Incendiary Lit

So many amazing things are said daily. Usually, amazing in a bad way. But amazing’s still amazing.

For instance, in a class the other day, to prove a point about cave paintings, the professor said that in the 18th century the world was only around 7000 years old, but now, we know it’s billions of years old. And he even went on to say that because of the scientific research we’ve gone from the religious tenet that these paintings couldn’t possibly be 10,000, or even a million years old, and must be more recent– therefore not such a dramatic discovery. A girl a couple rows behind me said “That doesn’t add up. If it was only seven thousand years old before, how can it be so old now?”

Now, it’d be hard to get to the line of dialog in the same way, about cave paintings, but there are plenty of other reasons to explain the difference in ‘creation’ dates between cultures, and if you have a character you want to showcase as not the smartest peanut in the turd, merely by paying slight attention to those around you, you’ve got a ready-made scenario. Give it a shot.

When we’re talking visual aesthetics it’s hard to not give an example. I wrote this quick poem to show one way the poem could take shape, but it is by no means the only way it could look.
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There’re many ways to format fiction atypically, and there are various reasons to do so. House of Leaves is one example of a large body of work that that uses the page in interesting ways, but there are many different ways to write a short story that looks not like the everyday short story. Here’s one.

Format your story like a script. Try to keep it mostly dialog, instead of using quotation marks, format them like this:

CHARACTER:    No, that’s what she said!

Begin every scene’s format like this:

SCENE: The bathroom’s tile is littered with stolen hotel towels in varying stages of their return to the organic. Even the air smelled green.The yadda-yadda-yadda, blah blah blah.

That’s what will set your story apart from being just a script, the poetic description of the scene, and the actions, and interaction of your characters. Try to think of stories that are entirely external. No omniscience. Third person. Try it out. Have fun.

Movies are filmed all over the world. One time Jessica and I stayed at a motel that turned out to be the same motel from “Miami” in the movie Blow. You know, where Johnny Depp is dropping off the “package” for Diego, and he gets a stuck in his face… Here’s the assignment:

Using this IMDB database (I friggan heart imdb) find a filming location in a place you are either familiar with, or somewhere close that you can go to. Watch the movie/episode, go to the place, or recall a specific time you were there, or just imagine it yourself.  You are writers, right? OK, describe what happens in the movie/episode, and find some way to compare it to your situation… be it the characters love lifes, how you can or can’t relate to them, or something about the situation.

For instance: Sugar and Spice was at least partially filmed at Anoka High School, in Anoka, MN. I have fond memories of skating around there, of getting lost in Anoka driving with Jon and Jackie. So I could take the getting lost story, talk about the uncertainty Hannah had about the heist (yes, I’ve seen Sugar and Spice, there are worse movies. Like anything Jason Friedberg or Uwe Boll poop out), and decide that in this plane of existence, Jon had a crush on Jackie, but knows she doesn’t like him. That could be her parents’ guiding hand. And Hannah’s rebellion, and part in the heist is this new Jon trying to kiss the new Jackie, and it all works out in the end. That could be done going back and forth between the movie and the narrative (Like in MAR’s Fineline Contest winner for works under 500 words, “How to be a conqueror” by Matthew Salesses), or it could just make mention of the movie intermittently. The choice is yours.

I tried the complex form of a double abecedarian, at my own suggesting, from the August 19th firestarter challenge, and just received word that it was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize put on by the North American Review. Of 331 Entrants and 1461 submitted poems, the readers and Molly Peacock chose 18 finalists, three received places and three Honorable Mentions. Yeah, I know, it didn’t win, well, I’m still learning too, ok? The first place poem was Kate Buckley, just down the road in Laguna Beach, for the poem “The Life Cycle of Moths,” which is very exciting for her. Second and third places went to Sarah Heffner’s “Elevator Conversation,” and Deborah Fries’s “Reconstitution.” So you too can turn an exercise into a publishable poem. Give it a shot!

