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Welcome to the playground. During this week you are assigned (or is it
allowed?) to write for 20 hours. You may choose your week, but you must complete
all your hours within seven days. If this is completely impossible, you
may, instead, write for a total of 25 hours over a two week period. Feel free
to write together or devise group writing games.
The purposes of this week are three: 1) to produce a lot of raw material
quickly; 2) to write differently; 3) to create at least one week in your
life when writing comes first. It is best to enter into this week with a
spirit of play. If that is difficult for you -- if you are the editing,
controlling sort -- then spend the week playing at being someone else.
You will find below a menu of writing exercises, some required and some
optional. Others will be passed out in class. (Those who choose to complete
IWW before the semester starts will have to make do with what's here.) I
will also put on Reserve at the Johnson Center a copy or two of The
Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach, edited by
Robin Behn and Chase Twitchel. The latter is a good text for undergraduate
workshops and has been known to break writer's block even in pros. Daniel
Halpern's "Writer's Block: An Antidote," page 217, is itself a version of
"intensive writing week" with detailed instructions on what to do each day.
I will put a short circulation time on these items: please photocopy what
you want to work on and don’t keep the book or notebook out of others’ reach
for long.
What must you turn in at the end of it? To me, turn in 10
pages of your rough work from the first ten hours and 5 pages of drafts of
poems from the second ten hours. Choose work on which you want feedback,
critique, evaluation, encouragement -- or merely fresh eyes to tell you what’s
worth keeping. The latter can be particularly important, as we all tend to
value what is most safe and familiar, what we have been rewarded for producing
in the past. To your small group members, turn in any 10 pages of IWW work
on which you want feedback.
Last note: You may spend some time revising in the second
half of the IWW, but remember that the purpose of this undertaking is to
produce new work. Don’t spend time obsessively revising or trying to finish
poems. That work can wait for another time.
PART I: In your first ten hours, do the
following ONLY:
Free-writing / Variation & Return / Homophonic Translation / Random Generation / Collage Cut-up
Lewis Carrol Carol / Shall We Dance? / Slant-rhyme / Transfusion
/ Suggestions to keep you
sane
1. Free-writing.
Do this exercise at least twice a day for anything up to 20 minutes.
It may help to do it when are tired, just waking up, have just worked out,
or are upset, agitated, elated -- in other words, whenever you are not feeling
average and not in a frame of mind for (normal) writing.
Start at the top of a page and write without stopping for a set period
of time or until you reach a certain predetermined point on the page. Keep
it short at the beginning, maybe 5 minutes, but gradually lengthen your time.
Whatever your time period, once you start writing you may not stop. If you
get stuck, keep rewriting your last phrase until your mind moves on. Try
to write concretely, sensuously, in images, sounds, and wordplay. Don’t worry
about sense, logic, grammar, etc. Stop when your time or your space runs
out. Put the page away and don’t look at again until the second half of your
IWW time.
In addition to your twice daily dose of free writing, you must
try as least five of the following exercises. In most of them it is to your
advantage to work quickly -- no lingering, no revising.
2. Variation & Return: Choose
as a “base line” a line or part of a line which you find rhythmically and
sensuously compelling. Write it down. Now read it aloud and write whatever
comes to mind. Keep writing, line after line, without stopping, editing, or
reflecting. Write as quickly and continuously as possible. If you get stuck,
or have the urge to stop and read what you’ve done, intervene by writing the
base line again. Keep writing it until the unmediated flow of words resumes.
Write at least to the bottom of your page. Put the page away and don’t look
at it again until the second half of your IWW time. (Based on an exercise
by James McKean, but many people use similar exercises; see Practice of Poetry
150.)
3. Homophonic Translation, an exercise
by Charles Bernstein: Take a poem or part of a poem in a foreign language--preferably
a language you don’t read. Translate it word for word according to what
it sounds like in English. Use slang or other nonstandard English. Don’t
worry about syntax. Put the page away and don’t look at it again until the
second half of your IWW time. (See Practice of Poetry 126.) If you have trouble
getting going with this, try #9 below, the very similar Transfusion Poem.
