Saturday, November 24, 2007

Slings and Arrows

I have recently been introduced to the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows.  I’ve watched the first season and a half of it on DVD now, and am really enjoying it.


Part of what is so fun to me, as I watch, is thinking about the acting process.  I am not a stage person, not at all.  But it is fun to consider the connections between the acting process and the writing process.  The whole obsessing over a little detail, knowing that you’re being pedantic and knowing that it is ok to be so, the feeling that everything you say is not quite understood… that all comes through as part of the acting process in the show, and it seems to fit with my own feelings in the writing process from time to time (OK, much of the time).  But what I really love is the connection that it all brings between people once the task is done.  I don’t mean to say the work is perfect (we all know it never is), but that it is bonding, bringing the human experience to the foreground, and bringing humans together in the process.

So, for all that the acting or writing process is something of a lonely journey, it is also a very communal experience.  And that is kind of cool, when you think about it.
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Sunday, February 11, 2007

The Practice of Poetry

Robin Behn and Chase Twichell have written an excellent help for poets, a small volume called The Practice of Poetry. This volume is packed full of both essays and poetry exercises. There are 7 parts to the book, each focusing on a different aspect of the writing process. The numerous contributors have all put in their personal essays, exploring their poetic processes, and also contributed exercises to help other poets grow in their craft. It is really a valuable resource for poets.

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Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Structure and Form in Poetry

I’ve written before about my attempts to experiment with forms and structures in my writing process. Recently, I’ve begun an experiment that might be a little closer to my friend’s normal writing process than to my own. I’ve got a rather elaborate structure in my mind to which I want to fit a particular idea that I’ve been toying with.

What I am finding is that writing in this way slows the process down tremendously. This form I am currently working with is much more elaborate, and the poem is longer, than what I usually do. That is slowing me down, and that is a good thing. I am forced to think, this way, more carefully about exactly how I want to say what I want to say, and how to fit it effectively into the formation.

This is eye-opening to me, showing that there is so much more to it than merely being clever with words. There’s the equally important side of it, that of being disciplined with words.

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Structure and Poetry

I have a friend who is a very accomplished poet, having won awards in both Chinese and English poetry. He has told me before that for him, the structure of the poem comes first, and that dovetails with an idea/concept; and only later do the words begin to formulate.

That is very different from my own writing process. For me, it is often the idea that comes first, or snippets of phrases and words. Sometimes I even intentionally do things to make the poetry grow out of the words, like this or this.

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Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Fun with the Dictionary

I talked in a previous post about playing games to improve one’s poetry. I’ve found it works, as I said there, for increasing mental flexibility and for pushing the poet to look at the writing process from a different perspective.

In the games I highlighted in that post, the poet needs the participation from other people — readers, other poets, etc. — to play the games. I’ve developed a game I like to play on my own that has actually helped me to produce some poems that I am fairly pleased with.

What I do is take a series of words at random from the dictionary. The first word is the first word of the poem, and the second word chosen is the last word in the poem. The third word is the title.

This has proven useful for me. What happens is that you’ve established a beginning point and an ending point, as well as the framework (the title). The poem, then, grows out of language/words in a very particular and peculiar way. I’ve written a number of poems with this method, and am pleased with several of them.

There are, of course, other variations of this game. I have also chosen several words from the dictionary, letting each form the first word of each of the poems stanzas, with the final word forming the title. I have one poem that turned out nicely with this variation on the game. I found several of the words had lesser-used meanings of which I was not previously aware, and the poem took on a nautical theme that I might never have come up with otherwise, particularly as I didn’t know the nautical applications of several of the words before.

For linguaphiles like me, this game can be very fun. It really stretches how I look at a poem, as often for me ideas come first, with the poem growing up around the ideas. This method makes language primary, with the ideas growing out through the words. For me, at least, it has proven a very useful exercise.

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