I've been playing flashcards lately. I know from experience that the flashcard method of learning is quite effective, based as it is on repetition and the agonies of thinking before the gradual process of reinforcement hits the message home. Obviously this is a good method for language learning - but it's also a good brain training tool for your own powers of description and expanding your word power more generally.
Today I am in the process of facing 450 cards of fairly difficult words. These aren't words that I'd be adding to any poetry lists - but instead they are words that help the power of everyday writing and speaking - the helpful avoidance of tip of the tongue syndrome - a debilitating and frustrating condition that we are all heir to; perhaps some more than most. Although not serious, there are serious connotations associated with the condition anomic aphsia. The condition which is suggestive of tip of the tongue condition removes any sense of frivolity associated with Tip of the Tongue as its the root cause tends to be serious such as head injury, stroke or age related psychological illnesses such as dementia. We may laugh at tip of the tongue, but no-one laughs at anomic aphsia. But since I don't believe what I have is serious I'll will treat it as a minor inconvenience that might be ameliorated by flash cards and brain exercises.
For me it's the utter frustration at non instant retrieval - which can occur at anytime though tends towards greater prevalence when I am stressed or nervous. Doing these flash card tests aren't going to improve my mental condition when most afflicted by tip of the tongue condition - but the mental exercises and reinforcement processing of this of brain training concept might make episodes less prevalent.
As far as the flash carding exercise is concerned, interesting words are flowing through. The need to think through as creative and illustrative a definition as possible once you have settled on a sense of what the word means, at least in part as many words have multiple meanings, makes the brain work hard. Its a good little work out. Flamboyant Fervent Foible and Foist have all just come out: to show off ostentatiously, intensely fervid or zealous, an individual trait or slight frailty in character, and to thrust without debate or to put in slyly or stealthily. All 'f' words which demonstrates that they are flying out alphabetically or what one might say frenetically: without recourse to the consideration of thinking time.
Thursday, 3 April 2014
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Themes
As befits the *'dustbin' this is a repository where no literary merit can ever be expected to be found. This is where free-writes, focused and unfocused usually get done. Often they can look terribly bloated, grammatically eccentric and completely incoherent - but there you are, this blog isn't called 'dustbin' for nothing.
The eternal hope - and it has happened - that from out of the lexical bilge typical of free writes, will come pearls, even if the fabled reader does have to look really hard to find them. All writers, however successful or grand to free write occasionally. As a process it draws on the subconscious and allows another side of the brain to way in with a few surprises occasionally. It's better I think to have an idea floating around in your thoughts so that the free write has an anchor to support it - stop it from drifting too far away, whilst at the same time allowing free rein within its constraints. I like the idea of going off on tangents - and then being pulled back to being 'on message so to speak. It allows for a certain amount of structuring and can help with getting to the nub of the idea that you first had. The idea that made you want to free write in the first place.
Today I have been thinking of themes and wondering if themes and the understanding of them is one of the keys to writing poetry, If as Douglas Dunn says: the poem has to come from the tongue the teeth and most of all the heart - then to write poetry without heart will probably result in a worthless poem.
I think one way is to tap into the things that really matter to you. This is surely where the writer gets his themes. Subjects are fine, they're all over the place. But themes are far more personal. So, if for example one alights on a subject - recently for example I walked around a disused building that used to be a school. I was moved by the experience because set within one of the walls was its date stone A date stone is typically an embedded stone with the date of engraving and other information carved into it. They are not considered a very reliable source for dating a house, as instances of old houses being destroyed and rebuilt (with the old date stones intact) have been reported. But notwithstanding they excite me at least. This one was showing the putative date the building was completed: 1823. I like history so the building provides something to write about. The old bricks, the class rooms where the slates must have been scribbled on, the echoic halls, the headmasters study etc. Its all history and fills with wonder. But if one stays with these concrete things the poem will read like a piece of history and lack any wonder. This is I think where theme comes in. We have our subject -the thing that provides the prompt is the old building - but WHY has it provided the prompt? It has provided the prompt because it suggests other things that run more deeply. The notion of time passing. Experiences had and them melting away. Emotions felt - schools will have felt if they could feel: certain amounts of pride, fear, joy, nervousness, competition, many emotions. What if those emotions were somehow trapped within the fabric of the building. If we think like this what themes are emerging: The supernatural? The oddness of time? The passage of time? Life/death/achievement/ failure. If we are concentrating on these emotional states we have themes emerging. And often it is those themes that are already there in the mind of the poet who first stumbled into his subject. I'm walking around an old building and getting these feelings. Therefore they are probably from the heart. Others might concentrate on the architecture of the building -wonder at the craftsmanship of the building and the techniques and materials used. Others might concentrate on the community spirit that allowed for these schools to be built - tapping into social science aspects of the building and its functions. Others might look upon it in purely commercial terms - with a view to buying it to refurbish or convert it into a dwelling - or knock it down to reclaim the land. Its probably fair to say that anyone can have any of these thoughts. But if primarily ones thoughts are of wonder - and curiousness and an emotional response that wishes to connect with something human in the story - perhaps they are the poets or certainly the most poetic. perhaps a poet then is one who carries themes within him. Little obsessions that he would like to develop and learn more from. To ignore at least for the moment the reality of a situation and spend time instead trying to connect with something slightly higher or other worldly.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Free Write. Typed at 300 mph.
Gertrude Stein had something to say about this Free Writing business. So did Virginia Woolf. So it must work right? perhaps. Anyway here's another of mine:
It is with the utmost ambivalence that I approach this austere exercise: that of eliciting the most exciting extemporaneous text capable of being written by me, without recourse to lexical collections such as dictionaries and thesauruses. Or Thesauri if you would prefer. It's a good and bad thing - or rather since this is an exercise in word selectivity and associated appropriateness, it is both a beneficial and helpful practice whilst simultaneously being a tedious drudge through the blinding effort of disinterring and excavation words from the dusty cells,caves like crevices and deeply scored interstices of my brain. After all if they (the words) have decided to absent themselves, go on self-imposed exile or even choosing the option of a more benign break such as a vacation from the all consuming effort needed for day to day living, that's fine. As long as you come back smartly when called.
The observant among you will have noticed that I am ferreting around at the moment trying to remember a word that I know which I fully intended to fit into the last sentence but which steadfastly,obstinately,and with the adamantine bloody-mindedness that I have come to learn about when this kind of dispraxia, decides to bring its awkwardness to the game - it won't come until I have stopped thinking about it. Ceased to pontificate, to ruminate, to think deeply as the cogs in the brain squeak around desperate for the oil I am in the process of squirting all over them. Is there another word for squirting? Spilling suggests droplets with no force greater than gravity propelling them along, rather than additional kinetic energy which the image of squirting seems to conjure. Blasting is a bit extreme - although a blast can be relative I suppose. I can imagine writers desperate to avoid cliches could utilise a verb like 'blast' to describe a kind of emphatically energised application of something that might be used for exaggerated effect - like blasting a verruca from the foot. Do you really? I think rather you are seeking to ease the verruca from the foot with the gentle application of medicinally proven pharmaceutical cream rather than aiming both barrels of a Martini Henry at the blight, but such is the desire to see the aberration gone, the foot holder wants to blast it to Kingdom Come - such is the contempt with which it is held and regarded. Extra force brought to the image, induced by the hurtful ire the person would undoubtedly feel for the affliction - 'I'll blast it off the face of the Earth,' might well be a sentiment that lacks logic - but putting cold logic to one side and emote a bit more and yes, you would want to blast it to Hell. And that's just a verruca a small plantar wart lesion that appears on the sole of the foot and has the temerity to resemble a mini cauliflower. Not exactly pancreatic cancer. What would be needed if one maintained such metaphoric grandiosity: a scud missile aimed at the solarplexes? a nuclear bomb blast piped down your throat.
Recourse to overstatement is understandable in these situations. The worse the condition the more fire added to the ire. Back to that break which actually wasn't a break but something undergone by students who look to take a year off, or a professional who feels that the time is right or ripe to drop out of the usual routine and take a - damn it's gone again. Its gone. It's swirling around in the maze of my conscience looking for the exit door. It's ascending stairs, practically falling down others, glancing concernedly at signs and maps to help the navigational process. Perhaps stopping occasionally to ask a passing emotion or a wandering word or trivial memory nugget not being summoned whether they know the where the exit is.
