Incendiary Lit

Well, that’s essentially what this article is about. Self-insertion is not a crude term hermaphrodites use, but when an author shows up in their own book, most people think of it purely as a metafictional characteristic, but it’s been around for a long, long time. Think rhapsodes warming up the crowd in ancient Greece. It’s from Switchback, an essay called “I, Chimp” by Nathan Grover. There are some interesting points throughout, and though I’m not sure I buy an early paragraph that states

It really does matter who writes what we read. Stories don’t just happen; they come from some place. A story is a product of the views, experiences, and sensibilities of the writer. The writer and the story inhabit the same world. The source, like plot or character, is an important clue through which we derive meaning from a story.

although I don’t personally agree with this, I’m curious what others think. Comments, anyone? Is knowing who a writer is an important factor to how you read something? In a sense, yes, because if what you have in your hand is a book by your favorite author, you may read a little more convinced that the author knows what they’re doing, as opposed to reading something in a workshop or given to you on loose sheets of paper by a coworker. The sense of authority I can buy, but the meaning? Ehhhhh… I am as yet unconvinced.

The discussion of authorial self-insertion was interesting though… I am generally at least a little interested in almost all things Vonnegut, but the other examples werethoughtful as well. Nice work Mr. Grover.

All the following posts will be much less intense, for all those that the first day (and pre-write) didn’t scare away.

Today’s plan is to work on Sonnet 15 some more. You should have a rough draft of the poem already, and if not, welcome to my world. Sorry, I work and am working on a new project also that I’m very excited about. I’ll get one done and revise tonight, I promise.

The verbs will be the first place to scrutinize. In Sonnet 15 moreso than any other sonnet each word needs to carry its own weight, as the lines are both first and last lines of separate poems. Look for common, simple words like do, did, have, was, had. They’re called auxiliary verbs. They are ‘helping verbs’ which means they help other words instead of standing on their own. A good verb is probably the strongest type of word, you shouldn’t waste a word that could really set the line apart from the familiar to ‘help’ an adjective. Adjectives are like pawns. They’re very important to the poem’s infrastructure, but nouns and verbs run the show. Even if there aren’t any auxiliary verbs, there’s always stronger and weaker verbs by comparison. Weigh your verbs against each other. Even if they’re still fairly strong, just consider other options. Look through a thesaurus. It’s not a literary crime. It doesn’t make you a thesaurus-poet. You’re not stilting your writing, you’re enhancing it. Obviously you’ll only make changes that both sound, and are more appropriate for their context. So, if anyone had hesitations about using a thesaurus, as I know many young poets are, relax. It’s like alcohol, great in moderation (and perhaps even slight excess on occasion).

Before you go through, though, there’s a little exercise. Here’s how I’d do it, for efficiency. Click here, and then open a new window. change the size of the new window so it’s less than half of the screen size. Load http://dictionary.reference.com there. Go over the list of verbs I posted (or if anyone can find a better list, please let me know) and if a particular word strikes you, look through your poem and see if there’s a place for that word in Sonnet 15. If not, write it in a file where you’ve got your other ILHCA exercises. If you don’t have an ILHCA file or folder, make one. Haha, that’s very important. Easier access means you may actually utilize these words.

And before you take off your poetic cap, look over that list of perspectives, or poem ideas for the surrounding sonnets. If you don’t have a list of ideas for your heroic crown’s individual sonnets, well shame on you. Make one now. Consider the line repetition when thinking of the sequence’s, well, sequence. Sonnet 1 begins with Line 1 of Sonnet 15. That’s the first line of your whole sequence that the reader will see. Make sure you hook them with something. Leave something interesting unanswered. Or mention something very quirky in the poem that will potentially perk the reader’s attention so they wonder if the thing (be it a porch swing with one chain broken that no one had the heart to fix, Jerome’s missing fingers, whatever) will come back. Hoping that it will. That’s what you really want to accomplish with the first sonnet. You want the reader speculating about what’s coming next, because they’ve got a long ways to go.

Try to narrow down each line of Sonnet 15 to three possible perspectives/aspects (ie poem’s contribution to the whole of the sequence). If you have definite ideas that work with particular lines from Sonnet 15, power to you. That’s what you want. The pieces to fall together. If they haven’t fallen together yet, fear not. We’ve just begun. The puzzle will begin to take shape by the end of next week, I promise.

