Friday Writing Experiment No. 19: Ode For A Special Occasion

by Andrew | 1 Comment

roses

This week we’ve had Pancake Day, Chinese New Year and/or Shambhala Day/Tibetan New Year bringing us the Year of the Water Snake, and Valentine’s Day. My friend Indira Ganesan published her book As Sweet As Honey. A pope resigned. Lots of special occasions (and despite more cold, cold weather, this morning was bright and sunny and felt very springy – I even, finally, spied two yellow buds bursting through the green shoots in pots where I’ve planted crocuses).

So: let’s celebrate one of these special occasions (or maybe something else) with an ode, which is a lyric poem or song devoted to the celebration of something specific. This can be something grand (Allen Tate’s ‘Ode to the Confederate Dead’), or something more ordinary (such as Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to My Socks’).

The ode is an ancient form that can have specific patterns in its stanzas, but as Ron Padgett says in his Handbook of Poetic Forms: ‘Ultimately what has survived of the ode in its 2,500 years is its spontaneity, its expansiveness, and its openness to a wide range of emotions. Perhaps rather than its formal attibutes, these are the qualities that make an ode an ode.’

So: choose a special subject (one of this week’s holidays, your true love, the publication of your book, the retirement of a pope; a city, a tree, water snakes, your bed), and then ground the writing in details that are concrete and specific (‘two socks as soft as rabbits’, ‘Bats are scribbling verse on twilight’, ‘the men with green eyelids’). To help structure your work, you might like to pace your voice and perceptions into simple stanzas or lines, but most of all focus on creating a spontaneous, expansive and open voice that celebrates your chosen subject in ways that evoke emotion.

You might also like to read up and/or sample a few more odes devoted to subjects both elevated and everyday:

definition of ode from the Poetry Foundation

definition of ode from poets.org

examples of odes from the Poetry Foundation

Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’

Jack Spicer’s ‘Ode to Walt Whitman’

Sappho’s ‘Ode to Aphrodite’

Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market’ (the notes of the translator, Robin Robertson, are interesting too)

Gillian Clarke’s ‘Ode to Joy’ (click on the link to see the original London Underground poster, for which this was a commission)

Friday Writing Experiment No. 18: Candlelit Tales

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candles

So, for all our attempts to invoke spring last week, it’s still winter out there. Sun, some blue skies, but cold. Gets pretty chilly at night. It’s good to draw the curtains, light the fire, hunker down with a book or something good on the telly. Or a notebook and pen.

This week, while the nights are still long and dark, I’m spinning off something Elaine Showalter tells us she recommends to her students in Teaching Literature: writing by candlelight. Turn out the lights, spark up a candle, and write a story or a poem or just anything that comes.

Use a notebook or paper and pen/pencil. No ghostly light from a screen for our low-tech endeavour. Just the flicker of a candle, or candles. (The ones above were in Ely Cathedral, which I visited for the first time on Monday – pretty fabulous: arches, painted ceilings, lantern tower, stained glass glowing on stone, and so well maintained.)

(And if you are reading this in the southern hemisphere: sorry! Stay up late. And be aware of those lengthening nights …)

If you need a prompt, try one of these: blood, ink, handkerchief, mouse, drawl.

Otherwise, consider what happens when you write by candlelight. What sort of intimacy is created between you and the pen and the page within that spell of light? And how might it affect your writing?

Friday Writing Experiment No. 17: O, Just-spring!

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I don’t know about you, but it’s felt like a long and cold winter, and according to the calendar we’ve still a ways to go; this is only February the 1st, and we’re closer to Christmas than the official start of spring.

But this week I also felt a certain spring in my step, and a sense of the lengthening days; even if it was bloody cold out there, there was also something different in the light. The sun seems to get higher above that row of houses over the back, and the blackbird has returned, and the robin, and slowly, slowly those crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths are poking up through the soil in those pots in the back garden. Wonder when they’ll flower? Those green shoots have been patient for a few weeks now. The lawn is most definitely mud-luscious. Spring is ever-returning (thanks, Uncle Walt).