Other items who happen to be travelling sedately from brain to mouth towards the exit or various exits might tire of seeing this fool flailing around without a clue - too tight through inactivity and self-imposed inertia to purchase a helpful navigation aid - something like a helpful link. Links are thing that help out in situations nay crises like this. The links can act as guides for the blind the deaf and the disoriented - but if you're too good, to cool even to bother forging links you are guileless as well as guide less and your efforts will be thwarted, curtailed, blocked off. And that's what we're experiencing here - a blockage.
Blockages can be avoided. Links will ease the paths of the seriously lost or those who have lost direction in all senses of the word. Has it lost direction in its deeper psychological sense - a direction in live to know where it is going and perhaps ultimately where it will end up. Or are we merely talking here about finding the way to the tongue from the deeper and dustier recesses of the brain - tucked being the folds, lodged in the dark and fustian corners where things like prompts and guides and linkages can't penetrate.
Penetrate to probe in and exercise a role that suggests that encouragement under pressure will caused those who are either racked with timidity or timorousness or lain injured or stagnant through obesity. Penetrate and his friends extricate and release should bind together, pool their redoubtable resources and bring forth those who find through time and inactivity an ability to move into the light.
Extricate and his cousins extrication and extraction can only really mobilize when locate and penetrate have completed their tasks. Find and bring to safety. Locate using all his perceptive senses will use his own helpers - intelligence helping elves will scour around asking questions positing answers from lies and drawing enough strands out to bring to the chief of this area Intelligence. He (intelligence) will then formulate a hypothesis through a narrowing down through selectivity of information of most probably areas where the word might be hidden might just be. Once he has the information it is within his demesne he can make a judgement about where the search teams might prioritize their future efforts if the search is to continue. At the moment he's thinking that the word might begin with the letter V. A valetudinarian? A valetudinarian is someone who things he has multiple diseases, I think - perhaps someone who claims to have so much he habitually weakens any assertion he might have that has more than a grain of truth to it. Victor, veracity voracious, vulpine veracity, vinous, viscous vampish, vicarious. Nothing to find there.
All interesting in their own right. A winner, a truth, something that resembles a fox, something that resembles food and wine, a fluid of dense and sticky quality that reduces stress on other material, a description of feminine activity suggestive of overt flirtation, and something that is associated with liability through a third party (all have been guessed at and no apologies will be forthcoming to excuse the erroneous content of the definitions found theretofore). But perhaps not even V. It still hasn't arrived. Intelligence is going to have to muster its helpers - bring in the team leaders of instinct, a branch of memory called conversational snap-shot, contemplation, readers-write and quiz-master and brief them on what it needs to make a better hypothesis. Then the search and rescue squad can get in find their hostage, kill off any shacklers, slackers, binders and de-motivators, and bounce our victim - because yes it is a victim, into the open for use. Conversational snap shot is on his feet and speaking let's listen to what he has to say:
'I have to say that I do recall an instance when this word was used. It was during the hosts time on the Divisional Group when he addressing his team leader a certain Mr Philpot. He said to Mr P 'I hope you enjoy your such and such as you deserve it.' The intimation there was that this break in the normality of Mr P's life was to be welcomed and nourishing in both body and soul and that this break is something that is looked forward to - not in the manner of retirement where all is behind you, but in the manner of I've worked really hard for a period of time and I wish to opt out of this for indeterminate amount of time but usually not.' exceeding one calendrical year.'
Intelligence: Think hard snap-shot try to recall the exact conversation'
Snap-shot: I believe Mr P said something like 'You're right, if anyone deserves a blank it's me. I've been at this particular grindstone for thirty five years and I've still got ten to go before early retirement.'
Intelligence: Grindstone Snap-shot? Did he really say that or are you allowing Imagination to infiltrate your memory. Is he there playing with the precision of your memorizing, filling bleak gaps with colour for the future betterment his skills when they are called upon.
Snap shot. 'You might be right intelligence. Imagination does play havoc with the specificity of my accounts. It's as if one pause gives him the opportunity to inject an element of overt fictionalization possibly for his own and no-one else s benefit. I'm doing my best to accurately recall the finest details of the utmost veracity, I turn around and always he' there interjecting with things, weaving descriptive spells that are so interesting and fill the void so beautifully I sometimes feel powerless to resist them.'
Intelligence: Pull yourself together snap-shot. You occupy a very different thought area. You are to do with facts. Your milieu is in the frozen image and the exactitude of detail contained therein. His area is the dramatic, the poetic, the creation of vibrant moments - he knows little to nothing of the real truth. That said I know where his skills can take us when the facts are in short supply. I admit that his wayward way with things might help here - come up Imagination let me interrogate you - entrance yourself, let the nonsense flow - we're getting nowhere with facts.
Imagination: Thank you. I was wondering when I was going to be recruited into this... sham. Surely everyone knows by now that what I have is the ability to construct a wondrous framework from which facts can be plucked. I can use image and colour and ludicrousness to create things. Chaos theory is my specialty. There is always order from mess if you know where to look. From the farrago new truths can be deciphered and grafted onto facts with pegs that link all the way metaphorically speaking, to the Moon and beyond. I always say we can work in co-operation. Cohorts rather than adversaries. Blended skills for ultimate solutions. I can fly like a butterfly, flit from one word to another and cover everything in a cloud of gold-dust, fine as talcum. I can sew the finest filaments of silver into the drabbest of material, pull and stretch and engorge anything with colour, everything that comes my way. And that's what you will get you back - a word that looks like an elephant in a purple onesie wearing a gold papal cap and rollerskating to the tune of I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman whilst a flapping sign around its neck reads... 'sabbatical' which is the word you've all been looking for, am I right? I know I am. I'm not alone, there's loads of us on the right side that are ignored during these deep thinking times. Our job is to make memory memorable. Why would you not trust us.
Intelligence All right imagination I get your point. Sabbatical. Well done.
It is with the utmost ambivalence that I approach this austere exercise: that of eliciting the most exciting extemporaneous text capable of being written by me, without recourse to lexical collections such as dictionaries and thesauruses. Or Thesauri if you would prefer. It's a good and bad thing - or rather since this is an exercise in word selectivity and associated appropriateness, it is both a beneficial and helpful practice whilst simultaneously being a tedious drudge through the blinding effort of disinterring and excavation words from the dusty cells,caves like crevices and deeply scored interstices of my brain. After all if they (the words) have decided to absent themselves, go on self-imposed exile or even choosing the option of a more benign break such as a vacation from the all consuming effort needed for day to day living, that's fine. As long as you come back smartly when called.
The observant among you will have noticed that I am ferreting around at the moment trying to remember a word that I know which I fully intended to fit into the last sentence but which steadfastly,obstinately,and with the adamantine bloody-mindedness that I have come to learn about when this kind of dispraxia, decides to bring its awkwardness to the game - it won't come until I have stopped thinking about it. Ceased to pontificate, to ruminate, to think deeply as the cogs in the brain squeak around desperate for the oil I am in the process of squirting all over them. Is there another word for squirting? Spilling suggests droplets with no force greater than gravity propelling them along, rather than additional kinetic energy which the image of squirting seems to conjure. Blasting is a bit extreme - although a blast can be relative I suppose. I can imagine writers desperate to avoid cliches could utilise a verb like 'blast' to describe a kind of emphatically energised application of something that might be used for exaggerated effect - like blasting a verruca from the foot. Do you really? I think rather you are seeking to ease the verruca from the foot with the gentle application of medicinally proven pharmaceutical cream rather than aiming both barrels of a Martini Henry at the blight, but such is the desire to see the aberration gone, the foot holder wants to blast it to Kingdom Come - such is the contempt with which it is held and regarded. Extra force brought to the image, induced by the hurtful ire the person would undoubtedly feel for the affliction - 'I'll blast it off the face of the Earth,' might well be a sentiment that lacks logic - but putting cold logic to one side and emote a bit more and yes, you would want to blast it to Hell. And that's just a verruca a small plantar wart lesion that appears on the sole of the foot and has the temerity to resemble a mini cauliflower. Not exactly pancreatic cancer. What would be needed if one maintained such metaphoric grandiosity: a scud missile aimed at the solarplexes? a nuclear bomb blast piped down your throat.
Recourse to overstatement is understandable in these situations. The worse the condition the more fire added to the ire. Back to that break which actually wasn't a break but something undergone by students who look to take a year off, or a professional who feels that the time is right or ripe to drop out of the usual routine and take a - damn it's gone again. Its gone. It's swirling around in the maze of my conscience looking for the exit door. It's ascending stairs, practically falling down others, glancing concernedly at signs and maps to help the navigational process. Perhaps stopping occasionally to ask a passing emotion or a wandering word or trivial memory nugget not being summoned whether they know the where the exit is.