The honorable mentions were:
Joan Colby for “I am calm and happy but desperately anxious to live”
Elizabeth Haukaas for “Red”
Michael Kriesel for “Secret Women”

The other finalists (who will also be published in that issue)
Roy Bentley for “Funeral in the South”
Greg Braquet for “Car Maps”
George David Clark for “The Secret Lives of Lady Gymnasts”
Barry Dickson for “Barry Dickson 1945–”
Zebulon Huset for “Cabo San Lucas, 2007: A Double Abecedarian”
Kimiko McGonigle for “She Learned”
Susan Norris for “For My Mother”
B.V. Olguin for “Chin”
Douglas F. Parham for “The Jealous Praise of Flannel Sleep Attire”
Emily Lupita Plum for “Two Islands”
Michael Spence for “And Don’t Forget the Fruit”
Joshua Wood for “Dream Creatures”

For those who haven’t heard, there’s a spy satellite the size of a bus with rocket fuel that has lost power and will plummet to the earth at any moment. Think alarmist for this exercise. Or not, either way. Be there when it happens. Choose the time, and the place. Write in the first person, and see either it actually happen, or the aftermath. Decide on a central idea before you begin if you can. Know where you want to end, so you can sprinkle bits of foreshadowing or parallel imagery in there. Is it somewhere cut off from the news? Were they able to divert the satellite to the Pacific like they had in the past, and if so, what of the oceanlife there, or a possible diver, fisherman, did the satellite land on a spot where you hold a fond memory? There are many places to go with this one. Maybe the time period is different, in the 80’s perhaps, or the near future. Have fun.

In her wonderful collection Tell Me, Kim Addonizio plays around with the pantoum form in poems like “A Childhood” “Spill” and this poem:

“The Revered Poet Instructs Her Students on the Importance of Revision”
by Kim Addonizio

Listen. I’m trying to tell you
how easily the poem you thought
was a beautiful woman becomes
cronelike by a kind of witchery.

How easy, you thought, to write a poem:
you scrawled last night in your journal
and in the morning, by a kind of witchery,
the poem was born, perfect, immortal.

But soon, too soon, what you scrawled in your journal
begins moaning, pitches forward and wails, hating
itself, the fact that it was ever born - imperfect, mortal
and suffering the way everything suffers,

every moaning lover, every wailing child,
each creature destined to be isolate and alone
and suffering the way everything suffers,
but I said that, didn’t I, I explained alreadya bout suffering

and about each one of you, destined to be isolate and alone
because writing is lonely work, is what I’m trying to say,
did I say that, did I explain already? I’m suffering
through your poems, and my own, oh God I feel

so desperately lonely is what I’m trying to say,
look at you you’re so young all of you,
I don’t care about your poems, or my own,
do you know how fast it goes, all I want is to be

as young as all of you, look at you
you’re so fucking clueless, oh I want
my life back, where did it go, I want it all to be
different but I’m standing here, lecturing again-

on what, on what? Oh fuck it,
listen, I was a beautiful woman,
you think I want to be standing here, lecturing? Look again
Listen. I’m trying to tell you.

(Notice how the poet plays on words and  alters them slightly to completely change the meaning of the repeated line? Try it yourself! Here’s info for the basic pantoum form, try to tweak one in a similar way.)