So, let’s take a stand against the darkness, and though it’s premature write a poem or an invocation or a gratitude that invites a bit of Just-spring to return to our lives. It’s something of a reach, but sometimes stretching is good for our writing.

Here’s a small sample of Just-springy poems (I nixed a few that refer to later months – that seemed to be rubbing it in too much, or tempting fate to bring back winter). Add others or links or your own in the comments below, if you wish.

E.E. Cummings, ‘[in Just- / spring]’

Tony Hoagland, ‘A Color Of The Sky’

Emily Dickinson, ‘A Bird Came Down The Walk’

Walt Whitman, ‘When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d’

William Shakespeare, ‘Spring’

William Wordsworth, ‘Lines Written In Early Spring’

Jane Cooper, ‘Hunger Moon’

Anselm Hollo, ‘Webern’

Friday Writing Experiment No. 16: People Of The Stars

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Zodiac

To mark the publication of Astrology Decoded by Sue Merlyn Farebrother, let’s use some astrology in this week’s writing experiment. The symbolic types that astrology describes can be very useful for writers, and help us in generating new characters, settings, and story ideas.

* Take an astrological sign, and in one paragraph write a brief character sketch in which you embody some of the essential qualities associated with that sign: behaviours, actions, gestures, physical traits, occupations, clothes, home, family, love life, and maybe a bit of summary about that person’s history too.

* Take another astrological sign, and repeat for a new character.

* Then introduce those characters to each other in a scene that includes some dialogue. Perhaps you can bring in some element of conflict or connection based on ways in which the signs’ essential traits might have some bearing on each other.

To help, you might want to consult some resources on astrological signs (more here), and also consider some of their elemental qualities.

To mix this up further:

* You might understand the difference between a sun sign (your essence or basic nature) and a rising sign (your mask or persona: how your essence meets life and interacts with the world). If so, you could make the portrait and exchange of your characters more complex by bringing in these added dimensions.

* If your knowledge of astrology goes deeper, perhaps you can introduce further influences or variables: planets, houses, aspects.

* Create a random character: pick a randomly chosen birth date (stick a pin in a calendar), and then use a computer-generated programme to assemble some characteristics before bringing them to life in a sketch or a scene.

* And maybe, if you have an existing piece of writing, you could use astrological signs in revision as a way to refine your characterisation: what are the signs of your characters, and how might these be brought out some more in the writing?

How To Avoid The Self-Published Look

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I just read a very useful article with lots of practical tips: ‘How To Avoid The Self-Published Look’.

To that I add:

* If you are printing a book the traditional way, choose good, quality paper. Don’t go for bright, whiter-than-white photocopier paper, else your book will look as if it’s just come off a photocopier. Ask for paper samples, or even show your printer or paper supplier the sort of paper you like from a book whose production you admire. Better paper might be more expensive, but it will look more professional, for sure; maybe you’ll just have to charge a little more for it, or print a few less? But it’s probably better than having lots of brighter-than-white copies lurking unsold in boxes in your garage. Make your book something that people want to possess.

* A good cover. A very good cover. Outsource it, if need be. Make your book beautiful, desirable. (Some publishers could pay heed to that too. Make your book look something more than a full-page advertisement in a magazine sold at the checkout in the supermarket.)

* Understand the differences between structural editing, copyediting, and proofreading, and introduce these as separate editorial stages in your production process.

* At some point, make sure that other sets of eyes read the book. You’ll never catch everything yourself.

And oops, I see that I go against the grain on this site in at times ‘improperly’ capitalising the first letter of every word in titles, including articles, conjunctions, and shorter prepositions. I follow that style in print, but for some reason I’ve found myself using initial caps online; it just looks tidier? Not least given that in email and other online contexts we don’t always italicise titles. Well, that’s my logic/excuse. Someday, maybe I’ll go all OCD on this site and change that, perhaps. Or maybe not. Ow, one of those editor dilemmas to keep us awake at night.