Other items who happen to be travelling sedately from brain to mouth towards the exit or various exits might tire of seeing this fool flailing around without a clue - too tight through inactivity and self-imposed inertia to purchase a helpful navigation aid - something like a helpful link. Links are thing that help out in situations nay crises like this. The links can act as guides for the blind the deaf and the disoriented - but if you're too good, to cool even to bother forging links you are guileless as well as guide less and your efforts will be thwarted, curtailed, blocked off. And that's what we're experiencing here - a blockage.
Blockages can be avoided. Links will ease the paths of the seriously lost or those who have lost direction in all senses of the word. Has it lost direction in its deeper psychological sense - a direction in live to know where it is going and perhaps ultimately where it will end up. Or are we merely talking here about finding the way to the tongue from the deeper and dustier recesses of the brain - tucked being the folds, lodged in the dark and fustian corners where things like prompts and guides and linkages can't penetrate.
Penetrate to probe in and exercise a role that suggests that encouragement under pressure will caused those who are either racked with timidity or timorousness or lain injured or stagnant through obesity. Penetrate and his friends extricate and release should bind together, pool their redoubtable resources and bring forth those who find through time and inactivity an ability to move into the light.
Extricate and his cousins extrication and extraction can only really mobilize when locate and penetrate have completed their tasks. Find and bring to safety. Locate using all his perceptive senses will use his own helpers - intelligence helping elves will scour around asking questions positing answers from lies and drawing enough strands out to bring to the chief of this area Intelligence. He (intelligence) will then formulate a hypothesis through a narrowing down through selectivity of information of most probably areas where the word might be hidden might just be. Once he has the information it is within his demesne he can make a judgement about where the search teams might prioritize their future efforts if the search is to continue. At the moment he's thinking that the word might begin with the letter V. A valetudinarian? A valetudinarian is someone who things he has multiple diseases, I think - perhaps someone who claims to have so much he habitually weakens any assertion he might have that has more than a grain of truth to it. Victor, veracity voracious, vulpine veracity, vinous, viscous vampish, vicarious. Nothing to find there.
All interesting in their own right. A winner, a truth, something that resembles a fox, something that resembles food and wine, a fluid of dense and sticky quality that reduces stress on other material, a description of feminine activity suggestive of overt flirtation, and something that is associated with liability through a third party (all have been guessed at and no apologies will be forthcoming to excuse the erroneous content of the definitions found theretofore). But perhaps not even V. It still hasn't arrived. Intelligence is going to have to muster its helpers - bring in the team leaders of instinct, a branch of memory called conversational snap-shot, contemplation, readers-write and quiz-master and brief them on what it needs to make a better hypothesis. Then the search and rescue squad can get in find their hostage, kill off any shacklers, slackers, binders and de-motivators, and bounce our victim - because yes it is a victim, into the open for use. Conversational snap shot is on his feet and speaking let's listen to what he has to say:
'I have to say that I do recall an instance when this word was used. It was during the hosts time on the Divisional Group when he addressing his team leader a certain Mr Philpot. He said to Mr P 'I hope you enjoy your such and such as you deserve it.' The intimation there was that this break in the normality of Mr P's life was to be welcomed and nourishing in both body and soul and that this break is something that is looked forward to - not in the manner of retirement where all is behind you, but in the manner of I've worked really hard for a period of time and I wish to opt out of this for indeterminate amount of time but usually not.' exceeding one calendrical year.'
Intelligence: Think hard snap-shot try to recall the exact conversation'
Snap-shot: I believe Mr P said something like 'You're right, if anyone deserves a blank it's me. I've been at this particular grindstone for thirty five years and I've still got ten to go before early retirement.'
Intelligence: Grindstone Snap-shot? Did he really say that or are you allowing Imagination to infiltrate your memory. Is he there playing with the precision of your memorizing, filling bleak gaps with colour for the future betterment his skills when they are called upon.
Snap shot. 'You might be right intelligence. Imagination does play havoc with the specificity of my accounts. It's as if one pause gives him the opportunity to inject an element of overt fictionalization possibly for his own and no-one else s benefit. I'm doing my best to accurately recall the finest details of the utmost veracity, I turn around and always he' there interjecting with things, weaving descriptive spells that are so interesting and fill the void so beautifully I sometimes feel powerless to resist them.'
Intelligence: Pull yourself together snap-shot. You occupy a very different thought area. You are to do with facts. Your milieu is in the frozen image and the exactitude of detail contained therein. His area is the dramatic, the poetic, the creation of vibrant moments - he knows little to nothing of the real truth. That said I know where his skills can take us when the facts are in short supply. I admit that his wayward way with things might help here - come up Imagination let me interrogate you - entrance yourself, let the nonsense flow - we're getting nowhere with facts.
Imagination: Thank you. I was wondering when I was going to be recruited into this... sham. Surely everyone knows by now that what I have is the ability to construct a wondrous framework from which facts can be plucked. I can use image and colour and ludicrousness to create things. Chaos theory is my specialty. There is always order from mess if you know where to look. From the farrago new truths can be deciphered and grafted onto facts with pegs that link all the way metaphorically speaking, to the Moon and beyond. I always say we can work in co-operation. Cohorts rather than adversaries. Blended skills for ultimate solutions. I can fly like a butterfly, flit from one word to another and cover everything in a cloud of gold-dust, fine as talcum. I can sew the finest filaments of silver into the drabbest of material, pull and stretch and engorge anything with colour, everything that comes my way. And that's what you will get you back - a word that looks like an elephant in a purple onesie wearing a gold papal cap and rollerskating to the tune of I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman whilst a flapping sign around its neck reads... 'sabbatical' which is the word you've all been looking for, am I right? I know I am. I'm not alone, there's loads of us on the right side that are ignored during these deep thinking times. Our job is to make memory memorable. Why would you not trust us.
Intelligence All right imagination I get your point. Sabbatical. Well done.
Tests 1 and 3
This test which with astonishing creativity I will call number 3, will differ in that I will have help eliciting words (in this case between a and e) using a thesaurus or dictionary. Each word will be selected for interest and usability - there won't be any of those specialised words that are too obscure to ever remember to ever be of use. I will then free write using as many of them as I can.
aggregate agrarian apologia assimilate abbreviate ambivalent androgynous asymmetrical arduous
bailwick baulk benevolent burnish
corrosive cavil couch cumbersome cross-grained conflate connivance conjugal churlish cynical
diametric diatribe didactic disputatious disparage disposition disputatious disparate
excoriate excrescence execrable effectuate effeminate estimable
The number of apples found in each of the barrels amount to an aggregate of 40. Aggregate means a combined quantity of something so the following synonyms could be considered cluster, agglomerate or accumulation. One shouldn't be confused by aggravate which is a very different word which suggests that something has been interfered with to the annoyance or discomfort of the thing itself. Worsen, exacerbate intensify would be used in mitigation perhaps which would lead to a more vexatious state. Vexatious: a state of enhanced irritation. Irritation could also be classified as annoyance. Annoyance might be something that irks someone to the extent that they would become irrationally angered even it the object of that irksomeness is trivial. Trivial means something that lacks serious significance.Trivial Pursuit nothing if not a masterpiece of self-awareness-based marketing where the subjects within the quizzes and the questions, despite often containing elements of interest, were essential trivial to living a full life. No-ones was ever enhanced by knowing that banana oil was obtained from coal - though I'm sure a few trivial victories were won answering questions of similar obscurity. Obscurity is a place that someone might emerge from or disappear into if they are not or no longer occupying a high profile or public faced existence. Existence is the occupational position of something that is opposite to not being present. If in existence then it is there to be seen heard touched felt or smelt or otherwise perceived. Perceived is something that can be sensed either through the traditional senses or through something that might be termed a sixth sense where an awareness is conceived through an unrecognized sensory route.