4. Random Generation: For
this exercise you must, as the poet Jackson Mac Low says, make your own
system for collecting material out of a text. You may collect sentences,
phrases, or words. The key is to choose your text subjectively, but make
your method of selection objective.
First, choose a text that has resonance for you, whether aesthetic,
moral, philosophical or otherwise. Don't choose a poem, but there are no
other restrictions: newspaper, biography, travelogue, whatever.
Next, devise a method for selecting from it words, phrases or sentences.
It is important that you make your own system, but here are some examples:
- Choose a key word, then select the first word that begins
with your key word's first letter, followed by the first word that begins
with the second letter, etc. For example, if your key word was "select"
and you used these instructions for your source text, you would list says,
excercise, low, examples, collecting, this. If you were using a longer
source text (as you probably will be) you could get a wider sampling of
its diction by taking your words in order instead of taking first words.
That is, the first word starting with 's', the next word starting
with 'e', and so forth.
- Choose a book as your source text. Quickly, without much thinking,
write down a list of page numbers. Take the first sentence on each page
with that number -- or the fifth sentence, or whatever. If you've listed
a page number higher than the number of pages in the book, subtract the
number of the book's last page from that higher number and use the page
number that results. You could vary this method, and get shorter fragments,
by taking the first five words on each page. This method was invented by
GMU grad Kirsten Hilgeford.
A quick comparison of these two systems reveals that what system
you choose will have a lot to do with how random the resulting text will
be and what kind of work you might do with it next. See #4 in instructions
for Week 2: "How Random Is Random?"
When you have generated a page or more of language in this way, a draft
as it were, put the page away and don’t look at it again until the second
half of your IWW time.
5. Collage Cut-Up, an exercise used
by many, derived from work by the Dada poet Tistan Tzara. Take a page
of text, any kind of text as long as it in no way resembles your own vocabulary.
Intercut lines and phrases from this text with lines and phrases of your
own. You may want to literally alternate lines, cutting up syntax and completion,
or you may want to use larger chunks. Think of this exercise as shifting
frames around, as a film-maker does. When you have a rough first-take, put
the page away and don’t look at it again until the second half of your IWW
time.
6. Lewis Carrol Carol, an exercise by Karen
Swenson. Handed out in class. Put the page away and don’t look at it
again until the second half of your IWW time. See The Practice of Poetry
7. Shall We Dance? an exercise by Richard
Jackson. Handed out in class. Generate several drafts quickly, using
different musical models (or several poems based on the same kind of model)
then put the draft away and don’t look at it again until the second half
of your IWW time. See The Practice of Poetry
8. Slant Rhyme Exercises
- This exercise was suggested by Peter Streckfus, winner of
the Yale Series of Younger Poets. While studying here at GMU, Peter once
claimed to be able to link any two words in the English language by slant-rhyming
them with a third, intermediary word. This exercise may be done individually,
in a small group, or in pairs. For a group, each student should bring to
class about five pairs of words that do not rhyme and that have no sounds
in common. Students then swap lists and bring their solutions to the next
meeting. Every list should be worked on by more than one student. Examples:
orange + udder = grudge
pearl + raft = elf
book + hard = ark
black + pen = blank
yellow + preen = Halloween
You can also do this in reverse--which makes it a little easier.
Start with a word, add a word that shares some of its sounds but adds others,
then finish with a word that picks up only the new sounds added by word
# two. By this method you would start with yellow, add Halloween,
then arrive at halcyon or preen.
