Poetry Snippets

This Thanksgiving weekend is a writing weekend. I have thus far written a critique, posted a story for critique, started editing said story, and begun trying to make an incomprehensible poem into something comprehensible. (I am thinking the last is a lost cause, but I'm gonna keep trying. ^_^)

The story and poem are the ones I wrote for my creative writing class. I won't bother posting them here yet, but I feel like putting up some of the exercises I've done (one of which I wrote about in my previous post). They're not good, but they were fun to write~

***

Write an unrhymed poem that incorporates the following six words (among others): ROAD, DEAR, SICKLY, GLASS, DISPERSES, BLOSSOMS

Dear Friend,

You took the left turn and I the right
and I wished it had been a knife in the road instead
because then my feet would not have wanted to be right.
The sickly scent of your new perfume
dispersed with the distance and I hated it--
its presence, its disappearance.
Red blossoms on the hedgerows were your cheeks
and bees buzzed around blushing petals.
My dull face did not attract such suitors
and I swatted down your butterfly.

Guilty feet shuffled and scuffed
the dirt, the pebbles, the dust
and later they found their way back to town.
You stood behind the glass of a shop window
and my feet tripped one over the other--
but I saw that you had two left feet
equal to my two right feet.

I waved, and you smiled.

***

Write a poem in which one color (ex: red) is frequently repeated. Consider the symbolic associations of your chosen color (ex: anger, passion, death). Make color your unifying motif. Pay close attention to where, when, and why you're breaking the language where you are.

Viola Brown

The brown sound seeps deep into my bones
and I am the one who owns these strings.
Brown wood sings in mellow melody,
rich rhapsody thrilling down my arms,
and it warms like coffee on an autumn day.

I am a chestnut rooted in brown earth,
my leaves unfurling in rebirth to the sound
resonating all around. My heart begins to heal
as my flying fingers feel and my ears hear
the color of brown.

***

The second is very shallow, but I had so much fun messing around with sounds I really can't bring myself to care. ^_^

On the Creative Writing Class

I've been having a lot of fun in my online creative writing class, but unfortunately it's the cause of my lengthy radio silence. A few weeks ago we had a fiction workshop, in which everyone posted a story and then critiqued the other stories. Twenty-two critiques in three weeks gets to be a bit wearing. ^_^

Having to write a story for the workshop was good motivation, though; I managed to write a shortened version of a concept I've had for several years. I think it must be pleased to see the light of day after knocking around in my head for so long. The draft was received fairly well, and soon I'll begin revising it for our final "portfolio" assignment.

Going through the critiques I received has me pondering how to deal with contradictory opinions, a situation I hadn't come across before. On Locution I usually get a body of advice that all adds up to a certain direction; even different opinions aren't blatant contradictions. With this workshop, though, I've found people can have very different reactions to the same story. One person really disliked the magical element I introduced, for instance, while two people thought it needed more emphasis to seem more magical. Yet another said he liked the subtlety of it. I'll probably end up editing the story in line with the opinion I favor, but I can't decide if that's taking the easy way out or simply the way to deal with such variance. Ah well~

Just over a week ago we started the poetry segment of the course, which has been interesting. I'm not much of a poetry person, and I was both apprehensive and excited about it. Right now I've got my workshop poem and a color poem to write--it's sort of what I'm avoiding at the moment, but I'll get round to it soon. ^_^;;

I made a conscious effort when the segment started to try thinking differently. I don't write much poetry, but when I do it's not uncommon for someone to say it's too much like prose, or they can't find a deeper meaning. And I agree--I'm not very good with poetic language or symbolism. I think, though, I managed something different with the exercise last week. We had to take six words the professor gave us and use them in a poem. What resulted wasn't good, per se--the imagery was probably a bit muddled, and rereading it I can see places that need work. Point is, I actually paid attention to imagery, symbolism, metaphor, and suchlike. I may not have got the execution right, but I was thinking about it as I wrote and edited, and I think it made a difference.

Anyway, I should probably get back to thinking about that color poem:

Write a poem in which one color (ex: red) is frequently repeated. Consider the symbolic associations of your chosen color (ex: anger, passion, death). Make color your unifying motif. Pay close attention to where, when, and why you're breaking the language where you are.

I'll see how it goes. ^_^