A Writer's notebook, Day One-Hundred-Fifty-Eight

I am still on the sleepless side of things, and it is going to be another long day tomorrow.  While I did not write a poem today, I did begin a craft essay exploring how time can be rendered in poetry, and certain possibilities for building tension in the work through the juxtaposition of different temporal representations.  The basic concept is to do with the difference between the way that time can be presented in the content versus the use of poetic devices to create a tempo in the language and the way that this may be utilized to build tension in a poem.  I need to do a bit more research and find some examples, but I think I've already got a good start.  I am hoping to show the bit that I have already to one of the poets who is at the conference tomorrow.

Again, I feel incredibly fortunate to be at the festival and attending the class I am in.  I think that I am really learning two essential things, one is a way of pushing towards new and exciting work, and the other is the reassurance of confidence in your own voice.  In essence, we are looking at voice as a sort of habituation in terms of how a poet utilizes language.  From such a perspective, the goal is to push past voice, but the recognition is that one cannot escape voice.  I have seen numerous other poets in class return work that is in response to exercises that are designed to move them away from those habits, and the work they return is still clearly their own.  In the end, one cannot lose their voice, since it is an artifact of identity that exists inside of language.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Fifty

Each of the three pieces I wrote today was a bit of a struggle to get going, if I am honest.  That happens, as I have mentioned, and my answer is generally to just wait it out, and the results vary.  A lot of the time, if I am really stuck, I might try to force something out, often it winds up being a bit meta, with me writing about being stuck without much in terms of inspiration, and it feels a bit like I am working scales in a way.  All the aesthetic decisions are there, they just don't always have a lot of purpose behind them, and that is fine in that context.  Essentially, I am just forcing myself to do the work, and getting it done, and I am showing myself that I can and will do it even if inspiration never strikes.  This can often take pressure off, and that lack of pressure opens up creative thinking and inspiration. Now, that is a fine thing for me to do, and I am likely to use that approach again many times in the future, but today I felt that I want...
Read more

Le Guin, Steering The Craft, Chapter Five: Adjectives and Adverbs (Exercise Five, Chastity)

A note of apology for my lateness with this.  I had expected to have time earlier in the day, but it was not to be, alas.  Anyhow, I am still a bit nervous about this exercise, though it is clearly of significant import to Le Guin, as she points out that it is the only exercise that she has given to all of her workshops.  That, of course, does not alter my feelings about it, excepting that I am aware of it as something valuable and worth doing, so the fact that it is a bit daunting might well be seen, through that light, as a promise of reward, perhaps.  The more difficult the task, the more one has to gain, at least by some logic... Exercise Five: Chastity Mr. Torino was in charge.  He had his way.  It was the way.  Desktops are clean.  Nothing but work.  No pictures: not your kids; not your girl or wife; not (as Allen recounted) your car.   None of that.  No plants.  No cartoons.  That is for home, this is work....
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fifty-Nine

I have been thinking about how I can discuss certain aspects of my poetry and the choices I make as a writer.  In particular, I tend to write without as much reliance on sensory details and descriptions, instead choosing more abstract depictions.  This is something that I know many writers would call an odd choice, as specificity seems inherently to demand the application of detail, but I tend to be a bit hesitant about relying on depictions that utilize the senses, as I find that approach somewhat problematic.  For one thing, sensory description is always going to be less than universal, and not only because of the reality that there are individuals who lack one or more sense.  In many ways, for me, the deeper problem is one related to language itself.  Our use of language creates our experiences in a very real way, though I can't necessarily offer a full explanation of what I mean by that right here, but using a word for an object bestows qualities on it....
Read more