The fatigued detective frail from overwork and fraught from the disruptions in his private life feared failure above all other things. He had hoped that following his promotion that the panegyrics foisted on him as he flew outrageously through the ranks, that his fortitude and fearlessness would not be exposed as a facade: solidified fluff rather than the tensile robustness of the verifiable truth capable of surviving the hammering rigour of an interrogation. Failure in the hot seat was not an option for him. But if these interrogators attempts to drill down through what they might view as a friable personality ready to crumble the moment added pressure was applied, his confidence could conceivably fade, evanesce or shrivel in the face of hard facts fastidiously forged in the minds these formidable persecutors who would only ease off if if they could penetrate the dubious veneer of those fictive accounts he has already tried to promote as verifiable facts rather than delusional falsehoods.
aggregate agrarian apologia assimilate abbreviate ambivalent androgynous asymmetrical arduous
bailwick baulk benevolent burnish
corrosive cavil couch cumbersome cross-grained conflate connivance conjugal churlish cynical
diametric diatribe didactic disputatious disparage disposition disputatious disparate
excoriate excrescence execrable effectuate effeminate estimable
The number of apples found in each of the barrels amount to an aggregate of 40. Aggregate means a combined quantity of something so the following synonyms could be considered cluster, agglomerate or accumulation. One shouldn't be confused by aggravate which is a very different word which suggests that something has been interfered with to the annoyance or discomfort of the thing itself. Worsen, exacerbate intensify would be used in mitigation perhaps which would lead to a more vexatious state. Vexatious: a state of enhanced irritation. Irritation could also be classified as annoyance. Annoyance might be something that irks someone to the extent that they would become irrationally angered even it the object of that irksomeness is trivial. Trivial means something that lacks serious significance.Trivial Pursuit nothing if not a masterpiece of self-awareness-based marketing where the subjects within the quizzes and the questions, despite often containing elements of interest, were essential trivial to living a full life. No-ones was ever enhanced by knowing that banana oil was obtained from coal - though I'm sure a few trivial victories were won answering questions of similar obscurity. Obscurity is a place that someone might emerge from or disappear into if they are not or no longer occupying a high profile or public faced existence. Existence is the occupational position of something that is opposite to not being present. If in existence then it is there to be seen heard touched felt or smelt or otherwise perceived. Perceived is something that can be sensed either through the traditional senses or through something that might be termed a sixth sense where an awareness is conceived through an unrecognized sensory route.
The fatigued detective frail from overwork and fraught from the disruptions in his private life feared failure above all other things. He had hoped that following his promotion that the panegyrics foisted on him as he flew outrageously through the ranks, that his fortitude and fearlessness would not be exposed as a facade: solidified fluff rather than the tensile robustness of the verifiable truth capable of surviving the hammering rigour of an interrogation. Failure in the hot seat was not an option for him. But if these interrogators attempts to drill down through what they might view as a friable personality ready to crumble the moment added pressure was applied, his confidence could conceivably fade, evanesce or shrivel in the face of hard facts fastidiously forged in the minds these formidable persecutors who would only ease off if if they could penetrate the dubious veneer of those fictive accounts he has already tried to promote as verifiable facts rather than delusional falsehoods.
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Tests 1 and 2 Part One
A small experiment which helps locate and identify the words that are closest to the skin of my brain and from which my day to day oral sentence structure is most likely to be composed. Composed as in made up, not fallaciously but elementally. Elements are pieces or portions of wholes - so in this case a sentence is a whole and the words are unifying elements within it. Punctuation being the joints in the sentence nexus or chain. Nexus means a connection or series of connections linking two or more things. Understood, in the way of establishing a comprehension. Understood in clarification - to understand means that you have comprehended the implications of the matter under discussion. Discussion is an interaction between correspondents which it is hoped will form a consensus. A consensus is an agreement put together through a mixture of ideas, some in unison others which might offer a contrary view. A view in this context is a position of knowledge held to be true but perhaps subject to challenge. A challenge is an adversarial position the holder of which seeks to question something through the weight of his own argument or evidence. Evidence is that which is presented to back up an argument as near as incontrovertibly as possible. Incontrovertible means something that might be sufficiently compelling as to resist evidence to the contrary. Contrary is a positional state that suggests other views are closer to the truth. The truth is something that has had its veracity tested and has proven itself to be so. So, in certain contexts, can mean much or more as in I am so cold - it's a intensifier. Intense might be a psychological state of mind where tension has invaded the ability to think as clearly as one would do normally. Normal means a generally or generic state that is is perceived as having a wider acceptability. Accept means to agree to receive something - this could be either an insult or an accolade. An accolade is a symbol of praise which might find its way into a eulogy or any other speech about citing positive achievement. Achievement is something that has been managed perhaps against expectation and perhaps through overcoming certain odds. Odds could describe a state or position where two antagonistic or opposing views are in dispute. A dispute is when two or more people have different preferences as to the realisation of something. Something is a pronoun that might stand to represent another thing. A thing - putting aside the famous John Carpenter movie from the early 1980s - is a pronoun that could be anything at all. All means everything - as in I have all the money so I have the total amount of money that was on offer.Offer means that someone is suggesting that something is available to them. Them takes us momentarily back to 1970s films again - but whereas the likes of Carpenter made trendy classics of the future with atmospheric mood music and iconic 70's stars drilled in expert pacing - the likes of Them were always regarded as B movies which never came close to classic status - the best they could hope for was to be considered cultishly fanzine rather than anything that stacked up as art. Art is always an interesting one - something created that provokes an emotional response - and no that can't be a queue for the supermarket check-out because that is an adventitious creation rather than the result of someone's vision and subsequent endeavour. Endeavour might be the 'held back for dramatic effect but probably wasn't even known by his creator until the mystery generated its own interest,' first name of the fictional detective, Morse - and also the name of a famous ship captained by a certain James Cook. But for literary purposes it is an act that has earned the right to be considered a successful achievement through hard work possible against general expectation. An expectation is something that is thought to be a sure outcome. confidence in this outcome allows perceptions of expectation over hopeful eventuality. Endeavour is often a slightly back handed compliment that suggests someone has done well despite having to overcome seemingly unsurmountable obstacles such as being regarded as moronically useless. Useless is word that expresses utter contempt and condemnation about someone or something. It is a monument to concision expressing a vote that the thing in question is without a shred of redemption and beyond all hope. Hope is an unfulfilled investment of optimism that fuels feelings of positivity and is suggestive that something will turn out for the better. Better means something is subject to amelioration or that someone is experiencing an upwards trending arc of improvement. Improvement is a beneficial progression from a baseline normal through to a higher attainment.
That's a trickier test than it looks. But I think it's quite effective as I'm being made to think about word meanings - even if most of them are quite easy - but in terms that could conceivably be understood by someone who perhaps doesn't know them (non English speaker perhaps). It has additional benefit of making my grey matter turn over a bit. My brain, a bit like my back garden, is looking (feeling) a little sterile. In need of weeding and enlivening. In more ways than one it's a little sluggish. It's gone hard and impenetrable - dried up a bit and in need of nourishment if there is to be any regrowth and vibrancy during the spring. Some of this will happen naturally. Organically you might almost say. The sun will come out, bringing its life force and enrichment - but some help at ground level will always help our inching towards bounty. So I'm tilling my brain and sprinkling it with nutrients - bringing it into an awakened state, alert and receptive and able to bring forth into blossom and fruition all those seeds I have sown over the winter months and which have lain in the dark, dormant though I hope, quite restive.
Note: Its hardly surprising that some obscurities and archaisms are slithering on the surface of my brain when such commonplace words such as - I don't know: obscurity and archaism never made it. It only goes to prove it's the words that you are using most at the time that furnishes your day to day vocabulary. You are what you're writing and talking about at any given time. And perhaps reading.
Here is another little vocabulary test. Going through the alphabet and writing down the first interesting word beginning with the relevant letter. Some interesting ones popped up - which in many ways was the point of the exercise. Each time I paused for in excess of about 10 seconds I went on to the letter beneath the one I was struggling over. I placed a small caveat in place that each word had to spelled correctly at the first go to continue. This was to stop the usual outcome of having huge volumes of words beginning with e and s and p for example and hardly anything beginning with some of the less common letters. Interestingly, to me anyway - some of the words are satisfyingly obscure and aren't happily accepted by blogger - but are confirmed by on line dictionaries.
