TOTT

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.  

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.