This is no pre-write. Though the pre-write exercises will be very helpful to the forming of your heroic crown. To review the rules of a sonnet go to the pre-write day here. The heroic crown is this: A sequence of fourteen sonnets and a fifteenth sonnet composed of the first line of each of the other sonnets. To further gum up the works there’s a repetition that links together the sonnets like a brass brad. It’s the same in all of the poems. The first line of the poem is identical to the last line of the previous poem. So Sonnet 2’s first line is the same as the last line of Sonnet 1. Sonnet 3’s first line is the same as Sonnet 2’s last line. And so on. The only other caveat is that Sonnet 1’s opening line is repeated as the last line of Sonnet 14. That brings the sequence full circle, and Sonnet 15 sort of the overview or consensus.

So how do you write this? Where do you begin? The ‘artist’ opinion would be, if it’s in you just write. But that’s not necessarily applying here. So, like any overly daunting maze, we’ll take the easy route and begin at the end. Sonnet 15. It will be much easier to rework single lines into a poem than to work 14 unrelated lines into a thematic culmination that the final poem in such a long sequence needs to be. So we need to begin with the end. Easy enough.

Before we just start writing, though, realize that these rhymes are very important. Since there’s the line repetition of the last line of the previous poem and the first lines, which means that for each repeated line, there must be a rhyme from the previous poem’s final couplet, and from that poem’s opening ABAB. So each ‘first line’ needs 2 rhyming words, not just the regular pair (unless you feel, like MC Robust, who once wrote “I’m so dope I can rhyme first place with first place”. Then, since Sonnet 15 is completely first lines, and has its own rhyme scheme. So each rhyming word in Sonnet 15 will need a total of 6 rhymes (which doesn’t include the duplicate lines which will obviously be the same word). Don’t be afraid, just remember that for Sonnet 15 you want to look especially for common end sounds. Sounds like /ite/o/ed/ay/el/ etc. Go to RhymeZone and buzz around for words that are linked if you get stuck. Just keep this prolific rhyming in the back of your mind while you figure out what you’re writing about.

So you know what the heroic crown is, and are frightened, let’s get to the fun part: what’s it going to be about? Well, the heroic crown is traditionally centered around one thing, like a person. We’re going to base our heroic crowns around an event. Sonnet 15 will be a narrative (at least roughly) of an especially significant (or traumatic) event. It could be a car accident, the demolition of a family home, a drug deal shootout, winning the lottery, getting fired, suicide, or you could get all sappy and have it be about noticing the smell your significant other (perfume, nail polish, cologne, shampoo, sweat, whatever) . Each sonnet will be aiming to add a different perspective on the final poem in the sequence, Sonnet 15. Whether it’s another narrative regarding related incidents, or something from a witness’s pasts that parallel this experience, or whatever.

Before we go any further, pick an event. Decide what this whole heroic crown is going to revolve around. The great thing is that each sonnet doesn’t have to be narratively related to the poem as long as they’re thematically connected, and can be placed at the scene in anyway, via physical presence, hearing or seeing the incident after the fact, perhaps a prescient narrative before the actual incident- ie an odd coincidence. So the event doesn’t have to be some big sweeping thing, it just has to be resonant.

Now that you have the topic, before you write Sonnet 15 you have to come up with perspectives for the other sonnets. You don’t necessarily need to know all of them, but knowing at least a few will help you cater lines to that perspective, as it’ll be used as a first line (and last line) in separate poems as well as in this final sonnet. Those who did the pre-write look at your list of perspectives, evaluate them thinking of your chosen topic. Once you have those perspectives, think of a word or phrase that might be kind of unique to that person/thing’s vernacular, but not so entirely unique that it’d be ridiculously out of place.

And finally, when you’re writing this first sonnet remember that each line will be the final, and also the opening line of a poem. That means that there should be solid imagery, and whenever possible an opening for enjambment. Ending lines on actions or images is a good way to keep that enjambment open so when the line begins the poem it can continue without being endstopped. This adds variation within the repetition and makes it even less noticeable. Also, ending on an image or an action adds some extra drama or resonance to a last line like “white in the wind the scarf slipped, and then dropped.” as the final line of a poem, then the next poem begins “White in the wind the scarf slipped and then dropped / from the girl’s pale fingers…”

So:

1) Use common sounds for the rhymes in this first (last) sonnet, Sonnet 15.