amiable assiduous assume axiomatic arduous amity anonymous anodyne ameliorate analogy ambivalent ambiguous amiable asinine avid amorous antediluvian anachronistic asserted autodidact attenuate amatory affiliate axiomatic autonomous
bestiality bemuse ballast banal benign bovine badger baleful burnish brutish barrier beatitude bucolic bacchanal bumptious bemuse
curious curio corpulent candid chimera cavil caveat contemporaneous contumely chastity cliche curative cursive cartography chime churlish chippy charismatic caveat cineaste chaste canard curvaceous capricious cynical cupidity crepuscular ceremony corrosive cascade colossal chiaroscuro cosmopolitan crepuscular calumny corrective chaste chimera covetous chirk coruscate
deposition duplicity diabolical detrimental deprecatory depreciation duality deposition damask deleterious desecration divination duress devilment dullard deemed duped
dubious dubiety dilatory divinity demerit diametric devilry density diligence divergent demystify debilitate dulcet
effulgent efficacious eminent enervate emulsify egalitarian equality emulate estimate estimable esurient escapade exaggerate exigency exemplify egregious exiguous empathetic edict euphoric euphoric euphony
fatuous, fulminate fructify farinaceous foment fulminate fastidious feculence fimbriated finesse forestall
gracile gutsy gormless gravid garrote gregarious gallimaufry grume gussie gasconade gluttony grilling gelid
harbor, husbandry harridan heinous haphazard humanity horology humanistic horrify hermetic Hellenistic hasty hegemony hubris hubristic heuristic heterogenous halcyon
insipid instigate insinuate implicate inviolate immolate imposition instrumental; innocuous invoke immediate invidious immensity insensibility insidious immemorial invoke induce indignant indigenous infinite infantilise indicative inane intrepid impervious impeach indigent incisive inchoate impregnable immutable intolerable intestate imperious induce
jurisprudence jurisdiction jejune Jeremiah jazzy juvenile juxtaposition jocund Jezebel judicious justice jilted jerrybuilt jocose jubilant Janissary jilted
kismet kinetic kaleidoscope kludge kinetic kinesthetics
licentious lucid levitate lurid laminate luminous litigate litigious lambaste luminescent ligament laudable lascivious
magnanimous moribund missive manifest municipal mitigate militate minatory minion metastasized mutate mutable mandate meretricious mellifluous miscegenation
numinous normal nutritional nutrient neophyte nepotism narrative nefarious nerve nervy navigable normative naiad nary nominate narcissistic nebulous naivety nubile nullify
oleaginous obstreperous ovoid occlude ominous ossify orgulous outlandish opprobrium oppositional ostentatious
punitive paunchy proliferate parsimony putative perambulate prerogative plaintiff pawky pusillanimous pastiche perennial paracide pre-empt pretext presume portability portmanteau
quiescent quiver quintessence quire quagmire quiddity query quisling
ructions roustabout rifle ruritanian riparian rumpus rhetoric ruse rapidity rapacious restive recidivist reconnoiter rhomboid rampant restitution rally rebarbative ruminate restorative
serendipitous suppurate slippage serenity saccadic symposium stertorous sycophant scalding studious stymie
tribulation tariff turgid truism transparent truculent traipse tremulous tinnitus trafficking trollop truism traipse tentative tumult tendentious tenebrous testify transnational transient truism trite
ubiquitous ululate unctuous unperturbed umber unified underwhelmed unity utility usury underscored underwhelmed.
vituperative vexatious voracious vixen vim votive vamoose vacuum venting veracity vacillate vastness vulpine vertiginous verifiable
whimsical whimsy worthwhile wily worthy wrestle writhe wraith without withal winnow warmonger welfare whim wretched wassail wrested wary warfare
Bit of a smorgasbord as the Swedish might say. I wonder how many other words have been imported in by that language. Ombudsman perhaps: a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency. A word used generally as a reference to kind of final referee who will make the fairest and final decision. Orienteering. Another Swedish blow in which I guess replaces running around with the aid of maps as navigational devices. Can that really be Swedish? What about orient? Orient as far as I know describes a process of establishing location or position through interpreting the available information. Or, to determine one's position with reference to another point. Perhaps the Swedes just took a word and applied a relevant suffix to it studiously avoiding any of their Æ, Ø, Å type letters so that as a putative global sport and pastime it would be accepted and embraced. Who knows?
As far as the rest of the words are concerned in the above list it would take a long time to write definitions of them all - even self-made ones.
That's a trickier test than it looks. But I think it's quite effective as I'm being made to think about word meanings - even if most of them are quite easy - but in terms that could conceivably be understood by someone who perhaps doesn't know them (non English speaker perhaps). It has additional benefit of making my grey matter turn over a bit. My brain, a bit like my back garden, is looking (feeling) a little sterile. In need of weeding and enlivening. In more ways than one it's a little sluggish. It's gone hard and impenetrable - dried up a bit and in need of nourishment if there is to be any regrowth and vibrancy during the spring. Some of this will happen naturally. Organically you might almost say. The sun will come out, bringing its life force and enrichment - but some help at ground level will always help our inching towards bounty. So I'm tilling my brain and sprinkling it with nutrients - bringing it into an awakened state, alert and receptive and able to bring forth into blossom and fruition all those seeds I have sown over the winter months and which have lain in the dark, dormant though I hope, quite restive.
Note: Its hardly surprising that some obscurities and archaisms are slithering on the surface of my brain when such commonplace words such as - I don't know: obscurity and archaism never made it. It only goes to prove it's the words that you are using most at the time that furnishes your day to day vocabulary. You are what you're writing and talking about at any given time. And perhaps reading.
Here is another little vocabulary test. Going through the alphabet and writing down the first interesting word beginning with the relevant letter. Some interesting ones popped up - which in many ways was the point of the exercise. Each time I paused for in excess of about 10 seconds I went on to the letter beneath the one I was struggling over. I placed a small caveat in place that each word had to spelled correctly at the first go to continue. This was to stop the usual outcome of having huge volumes of words beginning with e and s and p for example and hardly anything beginning with some of the less common letters. Interestingly, to me anyway - some of the words are satisfyingly obscure and aren't happily accepted by blogger - but are confirmed by on line dictionaries.
amiable assiduous assume axiomatic arduous amity anonymous anodyne ameliorate analogy ambivalent ambiguous amiable asinine avid amorous antediluvian anachronistic asserted autodidact attenuate amatory affiliate axiomatic autonomous
bestiality bemuse ballast banal benign bovine badger baleful burnish brutish barrier beatitude bucolic bacchanal bumptious bemuse
curious curio corpulent candid chimera cavil caveat contemporaneous contumely chastity cliche curative cursive cartography chime churlish chippy charismatic caveat cineaste chaste canard curvaceous capricious cynical cupidity crepuscular ceremony corrosive cascade colossal chiaroscuro cosmopolitan crepuscular calumny corrective chaste chimera covetous chirk coruscate
deposition duplicity diabolical detrimental deprecatory depreciation duality deposition damask deleterious desecration divination duress devilment dullard deemed duped
dubious dubiety dilatory divinity demerit diametric devilry density diligence divergent demystify debilitate dulcet
effulgent efficacious eminent enervate emulsify egalitarian equality emulate estimate estimable esurient escapade exaggerate exigency exemplify egregious exiguous empathetic edict euphoric euphoric euphony
fatuous, fulminate fructify farinaceous foment fulminate fastidious feculence fimbriated finesse forestall
gracile gutsy gormless gravid garrote gregarious gallimaufry grume gussie gasconade gluttony grilling gelid
harbor, husbandry harridan heinous haphazard humanity horology humanistic horrify hermetic Hellenistic hasty hegemony hubris hubristic heuristic heterogenous halcyon
insipid instigate insinuate implicate inviolate immolate imposition instrumental; innocuous invoke immediate invidious immensity insensibility insidious immemorial invoke induce indignant indigenous infinite infantilise indicative inane intrepid impervious impeach indigent incisive inchoate impregnable immutable intolerable intestate imperious induce
jurisprudence jurisdiction jejune Jeremiah jazzy juvenile juxtaposition jocund Jezebel judicious justice jilted jerrybuilt jocose jubilant Janissary jilted
kismet kinetic kaleidoscope kludge kinetic kinesthetics
licentious lucid levitate lurid laminate luminous litigate litigious lambaste luminescent ligament laudable lascivious
magnanimous moribund missive manifest municipal mitigate militate minatory minion metastasized mutate mutable mandate meretricious mellifluous miscegenation
numinous normal nutritional nutrient neophyte nepotism narrative nefarious nerve nervy navigable normative naiad nary nominate narcissistic nebulous naivety nubile nullify
oleaginous obstreperous ovoid occlude ominous ossify orgulous outlandish opprobrium oppositional ostentatious
punitive paunchy proliferate parsimony putative perambulate prerogative plaintiff pawky pusillanimous pastiche perennial paracide pre-empt pretext presume portability portmanteau
quiescent quiver quintessence quire quagmire quiddity query quisling
ructions roustabout rifle ruritanian riparian rumpus rhetoric ruse rapidity rapacious restive recidivist reconnoiter rhomboid rampant restitution rally rebarbative ruminate restorative
serendipitous suppurate slippage serenity saccadic symposium stertorous sycophant scalding studious stymie
tribulation tariff turgid truism transparent truculent traipse tremulous tinnitus trafficking trollop truism traipse tentative tumult tendentious tenebrous testify transnational transient truism trite
ubiquitous ululate unctuous unperturbed umber unified underwhelmed unity utility usury underscored underwhelmed.
vituperative vexatious voracious vixen vim votive vamoose vacuum venting veracity vacillate vastness vulpine vertiginous verifiable
whimsical whimsy worthwhile wily worthy wrestle writhe wraith without withal winnow warmonger welfare whim wretched wassail wrested wary warfare
Bit of a smorgasbord as the Swedish might say. I wonder how many other words have been imported in by that language. Ombudsman perhaps: a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency. A word used generally as a reference to kind of final referee who will make the fairest and final decision. Orienteering. Another Swedish blow in which I guess replaces running around with the aid of maps as navigational devices. Can that really be Swedish? What about orient? Orient as far as I know describes a process of establishing location or position through interpreting the available information. Or, to determine one's position with reference to another point. Perhaps the Swedes just took a word and applied a relevant suffix to it studiously avoiding any of their Æ, Ø, Å type letters so that as a putative global sport and pastime it would be accepted and embraced. Who knows?