- Make pairs or chains of words that share sounds without quite
rhyming, such as:
snaffle, snail
trumpet, trump, tramp
onion, yonder
speaker, spear, peak
You can keep a word-chain going until it evolves completely away
from its original sounds, as in:
tramp, trump, trumpet, petty,
onion, yonder, jonquil, jocular, color,
investigate, vestigial, digitalis, digit, jittery
This can be done in a group as follows: a student writes a word
and passes the paper to the next student, who writes a word with some sound
similarity, then folds the paper so only the second word is visible. The
next student writes a word with sound similarity to the second word, folds
the paper and passes it on, etc. Each student sees only the last word in
the chain. Once it’s gone round, read the list aloud and pick out some of
the most interesting transitions. Put the whole list on the board and ask
the students to use these words in a poem.
- You can also achieve a similar effect by using a word as a
center piece and adding words that radiate out from its sounds--that is,
add words that share sounds with the original word but not with each other,
such as:
investigate = vestigial, inveterate, marinate, invite, west, stigmata,
purple = pill, burp, purge, Wyatt Earp
speaker = spear, curse, pecker
- If you want to create patterns of consonant or assonant rhyme,
simply modify the above exercises to generate words that share vowel sounds
only, or terminal consonant sounds only, such as:
purge, edge, garage, binge, dodge
aim, entail, graze, maybe, lately, able
Generate a few pages of word chains and so forth, then put them away
and don’t look at them again until the second half of your IWW time.
9. Transfusion Poem: The poem below
is called a "transfusion" because it transfuses language from one context
to another. In this case the source came from a cereal box. Study the poem
below, then choose your own source and write your own transfusion based
on punning and sound resemblance.
TOASTED WHOLLY-GRAIL STOAT SURREAL
--©Evan Oakley, ENGL 564 1991, used with permission
What's so specious about
oat bran? Plenty! Oat
bran contains two hypes
of fibrosis, curable
and incurable, both of
which are condemned as
impotent parts of a
stealthful, unbalanced
Quiet.
Most other serial brains,
such as sweat and porn,
do not have significant
amounts of global fire.
But because it's made
from whore rain,
(including all the
coat lint), Cheroots
contains the molecule
that's preternaturally
sent in the ode itself.
Deliri-Os!
A fast that eludes
an owl of cherries,
low-fact milquetoast,
a bandanna, is a castaway
to get morose bran
and insoluble ire
into your Fiat.
PART TWO: During the second
half of your IWW time, choose from the following exercises:
Working with rough drafts / How Random Is Random? / My Writing Exercises Page / Other Exercises
Suggestions to keep you sane
WORKING WITH YOUR ROUGH DRAFTS
1. Take out your Free Write pages &
read them. Underline whatever seems strangest, most interesting, most bizarre,
even scary. Pay particular attention to things you don’t remember having
written and to things you would not ordinarily write.
Pull out the fragments, which may range from single words to whole paragraphs.
Clean up the grammar or spelling or whatever - unless the mistakes are themselves
interesting or useful. Type them out double or triple spaced--you will probably
have a couple of pages or so. Repeat this process on the new, reduced pages,
being a little harder this time in your definition of “interesting”, but
keeping the strange. At this stage you can begin to change or add to them,
paying attention to where they are leading you, not to how you can whip them
into shape.
Put those that seem to belong together on a single page and use them as
the basis for a draft of a poem. You may produce more than one poem from
this process.
2. Take out your draft of “Variation & Return” and read it. Proceed in one of two ways. (1) Remove
the base line entirely and begin to create a poem from what you wrote. Or,
(2) Keep the base line and shape your poem on the idea of improvisation that
returns repeatedly to something fixed. The metaphor might be variations played
by a Jazz musician, or a young child straying tentatively away from its
parents but always returning to check that they are still there. In any
case the pattern is write/repeat/write/repeat.
If you liked this one, you may want to next write a poem in which a phrase,
motif, or bit of diction recurs -- not as a refrain but each time in some
slight variation. Place its recurrences at regular or irregular intervals.
The end of the poem may complete our sense of pattern or release us from
it.
3. Take out any of your other drafts from the first 10 hours
and shape them into drafts of poems. You may want
to read "How Random is Random" on my Writing Exercise page, linked below
and at left.
