but clutching ideas I left the kitchen sink, the burning curtains, the cracked pane, and him to the fruit flies refusing to leave a wildness, the definition of me, to putridity I let go of the nonsense of conformity to expectation and a singular route with blinders forcing my way choosing instead the claws in the paws of the freshly showered cougar the dark, fresh-earth mole tunnels full of worms and beetles and ants and spiders under my tent filter and aerate the earth like new and curious spaces for contemplation a beam of light breaks through thick fir canopy revealing a clutch of rabbits in the brush destroying any old or bored blanks of not thinking these bunnies crawling, not seeing, as they emerge from an underground nest inspire me to try varying perspectives, to look from under and from high above, perspectives that may nourish new understanding here, walking vision, I face fears to love myself again this fresh hunger will not feed old stubbornness
-Wow. That was great! So many new and interesting lines. If only a couple work with the poem, that’s gravy. The rest may make their way into other poems. I’m going to print this and start highlighting my favorite lines.
Choose the best lines and free-write. Dig down, find the deeper meaning.
As I went through, I did some quick editing and the lines I chose to explore further are:
after the ground falls away and I embrace free-fall, letting my arms and my dress, fly above my head, my pinky-toe the stoical point
a heart slammed closed kills confusion
but constant irritation and itching desire keep me in motion, juggling stomach rocks, insatiable hunger remains
your erasable touches won’t last past the first rain
An excerpt from my free-write:
I think some of the new lines work in the original poem. I now have a kill my darlings dilemma with the first line of the second stanza, they both work, but she’s thinking about her own artistry and skill being wasted, not any passion she once felt for him. So I’ll save songs and hips for something else. I think the lines of the ground falling away and telescoping view go well with vertigo, so I’m going to try them with the first stanza. What about that pinky-toe at a stoical point? That works with the next line, stepping out of the spiral, so it’s the tether that pulls her out.
~Maria L. Berg’s journal
Use the best line as the beginning of a new poem
I was going to combine this with “Force into a Form” in the next post, but while I was free-writing, it just happened. I really like the line “A heart slammed closed kills confusion,” but it doesn’t really fit with the original poem as is. As I started to write about it here’s what I wrote:
A heart slammed closed kills confusion
-maybe breaks confusion’s tiny bones breaking the what ifs, grinding the what could bes to dust, scattering the woulda-couldas to the corners or into the dark waters, but not collecting them in an urn, on the mantel, or planting them among mycelium. No. This death is final, sealed in a crypt where the rock can’t be rolled away on any third day.
Cut up and create a collage poem
I enjoy doing collage poems. For this one, I’m going to cut up everything I printed this morning, put all of the short phrases (two or three words) into a container and start pulling them out randomly. I already have pages set up in a notebook for this and these cool glue pens.
Next Steps
There are two more redrafting exercises I want to explore for the next post. I think we’ve already covered “Expand, write past the ending, and I think I’ll combine “Tighten, to it’s most succinct telling” with “Force into a form.”
Force into a form, or change from formal form to free verse.
Though this poem started in a form, it is a form of my invention, so at this point, it may help to play with some other forms, specifically some rhyming and line repetition forms. For this experiment, I took a look back through my OctPoWriMo 2020 posts and decided on:
In my post Relax and Process from last October, I tried an exercise called Channeling Emotion. This made me think of something to add to the Review process. Right after moods and themes, we should identify the emotions: both the emotions in the poem and also the emotion you feel when you read it. These are important things to identify during the review because we may want to revise to bring out these emotions.
Emulate another poem or poet
A while ago, I went through all of my copies of the New Yorker and Poets & Writers and picked out my favorite poems.
For this exercise, I chose Dead Stars by Ada Limon, Ode by Jane Huffman, and News by Ben Purkert. Before deciding how I want to emulate these poems, I want to know more about them.
Jane Huffman is the Editor of Guesthouse Literary Journal. I highly recommend taking a look at the Foreward to Issue 7. It’s full of amazing images and discusses the content of the issue.
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain to this arsonist of bridges with nothing I’ve left what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
Redraft
Let’s warm-up with some fun and easy changes, and build through our drafts and choices.
Play with Line Length and spacing, the visual look of the poem
to look at short, centered lines. Let’s see what that looks like:
Indelible Marks
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain to this arsonist of bridges with nothing I’ve left, what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
That is fun. I definitely like that.