As far as the rest of the words are concerned in the above list it would take a long time to write definitions of them all - even self-made ones.
Friday, 28 February 2014
Writing Thoughts
It's easy to see why ideas have to be pooled, interrogated, developed and dropped to bring forth fresh ideas from the detritus of their beginnings. This is what's so very hard about writing anything. The process of one dipping a sanguinary pen into the wordy mix-up of a poem or story and knowing, not suspecting, but actually knowing, that most of the initial output will be bilge makes it hard to make that start. It's the knowledge that anything decent, before it can decorate the page, has to be prized from from remotest corners of a leaky brain and galvanized into something striking by a sliver of inspiration, if it turns up, and built up by head-spinning, mental hard graft. But there's no other way.
I wrote a couple of poems the other day which I quite liked. This was despite them being the usual artless, sub-standard, naive scribblings you often find in a local papers when you're searching for a plumber or a second hand car. To get to the 'quite liking' stage I had fussed and picked and played around with them for hours, but somehow I knew, despite everything, I knew that a revisit would yield horror; and it did. What looked half decent when I tucked away - reading them three later induced waves of dizzying embarrassment, and heart jabs of quiet madness. Since then I have re-edited both and I really do now think them decent. Not about to submit them to competition decent - but, they look at least competent in that they appear to meet some of the poetic requirements of free-verse.
But this is it. Knowing that the first draft is going to be so terrible. And that the second draft won't be much better. This might very well be one of the major causes of writers block. Not dried up inspiration, not a deficiency in motivation, not a lack of ideas, not feelings of low self-esteem or crises of confidence, but just a depressing fear that everything you're going to write is always going to be rubbish and will need industrial strength work.
And that's even if you understand that it has to be this way - much like the sculpture who has to turn a piece of ugly rock, a plain block of wood, or a lump of bronze into an artistic representation. The ugly starting point is amorphous before a framework can be deciphered, a semblance of what is being aimed at. Then it at least looks like something, even if it is a million miles from being what it needs to be. It's only during the the closer attention to detailing, the ever more specifying, the gradual finessing of the intricate, the unification of a multitude of parts gradually crafted together into one harmonious whole and allowing it to come alive and sing into the hearts of those who view it - only then does it matter. The rest of the time it's a workshop, a sooty foundry, a splattered floor, an ugly lump squatting in a cloud of paint, powder or smoke. But none of that matters because no one is interested in the process, It's only the finished article that matters.
Only the finished article matters. The bloody knuckles, the mess and the wreckage of the tools, the sleeplessness of nights,the damage to the heath and well-being, the howlings across the creative lake and the praying to the muses, don't.
Friday, 7 February 2014
Ted Hughes on Free Verse.
In the way you’ve put the question “formal” suggests regular metrics, regular stanzas and, usually, rhyme. But it also suggests some absolute form that doesn’t have those more evident features; it suggests any form governed by a strong, inflexible inner law that the writer finds himself having to obey, that he can’t just play around with as he can play around with, say, the wording of a letter.
(Hughes is addressing a question about poetry progressing from regular metrics etc, but says that there is always some form detectable through an inflexible inner law that the writer still has ti obey almost as if he is writing in strict metrical form)
That kind of deeper, hidden form, though it doesn’t show regular metrical or stanzaic patterning or end rhyme, can’t in any way be called “free.” Take any passage of “The Waste Land,” or maybe a better example is Eliot’s poem “Marina.” Every word in those poems is as formally fixed, as locked into flexible inner laws, as words can be. The music of those words, the musical inevitability of the pitch, the pacing, the combination of inflections—all that is in some way absolute, unalterable, the ultimate perfect containment of unusually powerful poetic forces. You could say the same of many other examples: Smart’s “Jubilate Agno,” any passages in Shakespeare’s blank verse, Shakespeare’s prose.
(Its not free verse when it truly works as a poem because the words are chosen so carefully. )
To my mind, the best of the kind of verse usually called free always aspires towards that kind of formal inevitability—a fixed, unalterable, musical, and yet hidden dramatic shape. One difference between this kind of verse and regular, metrical, rhymed stanzas is the problem it sets the reader at first reading. Regular formal features give the reader immediate bearings, the A-B-C directions for reading or performing the piece being nursery simple; the poem has a familiar, friendly look from that very first encounter. But when these are missing—no regular meter, no stanza shape, no obvious rhyme—the reader has to grope, searching for that less obvious, deeper set of musical dramatic laws. That takes time, more than one or two readings. And it takes poetic imagination—or some talent for rhythmical, expressive speech. But if those laws are actually there, as they are in the Eliot, the Smart, and the Shakespeare, sooner or later they assert their inevitability in the reader’s mind, and the reader begins to recognize the presence of some absolute, inner form. Of course if those laws aren’t there, they can never assert themselves. The piece never gets a grip on the reader. It might be interesting and even exciting to read at first encounter, but then it will slowly fall to bits. The reader will begin to recognize the absence of any law that makes it go one way rather than another . . . the absence of any deeper pattern of hidden forces. So the thing ceases to be read.
(The laws of form in terms of words chosen for pitch and musicality really do have to be there - so Hughes seems to against free verse per se its just a question of: what is free verse against what follows a complex structure that defies easy analysis)
In the long run, the same fate—to be rejected and forgotten—overtakes most formally shaped verse too, no matter how strict its meter or how accurate and dexterous its rhymes. Good metrical rhymed verse, if it’s to grip the imagination and stay readable, has to have, as well as those external formal features, the same dynamo of hidden musical dramatic laws as the apparently free verse.
(If in strict metrical form - for it to work it needs the same attention to musical dramatic laws to work - so there's much more than slavishly following iambic pentameter for example, otherwise we'd invest too much respect in say: nursery rhymes or limericks and dismiss classics like Eliot's Waste Land. )
Having said that, I think you are then left with the pro and contra arguments for using or not using those features of regular meter, stanza, rhyme. The main argument, to my mind, for not using them is to gain access to the huge variety of musical patterns that they shut out. Imagine if Shakespeare had stuck to sonnets and long-rhymed poems and had never got onto the explorations of his blank verse and those wonderful musical flights of dialogue or onto his prose. Imagine what might have come out of the eighteenth century in England if the regime of the couplet hadn’t been so absolute. How could Whitman ever have happened if he’d stuck to his crabby rhymes? That seems to me a strong argument.
(Too much constraint too often is not a good thing)
But the main argument for using meter, rhyme, stanza also seems strong. It’s not just that rhymes and the requirement of meter actually stimulate invention—which they obviously do, at certain levels—but it’s the strange satisfaction of making that square treasure chest and packing it. Or making that locket with its jewel or its portrait. Or making that periscope box of precisely arranged lenses. There’s mystery to it, I’m quite sure. Maybe a mathematical satisfaction. Take the ballad stanza, which is basically just an old English couplet. The best of those quatrains have a kind of primal force, not just musical finality but an inner force, a weight of paid-for experience that most people can recognize. Yet when you break the meter, lose or disarray the rhymes, everything’s gone. Then there’s Primo Levi’s remark. He found that in the death camps, where it became very important to dig poems out of the memory, the poems of regular meter and rhyme proved more loyal, and I’m not sure he didn’t say that they were more consoling. You don’t forget his remark.