4. How Random Is Random? In some of
the exercises I've suggested, you may be working with rough material whose
origins are less rational than you are used to. If you want to bring this
material into dialogue with your rational side, or with your sense of poetic
charm, try one of these methods:
a) Interlayer your poem with illocutionary effects -- that is, with
words and phrases that either address the reader/listener directly or signal
the presence of a speaker. Examples might be cue words like listen
or look, self-tagging phrases like all I'm saying is or that
isn't really what I meant. Walt Whitman and Marianne Moore are two of
many poets who use this method to good effect.
b) Interlayer your poem with rhetorical effects associated with
argument or logical exposition, words like then, therefore, however,
or phrases like it stands to reason, anyone can see
that.
c) Write your poem as a single periodic sentence, whose grammatical
completion is delayed but always anticipated, so that the conclusion of
the grammar conveys a sense of logical or emotional conclusion as well. Neruda's
early poems in book one of Residence on Earth provide many examples
of this.
d) Forget rational closure, but use methods of aural closure: repetition,
variation from and return to a pattern, metrical regularity, a strong rhyme
or other increased density of sound effect at the end of the poem, etc.
4. Writing Counterpointed Lines
5. Diction Exercises
6. Syntax Exercises
7. Rhyme & Sound Exercises
8. Imitation Exercises
9. Iambic Pentameter exercises
10. Quantitative Syllabics
OTHER EXERCISES:
11. Write a poem of 60-70 lines in one grammatically correct
sentence.
12. Emotion/Motion/Ocean/Shun: a nested rhyme exercise by Susan
Mitchell. Write an 18-line poem of six three-line stanzas. For each stanza,
create diminishing or nested end-rhymes such as those in the title of the
exercise. This is a kind of rhyming favored by 17th century poets, most
notably George Herbert. Mitchell’s examples also include: manifold/fold/old
and stumble/tumble/bull. See The Practice of Poetry.
If you prefer a lighter touch of rhyme, try combinations like batten/at/ten.
Or, try an 18-line poem of six three-line stanzas whose end-rhymes are derived
from your word chains created in the first half of IWW. Or, drop end-rhyme
altogether but use your nested rhymes within lines.
13. Twenty Little Poetry Projects, an exercise by Jim Simmerman.
Handed out in class. See The Practice of Poetry.
14. Write a poem in which some major change in style or content
occurs across a stanza break. Do not explicate or comment on the change.
15. Write an imitation, tribute, or satire of a favorite poem
or poet by collaging his or her lines with your own. A variation on this
is to spend some time collecting words from a favorite poet and then collage
this diction into your own.
16. Write a poem structured by association of words or images.
You may want to begin this with lines salvaged from a failed or abandoned
poem. However you begin, type a first set of lines, then begin a new set
of lines by word or image association, without regard to narrative or consistency
of subject. Complete those lines, then begin a new set by another leap of
association. Each set should run 2-5 lines.
17. Start a poem with last or best lines of a failed poem.
Start a poem with last line(s) of a favorite poem (of your own). Rewrite
an old, failed poem in a new voice or new form. Collect several old poems
and look for what they have in common (look for both strengths and weaknesses);
write a new poem from their bones.
18. Read aloud from a favorite poet for 10-30 minutes. Then,
don't imitate: react. Language-heavy poets like Pablo Neruda, Wallace
Stevens, Mina Loy, Susan Howe or Dylan Thomas are good stimulants.
19. Compose an entire poem in your head.
SUGGESTIONS TO KEEP YOU SANE THIS WEEK:
Write in a different setting than you are used to: outdoors,
in a library, in your car, in someone else's house, in a restaurant or bar.
Go to a gallery and look at paintings until you can't stand up. When you
sit down, start writing. Or, spend several hours outdoors before writing.
Or, go back to the suggestions for free writing: write when you are tired,
sleepy, or emotionally agitated.
Write with different tools than you are used to: write by
hand if you are used to typing, or vice-versa; this is especially good for
getting a different line-length activated.
Turn the page sideways.
Collaborate.
Write something no one can identify as yours.
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