There it is right below us, so why not try to use the basic structure as a jumping point for a poem of your own? Use an interesting fact about an animal, such facts can be found here and here and here amongst a million other, likely better resources. Animal Planet, and National Geographic Channel often have really interesting animal stuff, take an hour out of your day and do some “research” for a poem. Learn a little.  Find a fact that can be used as a metaphor for a relationship. Begin the poem with a scientific sounding statement of that fact, be as specific as is feasible. Consider that metaphor in the terms of three other animals/earthy examples, then finally relate it to the relationship. Explain it as simply and quickly as you can, no more than two lines. Then move immediately (no dawdling, because dawdling is not trusting your reader is overwriting is weakening your poem) onto a recent event from the character’s relationship. Be it first or third person. (Second… well, if you want, but be wary of the second person.)  This event should expand the metaphor with a brief narrative. Move on to three things that once were, be it in the relationship, or before the relationship, depending on the lean you take (I love love! or One is the loneliest number, or any shades of tangerine in between) . Then take that metaphor to its end, as in, if the metaphor is about the negatives of dependency, then seperate (break up, walk away etc)  If it’s about animals migrating to a beautiful, far away breeding place, clear the hill and see the valley (This can be about happiness, a monumental event like marriage, erotica, plenty of room to make like a penguin, spread your wings and walk around.)

If this is seen separate from the poem, here it is: Lucia Perillo’s Martha 

The ground is soaked with gasoline folks, get those ideas sparkin! Firestarter exercises will now be located in the Firestarter Exercises page (ironically enough) that is linked up on the top right side of the page. Also linked here. They will no longer be on the main page’s posts, so don’t forget about it! This week’s exercises are: Form, Title, Imagery, and Arbitrary Rules. Have fun!

Why use lines? Give a prose poem a shot, see if the different aesthetic has you read, or punctuate your poems differently, without leaning on any rhyming or enjambment.

Write a piece about a specific kind of plant. Find one with a cool defensive system, or that grows somewhere special. Research it. Then take three or so of those details that can be described in a simile for a human action, and describe them so that the plants definitely resemble humans.

Write a listing prose poem, that has a pattern of two items, then a third item with either a condition, or an explanation or follow up. Repeat the pattern as many times as you feel it necessary.

Write a prose poem that focuses on colors, and gives meaning to those colors through individual images.

Even if you’re not Christian, it’s a time of celebration. Enjoy it everyone. Sadly, work begins again tomorrow.  But if you’ve opened all your presents, and fiddled with everything to your heart’s content, and just really feel the need to write, how about:

Write a free verse poem either envying a ‘white christmas’ from somewhere warm, or a warm christmas from somewhere cold… X-mas palm trees and the like.

It’s that day of the year, you know, the one that only comes once a year. Unlike, well, just like every other day, but that’s besides the point. Christmas is a time honored holiday that many many celebrate.

As a kid, on Christmas evening your brand new toys have lost their lustre, and you want to see your best friend, compare gifts, but he won’t answer the phone. Write a short piece where you sneak out of the house and have an adventure on the mile and a half trip to his/her house.

Write a sequence of Haiku-stanzas, at least five, about unwrapping presents. Make it interesting and surprising.

There’s always that one bachelor uncle who can’t wrap presents properly, or even close. Write a short piece about that… perhaps a poem describing the box that parallels the imaginary uncle’s life, or a flash fiction about not being able to find a place to tear because he taped it to high heaven, and the frustration is mounting.

Write a piece in second person about being alone on Christmas morning, after working a long shift on Christmas Eve.

Inspired by a search that brought someone to the site, here are some writing exercises that involve magic realism.

Write a short piece in the modern day where the narrator has discovered a secret portal that transports him somewhere, but he discovered it years ago, and it has now become humdrum.

Taken from the fantastic story “Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush” from Luis Alberto Urrea’s collection Six Kinds of Sky: write a poem in which a ‘mad’ painter leaves the canvas and begins painting things into reality.

Write a piece of short fiction, where at about 1,500 words, the character says “to hell with it” (or something like that) and leaves in some fantastical way… walks across the ocean, sprouts a cocoon, levitates… and that’s the end.

Walking home the narrator steps into a puddle, coming out in a different time and place. Any contact with a puddle/pool does this.

Write a short piece inspired by the Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison photo here.

Write a short piece about a young child struggling with their shoelaces, reminiscing about the good old days of velcro and slip ons.

Write a short free verse poem with a secure knot on one of your favorite pairs of shoes an extended  metaphor for a relationship.