Write the poem in different POVs and tenses to find the strongest telling.
The only place in the poem that shows that this poem is written in first person are my new lines in the second stanza, “to this arsonist of bridges with nothing I’ve left.” I think this line, though it’s doing lots of work, isn’t what works with this poem. Is the Janus turn I intended worth it, since I use it in the next stanza as well? Any ideas? Let’s see what I can come up with.
Indelible Marks
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain with clarity, a responsibility what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
A different form in a different tense:
Curious Spaces for Contemplation
An impression arrested fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepped out of a spiral, the view became clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment emptied the glue of flavor and stole the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remained with clarity, a self-fulfilling responsibility what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggled among the moles under the tent of solitude vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrated new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, could nourish new understanding
For each line, write its opposite. Search for the turn in the poem.
For this exercise, let’s stay with the short lines centered and play with opposites.
Invisible Ink
An ignored cry for attention frees (what is the opposite of fruit flies) a cougar from a shower empty of thought on fire while at peace (in meditation) like hearing you clearly from miles away
after the still grounded stoicism of a point the closed dies fogged, unlike instantly losing a copy of placid dry existence
Restlessness fills the slime bland or gifts some screwdrivers of incompetence and irregular comfort or constantly quenched flee obscured many whims the erasable touches won’t stand away from an ass?
Thirst sits in the grass over non-sheltered groups of people refusing to leave a wildness letting go of nonsense or right a singular idea from the (what is the opposite of fruit flies?) cougar a light, destroyed sky blockades adumbrate old or bored blanks of not thinking here walking vision will not feed old ignorance/stubbornness
Combine the opposites with the original
The Kitchen Sink is Backed Up Again
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas An ignored cry for attention frees a cougar from a shower frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo empty of though,t on fire while in meditation like hearing you clearly from miles away stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay after the still grounded stoicism of a point the closed dies fogged, unlike instantly losing a copy of placid, dry existence
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry Restlessness fills with bland slime, or gifts some screwdrivers of incompetence but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain creating irregular comfort constantly quenched with clarity, a self-fulfilling responsibility fleeing obscures many whims what indelible marks will topple to the tongue? the erasable touches won’t stand away from an ass?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude Thirst sits in the grass over non-sheltered groups of people having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies refusing to leave a wildness, letting go of nonsense, or right a singular idea from the cougar the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation a light, destroyed sky blockades adumbrate old or bored blanks of not thinking where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding here walking vision will not feed old stubbornness
Next Steps
At this point in the process, it looks like I’ve made more of a mangled mess than improvement, but I do like some of the new phrases created by the opposites. I’ll free-write around my favorites in my morning pages and see if they add to the poem. In the next post, I’ll play around with more expansion techniques and then put it all together into a new draft.
The seed yet planted has potential it may be the one to burst into sprout the tiny green hope watched by the discerning eye not ignored as the yellow flowers in the garden, the kale gone to seed soon composted to clear the way
That quadrille (a poem of 44 words) in response to today’s dVerse Poets Pub prompt, feels like a great way to start this week’s adventure in revision. Merril’s prompt “seed” is also a fun tie-in, because it’s a Janus word.
Now that the April challenges have ended and I have over thirty new poems drafted, it’s time to think about revision. Last year in May, I had the same idea. I read a lot of posts and books and started charting my revision process in my poetry notebook. I’m going to attempt to approach each draft as a seed, full of potential.
The Process
Here’s what I have come up with thus far:
Review
After letting a poem rest a while, come back to it as if reading someone else’s poem for the first time. What do I like about it? What don’t I like about it?
Here is my review checklist:
Identify POV, tense, form, voice
setting, narrative
themes, moods
words to mind map
alternate titles
highlight the best lines
mark weak verbs & nouns
mark areas to expand
highlight cliche language
choose what to edit to (theme, idea)
make notes to guide re-write
Redraft
Here are some ideas to try while redrafting a poem:
Choose the best lines and freewrite. Dig down, find the deeper meaning.
Use the best line as the beginning of a new poem.
For each line, write its opposite. Search for the turn in the poem.
Cut each line in half. Write a new beginning and/or ending for each line.
Write the poem in different POVs and tenses to find the strongest telling.
Expand, write past the ending. Tighten, to it’s most succinct telling.