(But its absolutely vital that it continues as a major poetic device and must never ever stand aside and allow itself to be washed away by a tidal wave of freer verse)
(Hughes is addressing a question about poetry progressing from regular metrics etc, but says that there is always some form detectable through an inflexible inner law that the writer still has ti obey almost as if he is writing in strict metrical form)
That kind of deeper, hidden form, though it doesn’t show regular metrical or stanzaic patterning or end rhyme, can’t in any way be called “free.” Take any passage of “The Waste Land,” or maybe a better example is Eliot’s poem “Marina.” Every word in those poems is as formally fixed, as locked into flexible inner laws, as words can be. The music of those words, the musical inevitability of the pitch, the pacing, the combination of inflections—all that is in some way absolute, unalterable, the ultimate perfect containment of unusually powerful poetic forces. You could say the same of many other examples: Smart’s “Jubilate Agno,” any passages in Shakespeare’s blank verse, Shakespeare’s prose.
(Its not free verse when it truly works as a poem because the words are chosen so carefully. )
To my mind, the best of the kind of verse usually called free always aspires towards that kind of formal inevitability—a fixed, unalterable, musical, and yet hidden dramatic shape. One difference between this kind of verse and regular, metrical, rhymed stanzas is the problem it sets the reader at first reading. Regular formal features give the reader immediate bearings, the A-B-C directions for reading or performing the piece being nursery simple; the poem has a familiar, friendly look from that very first encounter. But when these are missing—no regular meter, no stanza shape, no obvious rhyme—the reader has to grope, searching for that less obvious, deeper set of musical dramatic laws. That takes time, more than one or two readings. And it takes poetic imagination—or some talent for rhythmical, expressive speech. But if those laws are actually there, as they are in the Eliot, the Smart, and the Shakespeare, sooner or later they assert their inevitability in the reader’s mind, and the reader begins to recognize the presence of some absolute, inner form. Of course if those laws aren’t there, they can never assert themselves. The piece never gets a grip on the reader. It might be interesting and even exciting to read at first encounter, but then it will slowly fall to bits. The reader will begin to recognize the absence of any law that makes it go one way rather than another . . . the absence of any deeper pattern of hidden forces. So the thing ceases to be read.
(The laws of form in terms of words chosen for pitch and musicality really do have to be there - so Hughes seems to against free verse per se its just a question of: what is free verse against what follows a complex structure that defies easy analysis)
In the long run, the same fate—to be rejected and forgotten—overtakes most formally shaped verse too, no matter how strict its meter or how accurate and dexterous its rhymes. Good metrical rhymed verse, if it’s to grip the imagination and stay readable, has to have, as well as those external formal features, the same dynamo of hidden musical dramatic laws as the apparently free verse.
(If in strict metrical form - for it to work it needs the same attention to musical dramatic laws to work - so there's much more than slavishly following iambic pentameter for example, otherwise we'd invest too much respect in say: nursery rhymes or limericks and dismiss classics like Eliot's Waste Land. )
Having said that, I think you are then left with the pro and contra arguments for using or not using those features of regular meter, stanza, rhyme. The main argument, to my mind, for not using them is to gain access to the huge variety of musical patterns that they shut out. Imagine if Shakespeare had stuck to sonnets and long-rhymed poems and had never got onto the explorations of his blank verse and those wonderful musical flights of dialogue or onto his prose. Imagine what might have come out of the eighteenth century in England if the regime of the couplet hadn’t been so absolute. How could Whitman ever have happened if he’d stuck to his crabby rhymes? That seems to me a strong argument.
(Too much constraint too often is not a good thing)
But the main argument for using meter, rhyme, stanza also seems strong. It’s not just that rhymes and the requirement of meter actually stimulate invention—which they obviously do, at certain levels—but it’s the strange satisfaction of making that square treasure chest and packing it. Or making that locket with its jewel or its portrait. Or making that periscope box of precisely arranged lenses. There’s mystery to it, I’m quite sure. Maybe a mathematical satisfaction. Take the ballad stanza, which is basically just an old English couplet. The best of those quatrains have a kind of primal force, not just musical finality but an inner force, a weight of paid-for experience that most people can recognize. Yet when you break the meter, lose or disarray the rhymes, everything’s gone. Then there’s Primo Levi’s remark. He found that in the death camps, where it became very important to dig poems out of the memory, the poems of regular meter and rhyme proved more loyal, and I’m not sure he didn’t say that they were more consoling. You don’t forget his remark.
(But its absolutely vital that it continues as a major poetic device and must never ever stand aside and allow itself to be washed away by a tidal wave of freer verse)
Ted Hughes on where his poems originate
'Well, I have a sort of notion. Just the tail end of an idea, usually just the thread of an idea. If I can feel behind that a sort of waiting momentum, a sense of some charge there to tap, then I just plunge in. What usually happens then—inevitably I would say—is that I go off in some wholly different direction. The thread end of an idea burns away and I’m pulled in—on the momentum of whatever was there waiting. Then that feeling opens up other energies, all the possibilities in my head, I suppose. That’s the pleasure—never quite knowing what’s there, being surprised. Once I get onto something I usually finish it. In a way it goes on finishing itself while I attend to its needs. It might be days, months. Later, often enough, I see exactly what it needs to be and I finish it in moments, usually by getting rid of things.'
Interesting. A thread of an idea with a notion of a momentum waiting behind it ( a thought that this idea has legs and a thought that I know where it might go!), then grabbing a pen and going for it - almost like focused free writing. Then during the process of focused free writing letting it go into different areas and being interested in those areas. If the original idea 'burns away' its not a problem there is a new momentum, the real momentum that has been hiding, takes over. Then new energies new possibilities - the original thought long extinguished now like a fire lighter in the heart of a raging bonfire. Then being surprised by the outcome but not the sense of surprise. As time goes by it helps in the finishing.
Interesting. A thread of an idea with a notion of a momentum waiting behind it ( a thought that this idea has legs and a thought that I know where it might go!), then grabbing a pen and going for it - almost like focused free writing. Then during the process of focused free writing letting it go into different areas and being interested in those areas. If the original idea 'burns away' its not a problem there is a new momentum, the real momentum that has been hiding, takes over. Then new energies new possibilities - the original thought long extinguished now like a fire lighter in the heart of a raging bonfire. Then being surprised by the outcome but not the sense of surprise. As time goes by it helps in the finishing.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Subjects and Themes for Poems
If you consider Ted Hughes poems for a moment - take a look at where his inspiration to write poems came from. Hughes poems are often from episodes from his childhood. Pike for example or Pig. He takes these subjects and explores greater themes during the writing of them, turns memories once seen into poetic thoughts about them and other things that concern or interest him. There is footage of Hughes talking about thinking. Thinking about single things and concentrating hard on them - pushing invasive thoughts away and gradually conceptualizing images of those things through words, trying to find the words that illustrate the thoughts. And succeeding through sheer effort.
If the idea of a poem comes from a more intangible inspiration where there's nothing to stare at - the thoughts themselves are the solid matter, love, fear, awe and so on. I love the idea of writing poetry about awe. I recently (keeping with the animal theme, thanks Ted) saw a film clip of a jaguar prowling the banks of a South American river in search of prey. The astonishing denouement and the reason it had made it into the public arena was that the big cat attacked and killed a caiman crocodile. It was seen swimming out to a small river island and with incredible stealth approached the sleeping crocodile, leaped onto its back and administered a powerful bit to its neck. In an eye blink and with even more audacity it then jumped back into the water the caiman's absolute predatory territory, with it in its mouth. Impossible to believe unless seen.
The prowling cat its musculature
gleaming through patterned skin
treading banks for tidbits and carrion?
Tiny mammals scurry, insects flick away,
untroubled in his laser sights.
Instead the granite-scaled sleeper
toughened by centuries-long survival
unbroken by fear,
basking the sun-baked mud
lulled by the waters lap
resting machete teeth
resting terrible power.
Obviously that's not really a poem it 's just a few desultory ideas about where it might go or how the blocking process might begin.
If the idea of a poem comes from a more intangible inspiration where there's nothing to stare at - the thoughts themselves are the solid matter, love, fear, awe and so on. I love the idea of writing poetry about awe. I recently (keeping with the animal theme, thanks Ted) saw a film clip of a jaguar prowling the banks of a South American river in search of prey. The astonishing denouement and the reason it had made it into the public arena was that the big cat attacked and killed a caiman crocodile. It was seen swimming out to a small river island and with incredible stealth approached the sleeping crocodile, leaped onto its back and administered a powerful bit to its neck. In an eye blink and with even more audacity it then jumped back into the water the caiman's absolute predatory territory, with it in its mouth. Impossible to believe unless seen.
