Incendiary Lit

Poetic Asides. Check it out. Right now he’s posting a prompt/exercise each day and people write to it. Like the Firestarter Challenge, but there are over a hundred poems posted to his prompts, and he picks the ones he thinks are the best. The website’s really cool in general though. Word it up.

For those of you with $1900-2400 disposable, and July 5-13th off of work, this sounds like the trip of a lifetime. A week at a Guatemalan lake with three great writers? Almost everything you’d need is included in that price, too, so check it out: The Joyce Maynard Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop.

Based on a sestina, only written in tercets (So I guess a more accurate hybrid titled would be the terctina, but hey, I didn’t come up with it first). The pattern of end words and stanzas is:

ABC, CAB, BCA, then a floating line using ABC in that order… so, coming up with words that work very well together is a must. Give it a shot. Here’s an Australian website that has a few tritinas, and sonnetinas (shortened sonnets) and their rules.

This can be summarized quick, but it just doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. According to MLA guidelines, an in-text quote is cited, and the period is placed outside of the parenthesis. Like: “… until it squished out of the eye sockets, amen” (121).

However, in a block quote (a block quote is any quote three lines[in your essay, no matter how many lines in your book] or more) the period goes before the parenthesis, and there are no quotations around the quote, and it’s indented an inch.

OK, thus concludes our MLA WTF moment of the day.

There are those who have a blind hatred for the sci-fi/fantasy and won’t crack the cover unless looking for something to take a jab at. Funk those people. The majority of people who read (and more importantly, who buy books) look for entertainment within their substance, and will suspend disbelief for a good enough yarn. What elevates a good science fiction/fantasy novel from the base term of “genre” is usually the development of characters. All other factors are important, but the thing that is the same about almost all “genre” novels, is the cast of half sketched archetypal, flat characters, while lavish details of scene and exposition of the ‘world’ thicken the book without connecting, thus slowly disconnecting the reader from the character. Good fiction develops interesting characters until you feel like you know them, and when their decisions surprise you, even then you understand the choices. So, for those who write something they despise being considered “genre-dreck” or whatever, consider the strength of your characters as well as the people you’ve chosen to share your work with. Some have plugged their ears entirely, but most just need a little extra convincing. But don’t forget that people love a good saga. Just ask Issac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, Ursala LeGuin, CS Lewis, Frank Herbert etc etc.

I’ve been tossing this idea around in my head for awhile now… a melding of process and formula that can spark good poem after good poem, depending on the astuteness of the writer. There’s always blocks, but here’s a good way to get the ball rolling on a poem, after which you just describe the ball’s progress down the hill, then edit it together like a 20 second commercial for Froot Loops, with just the important stuff kept. Corn syrup and sugar. Very different. Anyway, here’s one way to write a poem without even trying:

Find an image, better yet, find two images. Any two images. For the purpose of this post let’s say a Hershey’s Kiss wrapper, and a small stain on the carpet shaped like Mickey Mouse.

Find a way that the two images are linked. With the Kiss wrapper and Mouse stain, they’re the aftermath of something. A wrapper and spilled glass of wine. Or it could be an imaginary connection, like the time you went to Disneyland and on the way you ate so many Hershey’s kisses that you threw up on the teacups, and they had to bring out the elementary school sawdust before they swept it up with a dustpan, shutting down the ride for 20 minutes. I can just see the little kids holding onto the fence bars like they were in prison, waiting, worried the ride might never be fixed, and their perfect day at Disneyland ruined. Not that that ever happened, but why write about what actually happens?

Now that you have that connection, find a third image that falls in line with the connection between the first two. For the case of the wrapper and the mickey ears reminding the narrator of a Disneyland trip, let’s add in one of those huge circle lollipops in rainbow colors.

Now that you have three solid images (and find a way to phrase your images interestingly… off the top of my head, maybe “the futuristic robe of a Hershey’s Kiss” or something) Think of the connotations of those images. With the candy wrapper, the stain and the lollipop, they’re pretty light images, I could go with that, or they could be deceivingly happy images. Sometimes you don’t want to go with the easy choice, find a way to make them seem a little darker, or perhaps ironic. But with three linked images, you can easily format some story around them, and then the fun game of exclusion comes in and you decide the most important elements for what you want the impact to be, sad, happy, excited, enthralled, though hopefully not bored or angry at poetry.

But once you have the narrative (or points, or whatever you have decided the poem will actually ’say’ or ‘really be about’ you can write the poem you’ve outlined and labeled. Sweet, huh?

I’m writing said poem, and will post it after the link, the first draft from the images I picked while writing this article. It’s 10:39, promise I’ll post by 11.
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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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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“)

Firestarter Challenge Week 1 Title: Like Struck Matches

(the categories of the exercises will change weekly)

1. Imagery: A doll with one eye missing half-buried in a pile of fall leaves.
2. Persona: A smart Hooter’s waitress.
3. Form- Basic: An American Sentence.
4. Form- Complex: Write an imagistic narrative poem/flash fiction using only American Sentences, each describing one detail of a scene, so that they can be piece together to tell the story.
5. Sound: \t\ and \k\ as in “Take care, cannibals, totems took their toll on the kooky clowns of Nantucket.”

OK, here’s the deal. Everyday there will be five exercises to choose from to get your creative juices flowing. They’ll be broken up into categories like :Sounds, Devices, Imagery, Forms, Personas, Ekphrastic, etc. If you wish to enter the Firestarter Challenge, your piece must have the chosen title of the week. You can enter one poem, or one short story (1500 word max) per week, (which, for you math majors out there, is 4 pieces, except this month, which will only have 3 weeks in the challenge) and every month one winner will be chosen, their piece posted, and they will get their fabulous prize, which will change every month, but will consist mainly of cash or books.

Firestarter Challenge Week 1 Title: Like Struck Matches

1. Imagery: A folding Chair in the middle of a field.
2. Persona: A parking garage/lot attendant in a northern state during an unusually cold winter.
3. Form- Basic: English Sonnet.
4. Form- Complex: Two English Sonnets telling a narrative from two opposing perspectives, use discrepancies and differing tones to tell the real story, which would be the relationship between the two poem narrators.
5. Sound: \A\ as in “Someday the great waste of paste will grace his stomach casing with ulcers and pain.”