2) Try to end lines as openly as you can to aid later enjambment.

3) Pick an event that is especially resonant. There will be 210 lines of rhymed poetry in this sequence (including the 28 repeated lines) which revolves in one way or another around this event. That’s a lot to ask of your reader. Keep it interesting.

We’ll work on Sonnet 15’s rough draft tomorrow, and plan out the sequence. Each day there will be suggested themes for individual sonnets, such as color themes, certain perspectives, rhymes, and research assignments to help you in the course of the sequence. Good luck!

OK, here’s what a heroic crown is: 15 sonnets, ordered with a repetition. Sonnet 1 begins with line A, and ends with line B. Sonnet 2 begins with line B and ends with line C. Sonnet 3 begins with line C and ends with line D and so on, until Sonnet 14 which begins with the last line of Sonnet 13, and ends with the first line of Sonnet 1. Then the kicker is Sonnet 15 which consists of all the first lines, though if you want them in order it’s up to you. I believe a classic Heroic Crown has the first lines in order, which is another rhyme scheme to keep in mind. We’ll begin on Wednesday, I’ll work on a heroic sonnet as you do, I’ll post helpful tidbits (I hope) that will help you keep on track for this highly organized series of poems. But it’s also a sequence that you can be proud of. How many people have had the discipline to organize a Heroic Crown, or any sequence of sonnets at all? Even if the results fluctuate poem by poem, why not give it a shot, it’ll be very similar to using an firestarter exercise or any other writing exercise, but instead, for a week you’ll focus on sonnets, and a repetition of certain lines. As I said, I’ll be posting various excercises to help maintain focus and organization for the long haul. As you probably noticed, 15 poems and 20 days means a few non poem days. These will be organization days and brainstorming days, because in order to interweave your poems even more, it’s nice to have an idea of what you’ll be writing about later, and perhaps mingle some imagery in the process… Wednesday will begin the Incendiary Lit Heroic Crown Affair.

Did you realize that where you break your lines affects how the reader’s eye reads it. “What?” you ask. Or maybe you don’t, maybe you say “No crap.” But assuming you were slightly curious see the Sharon Olds poem, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe” for an example:

for a drink or two, but they could not meet
each other’s eyes.
Their lives took
a turn–one had nightmares, strange
pains …

By breaking on “meet” the line initially sounds like they couldn’t meet, as in get together, without the context of the next line, which changes the direction of the previous line. Instead of not being able to meet they can’t meet each others eyes. As the poem is about a pivotal, and traumatic event, the double (potential) meaning of “meet” works because in the world of the poem it might’ve made sense if that night they didn’t meet up for drinks afterwards… and then just after that “strange” breaks so that it sounds like the “strange” is qualifying the nightmares, but with the next line it’s amended to pains… This little trick comes courtesy of your reader, actually. Because the way (at least most people) read poetry includes at least a momentary pause at line’s end as their eyes jump back to the beginning of the next line, and their brain begins to process the information it had just read, hence momentarily reading of the line as it’s own little entity.

Why would you want to mislead someone? Because one of the biggest and most important aspects of a poem is the ability to surprise the reader. It’s what keeps people reading. What will happen next? Why do you think popular fiction is so popular? It is almost always plot driven, it keeps the readers wondering what will happen next. By utilizing the tiny twists of a good line break you can propel the reader through the poem much more energetically.

People write them as writing exercises, as little trials of their poetic ability before they return to their free verse (with, or without jigging lines and tumors of whitespace) and write their poems. I’ve been reading around in a couple dozen literary journals (scratch that, few dozen) and have seen more formal poetry than I expected. A good number of sonnets (here’s a refresher on the sonnet’s rules). I know some of you out there make a habit of writing formal poetry, in fact I’ve been turning to it fairly frequently lately in a chase after content matching form. I’ve got a paradelle on the backburner about two brothers in different stages of “Why are you hitting yourself?” amidst some fairly dire circumstances… which is all about the repetition having not only a purpose, but a need. Some poems almost need a specific form. Why? Well, in the rough blob of a first draft (despite how polished you feel your first drafts are, revision is important too.), sometimes there will be an echo of a form. Perhaps a curious repetition or the poem will be 14 lines with an accidental slant rhyme in three places already. You might see the vague form of a sestina, villanelle, sonnet, rondeau… and then there is an aesthetic goal. And to reach that goal you have to weight every line, every foot, syllable, for its importance (looking that close at any poem is a good idea) in order to meet that self-set goal, to reorder a scene, rephrase, to stretch your mind for the best result. And, you know, sometimes the poem just doesn’t fit a form. But sometimes it does, and the only thing that will come from attempting to adapt a free verse piece into a formal poem is that you will know your poem inside and out, and will have a very good head start on the next draft of your poem. So try it yourself:

A caesura: Shay-zher-uh. Though, dictionary.reference.com has it as si-zhoor-ah. It is the slight pause in the middle(ish) of a line. Every line has that turning point, between clauses, or between words. Sometimes it’s punctuated, sometimes not. It can also mean the midway point of a poem. A lot of times it coincides with a slight turn in the poem that leads to the actual turn. Here are a couple examples:

from Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a fly buzz when I died”

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;

The caesuras in the two lines are there, do you see them? After “uncertain” and “light.” The second line, being iambic tetrameter, the technical mean of the line would be between syllables 3 and 4, before light, however, splitting iambs like that isn’t typical. Don’t ask me why. We’ll call that a soft pause. A soft pausing caesura. Sounds good.
A more obvious line, also from Emily Dickinson, in “Because I could not stop for death”

My Tippet – only Tulle –

Here the emdash clearly marks a hard pausing caesura.
It isn’t a thing of the past, either. Check it out in *picking a poet at random from Poets.org* Charles Simic, Pigeons at Dawn.

Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.

Here we have a standard caesura, after efforts, and then a slightly off-center caesura, after us. Sometimes punctuation is the cause of the caesura, and it can postpone or hasten the longest pause of the line.

Caesuras are one of those prosody sciences which are more like arts. Consider Robert Bly’s assertion that there are no true spondees, so that metrical foot can only be termed spondaic. That two stressed syllables placed side by side will always have slightly differing levels of stress. I’m horribly paraphrasing, of course, as I’m best at, but you get the idea. Caesuras are one of those speech things that have fewer set rules than the CSULB Spring Holiday schedule.

OK, so a lot of people will be looking up literary terms, so why not try to help people out and decode some of them? Today’s word: Bildungsroman. It’s a style of german novel (originally) that told the story of a character through all the influential parts of their life, generally the main focus is the progress from childhood to maturity. Though it originated in Germany, it too gained a firm foothold in the UK. For instance, in Jane Eyre, there are five significant sections: Gatesfield, Lowood, Thornfield, Morton and Moor House. Other famous bildungsroman novels are Robinson Crusoe, David Copperfield, Great Expectations (Dickens was anything but terse), Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and Siddhartha. Some may argue that the genre is much wider, including books/series such as Harry Potter, Starship Troopers, Grendel, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Makes sense to me. So there you go. Drop Bildungsroman in an everyday conversation. And now you may even be able to use it in context.

Like, totally. Similes are easy, fun, and get across your point. Here’s a Sharon Olds poem that uses, *pauses to put on Count attire* One. Two. Three. Four, five-six-seven-eight. Eight! Eight Similes! HA-HA-HA!

Feared Drowned

Suddenly nobody knows where you are,
your suit black as seaweed, your bearded
head slick as a seal’s.

Somebody watches the kids. I walk down the
edge of the water, clutching the towel
like a widow’s shawl around me.

None of the swimmers is just right.
Too short, too heavy, clean-shaven,
they rise out of the surf, the water
rushing down their shoulders.

Rocks stick out near shore like heads.
Kelp snakes in like a shed black suit
and I cannot find you.

My stomach begins to contract as if to
vomit salt water,

when up the sand toward me comes
a man who looks very much like you,
his beard matted like beach grass, his suit
dark as a wet shell against his body.

Coming closer, he turns out
to be you - or nearly.
Once you lose someone it is never exactly
the same person who comes back.

Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio hypothesized, in their wonderful textbook The Poet’s Companion, that Sharon Olds has a simile-making machine in her basement. Despite many attempts, Ms. Olds’ basement vault has yet to be breached.

So why exactly would you use a simile? Usually if you’re describing something, and you picture it in your head, and you see, say the child’s safety blanket draped over his arm, and for some reason your brain flashes to that movie you saw last month about the hit man, and when he was dragging the dead body, and you think, hey, he was carrying his safety blanket like a fresh corpse. Relatively morbid, but don’t get on me, it’s your simile. Sheesh.