Force into a form, or change from formal form to free verse.
Revise
Read the poem aloud. Feel the words in your mouth. Sing it to your favorite songs. Walk to it. Dance to it. Feel the rhythm. Have the computer read it aloud. Highlight anything that doesn’t flow, that doesn’t sound right, anything that feels forced or doesn’t fit.
Feedback
When you feel ready for some feedback, you might want to try Poetry Free-For-All, an online poetry workshop for poets to exchange critiques. There is a lot of useful information in the forums including A Workshop for One.
I like that poets giving critiques are called critters. It makes me think of the campy horror movies. It’s fun to imagine getting poetry feedback from balls of fur with sharp teeth.
Learn from other poets
The forums of Poetry Free-For-All also include an extensive Recommended Reading list.
Take the useful feedback and things you’ve liked from reading and listening to other poets talking about their work and come to your poem again with a fresh, critical eye. Read it aloud until it feels good in your mouth and body while clearly expressing your intended meaning.
A Demonstration
I thought it would be fun and useful to take the first poem I wrote this April, since it has had a good rest, and demonstrate each step through the entire process as a series of posts this week.
An impression arrests the fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen in mid-irritation, fleeting yet multiplying before your eyes what indelible marks will topple to the tongue and adumbrate the growing clutch
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry the constant irritation and insatiable hunger –of those fruit flies, feeding in the sinks– sketch an impression of furious flight
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house with the ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
The Draft
This poem draft follows a form I created myself that for now I call the Jar and Janus form. I started collecting words in vases last year when I enjoyed the Coursera course Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop with Douglas Kearney for the second time. While working with abstract and concrete nouns, I decided to create vases full of each, to make random connections to spark ideas.
For each stanza of this poem, the form (followed loosely) is:
expand on the response in line two including a Janus word
Use the Janus word to say the opposite, or create a second thought, or point of view
Repeat for as many stanzas as you like
Now that the draft is created, the form isn’t particularly important, except to remember the Janus words and think about their opposite meanings.
Motivations
Before we dive into revision, it’s a good idea to focus intention. Why do I want to revise this poem? I want to improve it, of course, but why? And why this poem?
I want to revise this poem because:
It’s one of the first examples of a form I invented and I want to continue to explore the form.
I want to take one of April’s poems through revision to work through my revision process. This poem has had the most time to rest.
I think it’s a good example of my unique poetic voice that I want to continue to develop.
Though I will be publishing the revised poem here, so it won’t be eligible for journal publication, if I love the results, I may want to include it in a collection.
Since I plan on developing this form further, what I learn from this revision could be very useful for future poems.
My main motivation is to learn by doing and share the experience to inform others.
Next Steps
I hope you will join me this week taking a poem through all of the steps of my revision process. In my next post we’ll go through the Review and plan some re-writes.
Where There Are Tiny Dinosaurs In Trees (2020) bokeh photograph by Maria L. Berg
Attempt at Focus
This year has one main writing focus and that is revision. I will be revising my novels one after the other. I will be revising my short stories and my poems. I will find ways to stay motivated during revision. I will explore revision tools, workbooks and worksheets and find what works and doesn’t work for my process along the way.
There will be events like National Poetry Month in April, OctPoWriMo (October Poetry Writing Month) in October and NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November, but other than that, this site is about revision this year.
If you are an author or poet (or both) who would like to share your revision process, or tips and tricks let me know in the comments, or send an email. We can schedule a guest-post or an interview.
The Revision Experience Begins
Planner Pages
I thought I had given up on my planner pages, but then I wanted to start setting up my revision goals. I took a look at the revised pages I made for December 2019 and thought they would work nicely. After some quick revision, I offer what I’ll be using this month. If you are interested in looking back at my planner for writers project, it started back in February of 2019. Just click on the month in the archives (column to the right).
The file is set up to be used in OpenOffice. I decided to leave the deadlines blank this time, so you can focus on the deadlines that most interest you.
Here are the sites I usually look at when I’m researching deadlines:
I liked the prompts and the format of these planner pages. I also like the more achievable goal of three submissions a week. I look forward to your feedback on the pages and hope you find them useful.
To start my short story revisions, I chose twenty-one of my short stories and put them in one PDF without titles. My goal is to attempt to read through them on my tablet as if it is someone else’s collection and choose my ten favorites for revision.
Experience Writing 