The prowling cat its musculature
gleaming through patterned skin
treading banks for tidbits and carrion?
Tiny mammals scurry, insects flick away,
untroubled in his laser sights.
Instead the granite-scaled sleeper
toughened by centuries-long survival
unbroken by fear,
basking the sun-baked mud
lulled by the waters lap
resting machete teeth
resting terrible power.
Obviously that's not really a poem it 's just a few desultory ideas about where it might go or how the blocking process might begin.
Notebook Ideas.
I'm always going on about notebooks. I spend more time writing about notebooks than I do actually making notes. This is not a good statistic as without the daily notations I will never find the hooks and themes for plots and poems.
Today I haven't really troubled my notebook - this happens all too often. But in the news today and for the past few days has been the extraordinary story of a Mexican fisherman whose boat was washed up on an obscure island - part of the Marshall Islands after setting off 13 months from a Mexican port over 600 miles away ago and getting lost at sea. As one might imagine there's a story to be told here. The newspaper reports are full of spoken examples of how he has managed to survive - from drinking turtles blood to eating seagulls. This is story to be expanded on. In fact it makes one think about how often one can write a story of survival against the odds and for it to be appealing to the public. Think of Castaway, Life of Pi and so on. But a real story always goes deeper because people will be left to wonder about the experience and how they might have coped. All those empathetic emotions come into the story mix and help move it along as a reading spectacle.
Starvation, psychological madness, physical frailty, visions, health, despair, resourcefulness, stubbornness, religion, belief and faith, stoicism, regret, love hate, bravery: you can see how all these and more can be woven into a story. One character against the wildness of the world - the human spirit conquering all the travails and finally succeeding through survival despite the world doing all it could to kill him. You could certainly play with visions, interior dialogue with dead relatives, angels saints sinners all. Animals taking on human characteristics, the pathetic fallacy of the sea and storms raging in and threatening him and his survival. Truly if all this hadn't happened before with Castaway among others it would be worth a go. perhaps it's already worth a go. A poem at least.
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
Writing Warm Ups.
I rather like that phrase' loosen the ligaments', it puts me rather in mind of what some musicians do when they're about to play the piano - finger stretches, knuckle cracks hand flutters. Or in the case of the woodwind section, blowers making incoherent piping blasts before producing something a little more mellifluous. Or the artist who flings a bit of paint around in a haphazard before getting serious with his half inch brush. So, why should writing be any different? Why should writers expect to sit down after making themselves ham sandwiches, or seeing the kids off to school, or putting on a dark wash and expect to immediately write sentences of great profundity or scintillating humour. The answer seems to be that they cannot.
One of my more regular physical exercises these days is the practice of throwing a medicine ball around. Strictly speaking I'm not throwing it around - I'm sure the neighbours, not to mention other inhabitants of my home would have something to say about that. It's more of a regular hefting motion building in as many variations as is possible: lifting regularly from the side, through my legs, over the head in a circular motion - that kind of thing. All of which feels good and actually does feel as if it is physically effective in terms of exercise. But I have to be careful - not just of various mishaps waiting to happen: the odd table lamp toppled, a hanging ceiling light turned into a boxers speed ball, the plasma TV screen waiting its firsts crack etc - but more my neck, my back, even my arms - both bone and muscle. If I don't prepare myself for these little maneuvers I'm not just likely to feel painful twinges in my back and odd episodic stiff spasms in my neck both during and after exercise I'm not going to be able to the moves well, they will lack fluidity feel awkward.
Warming up is almost always necessary no matter what the skill. True you don't need to warm up prior to taking an engine out of a car or building a wall out of bricks - but that's not to say you shouldn't. I know, having completed similar tasks that often it's really difficult to make a start. Perhaps the reason why is because there is no conventional warm up leading to wielding trowels and spanners. Arguably, things like that don't really require a warm up because they are neither not sustained actions like say running a marathon would be or an artistic skill like singing an aria. Singers are well known to sluice their vocal chords with a honey and lemon water concoction accompanied by maniac yodeling. And certainly athletes need to stretch their hamstrings before performing. Certainly I need to warm up before I get my hands on that medicine ball.
It is with this in mind that I know that I need to do some warm up writing, any tripe will do - some people say that tripe is the better - the spilling of the subconscious which in many ways is what was behind that phrase about ligament loosening. So that's what I'm doing now. loosening my writing ligaments.
One of my more regular physical exercises these days is the practice of throwing a medicine ball around. Strictly speaking I'm not throwing it around - I'm sure the neighbours, not to mention other inhabitants of my home would have something to say about that. It's more of a regular hefting motion building in as many variations as is possible: lifting regularly from the side, through my legs, over the head in a circular motion - that kind of thing. All of which feels good and actually does feel as if it is physically effective in terms of exercise. But I have to be careful - not just of various mishaps waiting to happen: the odd table lamp toppled, a hanging ceiling light turned into a boxers speed ball, the plasma TV screen waiting its firsts crack etc - but more my neck, my back, even my arms - both bone and muscle. If I don't prepare myself for these little maneuvers I'm not just likely to feel painful twinges in my back and odd episodic stiff spasms in my neck both during and after exercise I'm not going to be able to the moves well, they will lack fluidity feel awkward.
Warming up is almost always necessary no matter what the skill. True you don't need to warm up prior to taking an engine out of a car or building a wall out of bricks - but that's not to say you shouldn't. I know, having completed similar tasks that often it's really difficult to make a start. Perhaps the reason why is because there is no conventional warm up leading to wielding trowels and spanners. Arguably, things like that don't really require a warm up because they are neither not sustained actions like say running a marathon would be or an artistic skill like singing an aria. Singers are well known to sluice their vocal chords with a honey and lemon water concoction accompanied by maniac yodeling. And certainly athletes need to stretch their hamstrings before performing. Certainly I need to warm up before I get my hands on that medicine ball.
It is with this in mind that I know that I need to do some warm up writing, any tripe will do - some people say that tripe is the better - the spilling of the subconscious which in many ways is what was behind that phrase about ligament loosening. So that's what I'm doing now. loosening my writing ligaments.
Wednesday, 15 January 2014
Blogging about nothing
Always useful to have a blog to use as a free writing area. A dustbin really - rather than the 'diamonds in the dust heap' that Virginia Woolf memorably went on about. What was it she who said:' if one puts aside the inner editor and just writes, perhaps the subconscious will enable your ideas and furnish your talent.' Actually she didn't write anything at all like that I'm just too lazy to try and find the actual quote. Which is a shame because memorising quotations are very useful. And the notion behind using them is quite a sophisticated device to use when at interview for example - picture the scene - a question is asked and you're going to answer it as convincingly as possible, where better than to start with something like: 'I'm with Woolf on this one: 'write from the brain and the heart will give it substance.' Which of course she didn't write - I'm still too idle to look up the actual quote.Anyway if asked about that at a job interview - the job would be primarily about writing and I'm unlikely to ever attend a job interview as a staff writer on a newspaper or magazine - so anyway just saying. This is what Virginia Woolf actually did write in her diaries:
'I got out this diary and read, as one always does read one’s own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough and random style of it, often so ungrammatical, and crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat. I am trying to tell whichever self it is that reads this hereafter that I can write very much better; and take no time over this; and forbid her to let the eye of man behold it. And now I may add my little compliment to the effect that it has a slapdash and vigour and sometimes hits an unexpected bull’s eye. But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles. Going at such a pace as I do I must make the most direct and instant shots at my object, and thus have to lay hands on words, choose them and shoot them with no more pause than is needed to put my pen in the ink. I believe that during the past year I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea. Moreover there looms ahead of me the shadow of some kind of form which a diary might attain to. I might in the course of time learn what it is that one can make of this loose, drifting material of life; finding another use for it than the use I put it to, so much more consciously and scrupulously, in fiction. What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think on re-reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time. But looseness quickly becomes slovenly. A little effort is needed to face a character or an incident which needs to be recorded. Nor can one let the pen write without guidance; for fear of becoming slack and untidy. . .
Hardly surprising that I couldn't remember that little lot which I think is a melange of diary entries. I have taken the liberty of emboldening the important bits as I see them. It's like a blueprint on the notion of free writing as being an important weapon in the writer's armory. A vital one perhaps - how else will the writer be able to spill out the ideas that really matter without recruiting the unconscious to the event. And that's what it's all about - using extra parts of the brains capability to function
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)