Another reason for similes is that whole pesky layering thing. You know, how what you say doesn’t just mean what it means, but means something else entirely as well. Meaning meaning meaning. A big pain in the ass. Even a blank page has meaning nowadays. You can’t get away from it. But if you want to venture into the whole, despicable making-your-poems-mean -something thing, then you can use a simile to tie your theme to the poem a little more securely. For instance, take your morbid little simile there. Say that was the first thing you thought of when you sat to write a poem. The kid with the safety blanket and the fresh corpse. This could go many places. How do you tie it together? If you want your poem to be about the loss of innocence, incrementally small (a pet toad died) or large, the use of the simile is one thing binding the theme and the narrative. Why not add a few more stitches. His footsteps on the stairs, slow as a death march, or his long hair shading his eyes like a widow’s veil. Over the top, perhaps… but you get the idea, right?

For further reading of the wonderful Sharon Olds check out amazon here, you can get many of her books for under $3, with shipping it’s cheaper than two gallons of gas, or a six pack of something imported. The difference between drinking 3 instead of 4 cocktails at the bar, depending on your drink. So just buy one of her books already. It’ll be worth it.

Many out there have never heard of a rhaptzung poem, which is a loose formal poem with many variations. Here’s the official definition:

Rhaptzung– An urban-influenced poetry form that involves heavy concentration on musicality, generally in multi-syllabic rhyming (often slant) couplets with internal rhyme and assonance. The form originated in the late ’90s among hip hop listening poets frustrated with the sparseness and lack of depth in the music they loved. They took the sonic density of the better rap music and gave it quality content.

Those whose work is selected for publication in Rhaptzung will receive three complimentary copies of the magazine, and a small stipend yet to be determined. To submit send emails to Rhaptzung@gmail.com

Here’s an example, though maybe not the perfect example, but an example nonetheless of a Rhaptzung I’d written a number of years back, We Are Apache which was published in Acorn Review.
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Here’s a blog post called, in an odd twist “Question Marks in Mid-sentence” from Nick Daws’ writing blog mywritingblog.com about using question marks mid-sentence in the case of thoughts and dialog. Basically, there’s no rigid rules on the subject, he goes over examples, and makes sense saying don’t use question marks mid-sentence. Though it’s not technically improper. So it’s OK, but it’s really not cool. You know, none of the cool kids are doing it, I know I don’t. Any thoughts? Anyone care to defend the mid-sentence question mark?

OK, if you’ve ever been sitting, say way back in a sophomore English class, and the new teacher, the one who’s trying really hard to be hip, drops a random literary term on you like consonance or anaphora, but keeps on in his lecture/assignment like these are obvious words that you should know, like onomanpeia, which everyone learns young and feels smart for, until they find out that everyone else knows a fancy poetry term. So you’re stuck there trying to piece together the meaning of what sounds like a Great Aunt’s name, from the other poetry nonsense he’s spurting about extended metaphor and emdashes and then you’re assigned to write a poem utilizing your great aunt and have it in class the next day, leaving you wondering if Aunt Ana was short for a phora, then you know exactly what it’s like to not know what anaphora means, and if you’ve never been in that situation, IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU! Anaphora is actually pretty simple, it’s the repetition of the beginning of a line/sentence. For instance in the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph she repeats “and” and “I shall,” really, see:

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

Another “And” anaphora example is Mr. Ezra Pound’s “And the Days Are Not Full Enough”

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

Anaphora has an affect on how a poem is read, turning it into slightly more of a chant or litany, and when done right it injects energy into the poem, like it’s a 50’s musical about leatherclad hooligans holding themselves back from the inevitable rumble. Any moment the poem will burst free and hit you with that baseball bat of wisdom. If you can do that with your poem, do it my friend. But there’s always a thin line of overdoing it and lessening the tension, boring the reader.

There’s an article here at poets.org that gives you additional information, like that anaphora comes from the Greek meaning “a carrying up or back.” Word.

(small note, I found the two poems in this article in the fabulous anthology Staying Alive; Real Poems for Unreal Times which is a great well of wonderful poems. Did I gush about it enough? Come on, it has two of my all time favorite poems (which I discovered in its pages) Adrian Mitchell’s “A Puppy Called Puberty” and “A Dog Called Elderly“)