Haiku for Dummies

I have been seriously slacking on my poetry game. Besides the fact that I haven't really written in a month, I feel like my style has gotten more than a little stale. This month, I'm going to challenge myself by trying a few different poetic techniques. First haiku, then tankas :) Haven't written these since elementary school, at least, so I decided to google "haiku's for dummies"...and look what I found!!

From Dummies.com

Traditional Forms of Poetry: Tankas and Haiku
The Japanese tanka is a verse form from classical Japanese poetry. Even older than its better-known poetic cousin the haiku, the tanka is a quiet, meditative form that focuses on the natural world and the poet's emotions. A tanka is essentially a haiku (three lines consisting of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each), except it has two additional lines of 7 syllables each.

Traditionally, the tanka begins with an observation of a natural scene:

Invisible hands
caress my face; have I walked
through a spider's web
woven this morning to catch
flies writhing with my surprise

Many poets find that the tanka falls naturally into a haiku followed by a couplet. The haiku tends to focus more on observation, the couplet on reflection. But you don't have to observe this movement in your own writing. The tanka is a syllabic form, so just follow these simple rules:

•Avoid end-rhyming the lines.

•Vary the rhythms from line to line.

•Use enjambment to keep sentences and clauses twisting around the ends of the lines.

•Avoid ending too many lines in a row with a one-syllable word.

Best. Quote. Ever! :)

"There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid."

-Katherine Paterson

:)

Got this from the "Advice for Writers" Twitter account. If you're on Twitter and want some daily nuggets of awesome, follow him!!

Ever Hear of 2nd-Person Narrative?

...Neither had I before I read a short story written in that literary form. I mean...I'm sure that some teacher or someone in my life mentioned it at some time...maybe...?

2nd-person narrative is essentially when the author refers to one of the characters as "you", giving the reader the sense that he or she is a actually "in" the story.

Here's some more info about this form from the all-knowing Wiki.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this mode in contemporary literature is Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City. In this novel, the second-person point of view is intended to create an intense sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader, causing the reader to feel implicit in and powerless against a plot that leads him, blindly, through his (the reader’s and the narrator’s) own destruction and redemption:

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already."

It's a pretty refreshing style. It's not very popular (probably because it's difficult to do in a compelling way), but it might be cool to explore in my own writing. It changes the reader from spectator to character, in a slightly unnerving way. You open a book, expecting to see someone else's life unfolding on the pages, but instead, that person is you... Love it!

I'm actually thinking about changing my novel to make it all 2nd person!

Thoughts?

Power of the Pen!

I just wanted to give a random shout out to my peeps at Reading Jr/ Sr High School and the coaches of our Jr. High Power of the Pen team. For some reason, this came to mind today and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. As an awkward new kid in Cincinnati in 1997, that team gave me a place to belong and really set the foundation for the writer that I am today.

I just felt the need to say thank you, because I don't think I ever thanked these teachers and coaches properly. If you're in Ohio and know of any budding writers who just need that extra push, encourage them to join at their local Jr. High School!

I was a regional qualifier and, though I didn't move on to state, being part of that team taught me so much. It gave me the confidence to strive for that level of achievement in everything I do. It showed me that I could be excellent, if I only had the courage to try.

::gratitude::

Any other former Pen-ers out there?

Brave New Voices, Indeed

For someone who is all poetry, all the time, I did not give this show the love and attention that it deserved. ::le sigh:: Other than a tiny little blog post ten months ago, I really did not show HBO's Brave New Voices sufficient lovin.

So, here is my sad attempt at redemption. I found the full first episode on YouTube and decided to share it with all of you lovely people. This may, quite possibly, be illegal but...that is how passionate I am about spreading the BNV gospel. These kids are so freaking talented and have the most inspiring stories. If they can go through some of the junk they've seen and still write with such hope and poise, what the hell is our excuse?!?!

Hope this inspires you to stop slacking and write...you know who you are:-)

Enjoy!

ps...check out HBO for more background on the show and such. They're also on Twitter . I'm going to try and find out if there are plans for a second season. I promise I'll watch...or at least DVR...

Can Poetry Matter? YES.IT.CAN

Poetry, like all things, must evolve and adapt in order to remain relevant and to guarantee its on-going survival. Yesterday, Dana Gioia told us why. Today, she tells us how.

Enjoy!


How Poets Can Be Heard
Excerpt from Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture.

All it would require is that poets and poetry teachers take more responsibility for bringing their art to the public. I will close with six modest proposals for how this dream might come true.

1. When poets give public readings, they should spend part of every program reciting other people's work—preferably poems they admire by writers they do not know personally. Readings should be celebrations of poetry in general, not merely of the featured author's work.

2. When arts administrators plan public readings, they should avoid the standard subculture format of poetry only. Mix poetry with the other arts, especially music. Plan evenings honoring dead or foreign writers. Combine short critical lectures with poetry performances. Such combinations would attract an audience from beyond the poetry world without compromising quality.

3. Poets need to write prose about poetry more often, more candidly, and more effectively. Poets must recapture the attention of the broader intellectual community by writing for nonspecialist publications.

They must also avoid the jargon of contemporary academic criticism and write in a public idiom. Finally, poets must regain the reader's trust by candidly admitting what they don't like as well as promoting what they like. Professional courtesy has no place in literary journalism.

4. Poets who compile anthologies—or even reading lists—should be scrupulously honest in including only poems they genuinely admire. Anthologies are poetry's gateway to the general culture. They should not be used as pork barrels for the creative-writing trade. An art expands its audience by presenting masterpieces, not mediocrity. Anthologies should be compiled to move, delight, and instruct readers, not to flatter the writing teachers who assign books. Poet-anthologists must never trade the Muse's property for professional favors.

5. Poetry teachers especially at the high school and undergraduate levels, should spend less time on analysis and more on performance. Poetry needs to be liberated from literary criticism. Poems should be memorized, recited, and performed. The sheer joy of the art must be emphasized. The pleasure of performance is what first attracts children to poetry, the sensual excitement of speaking and hearing the words of the poem. Performance was also the teaching technique that kept poetry vital for centuries. Maybe it also holds the key to poetry's future.

It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes.

Did you know November was NaNoWriMo?

Yes!! NaNoWriMo:-)

Also known as National Novel Writing Month. This month-long write-a-thon is described on the homepage as a "fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. All you have to do is write a 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time." That's ONLY 1,667 words a day! Sounds impossible, but I believe in you!!

The main site has lots of tips on how to get started, how to fight the evil dragons of procrastination, and how to donate to the efforts when you're a poor, struggling artist. You can even buy all kinds of bibliophile swag like the oh-so-adorable "I Eat Novels For Breakfast" shirt. Simply beautiful. They'll be tracking the number of words written all over the world throughout the month, so check out the site to register. Thanks to Ida for getting me hip to this. Happy writing lovelies!!

And just in case you're still wondering why you should hop on the NaNoWriMo band wagon...

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

How: Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.