Try a concrete poem. Write a poem whose lines crisscross like laces (write it originally on paper, and use photoshop or illustrator or even microsoft paint to get the lines just right) again, using shoelaces as a metaphor, perhaps for “keeping things together.” Which makes you obviously think Mark Strand… “I move to keep things whole”… but throw this one around your noggin for awhile, see if you can come up with a short, maybe 8 lined poem to crisscross on the page. Maybe even share a common middle letter. That might be interesting.

Write a three stanza syllabic based line of 7 syllables (7 syllables a line), with an ABCABC rhyme scheme.

Write a sequence of five haiku that each address someone that lives on ‘your’ street, the final haiku about yourself.

Write a sonnet from the point of view of a mouse in an office building for a ’skate’ magazine.

Write a pantoum about learning to ski with a parallel in the narrator’s romantic life.

Icicles are just fun, and the possibility for poetry, or poetic prose are endless. Here’s a couple:

Write a short imagistic poem about icicles cutting through the landscape in your window-view. Separate the individual images by the whitespace of a tab.

Waiting in someone’s driveway for them to return, look at the icicles and imagine scenarios where they change the outcome of the talk, falling on one of the two, someone accidentally hitting head on one and falling into the other’s arms, used as an angry weapon etc…

Write a sonnet length free verse poem using icicles as an extended metaphor

A professor in a literature class I had last spring referred to Shakespeare primarily by calling him the biggest thief of them all. So why not steal from a thief? Take a sonnet, any sonnet. There’s a large list here at Shakespeare Online. Contemporize it. For instance, set Sonnet 19 in the San Diego Zoo, a zoologist falls in love with one of the zoo’s botanists. A tale as old as time. Or just use slang and popular references like this wonderful riff off of Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 130 by Harryette Mullen, “Dim Lady”

Dim Lady

My honeybunch’s peepers are nothing like neon. Today’s special at Red Lobster is redder than her kisser. If Liquid Paper is white, her racks are institutional beige. If her mop were Slinkys, dishwater Slinkys would grow on her noggin. I have seen tablecloths in Shakey’s Pizza Parlors, red and white, but no such picnic colors do I see in her mug. And in some minty-fresh mouthwashes there is more sweetness than in the garlic breeze my main squeeze wheezes. I love to hear her rap, yet I’m aware that Muzak has a hipper beat. I don’t know any Marilyn Monroes. My ball and chain is plain from head to toe. And yet, by gosh, my scrumptious Twinkie has as much sex appeal for me as any lanky model or platinum movie idol who’s hyped beyond belief.

Also, for those interested in teaching High school English, or already doing it, here’s a lesson plan from Naropa University, home of the  Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

Write a sonnet from the perspective of one of the waif carollers from A Christmas Carol.

Write a jaded take on a famous carol like Silent Night or Jingle Bells or We Three Kings.

Write a short story about the caroling adventure gone horribly wrong with three others, at least one of them hopelessly optimistic.

Situate a poem during the week before Christmas, on a lonely night when the sound of a Christmas carol  appears in a sudden silence.

Well, why not. You see the poem, now try a little riff off of this of your own.

Write a poem that begins talking about a poem, movie, novel, whatever you like, it’s an ekphrastic poem anyway you poke it with a stick, so just deal with it. Somehow or another, that piece of art has suddenly vanished, or collective memory of it have at least. Intersperse bits of the piece (in your own words, almost like brief poetic translations) with what might’ve happened to them/it, and how the world is different, or the same, without that piece of art. Below’s the poem in case for some reason this post is separated from the poem post. Enjoy.

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This year your family decided to go chop down your own tree in a forest a number of miles away. A broken axe handle results in an emergency situation. Write the story/narrative poem.

Write a short piece about a young person on their first christmas away from home, with a tiny  plastic tree and no presents under it.

Write a sonnet about undecorating the Christmas tree.

Write a short piece from the perspective of a squirrel looking in a window at the decorated Christmas tree.