Words of the Day

Crepitate: to make a crackling noise. To make a series of short sharp noises.

I couldn't let that one go given my latest obsession with poetry. Only this morning I was reading about the need writers must have of being mindful of all 6 senses (something to do with kinetics connected to movement made up the surprising 6th). Onomatopoeic words like 'crackling' are fine - but dangerously close to cliche territory in some forms of use, so a crepitating fire may very well be a useful form of original sounding description if its use is relevant. And of course all poems have to be completely original or they aren't poems worth anything. Perhaps poems without originality (particularly if in free verse) are not even poems but only prose, chopped and delivered in a pseudo poetic style.  A few more have cropped up.  There's always a few more.

Deracinate: to uproot; to remove or separate from a native environment or culture; especially : to remove the racial or ethnic characteristics or influences from an area,

A good word - not very poetic perhaps, but worth adding to the Dream Lexicon, even if I did already know it before it became a Merriam Webster Word of the Day. I can see it being used in a poem - in one of those 'one long words that look interestingly difficult snuggling inside a poem and suggesting therefore that the poem has been written by someone who knows his or her subject' kind of ways.

Dottle: A small rounded lump or mass; especially, the tobacco remaining in the bottom of a pipe after smoking, which is often put on the top of fresh tobacco when refilling.
n. A plug or tap of a vessel.

This could be a good example of a word that has a specific use but can easily be borrowed to be used figuratively and usefully when writing poetry when (as one should always be I suppose), the poet is straining to avoid the damnable cliche. Although the word seems to describe tobacco - it could easily be used for a descriptive term for residue that plugs something up. The heart maybe - in romantic writings, or a 'drain' when not.

Chirk: cheer (usually followed by 'up' ). Or to make a shrill chirping noise.

Another little gem.  To some people 'chirk' is a non word, and that will always be the danger when you spend so much time looking for originality. Originality of thought, word, expression etc forever trying to avoid cliche of any kind. Like crepitate, it's another 'sound' word. And encouraged by the 'How To' poetry writing site I'm using as a temporary guide, it ticks the sound component of the six senses: 'kinesiology' (motion) as I said being that strange sixth one that adds to the usual suspects of sight, sound, taste touch, smell.

Nivosity: Snowiness. A resemblance to snow. Probably not for poetry. In any case you can see how it would be condemned as an abstract. And abstract terms are anathema to the poet. Abstractions basically stand sterile and presume to do the imaginative work the writer ought to be doing himself rather than becoming over reliant on empty utility words. 'She felt happy' for example should not be preferred over: 'She smiled luminously whilst skipping from the room singing.' Even if that is a clumsy way of 'showing' happiness it's at least showing what's going on rather than telling and therefore avoids the abominated use of abstraction.

A metaphor: is a statement that pretends one thing is really something else. Obvious, you might say. Except that it isn't quite so when you're trying to remember the difference between it and a simile.  'As guitarists go, he's more engine stoker than driver. A soot-stained grafter who pours fuel on the song's furnace and without whose industry the fragile artists who strum ethereally above him would seize up and die.' That might need a bit of judicious pruning if not a complete rethink - but it might help me to stop getting mixed up between metaphor and a simile where the guitarist is more likely to be playing - I don't know - like a man with a pistol pointed at his head and a one way ticket out of town.

Back to Poetry

In the interests of revision being vital to learning, I'm looking back through my old creative writing handbook, also known by some  as 'The Big Red Book', or more succinctly and sadly without a trace of affection, the 'BRB.' My motivation for doing this is that I have always believed that the major benefit from the reading experience comes from the revisit. I don't know why this is but it's probably to do with the brain's capacity to learn in chunks rather than in grand totals. If this is true perhaps the first read through scatters the hard new brain cells with raw material, then once those ideas germinate it softens the brain up to allow for a greater receptivity to the finer details missed the first time around.  Something like that anyway.

Easily the most talked about and in some cases reviled chapter in the BRB, was the one on poetry by the hapless (in A215 course terms) W N Herbert. I seem to remember I really enjoyed it - seeing in Herbert's style an unexpected refusal to take things too seriously which I really liked, though many seemed to hate it. The debate about WNH went on and on. I can't really remember what all the fuss was about except there was a sense felt by some that he didn't really explain what constituted a poem. Now having completed the course I'm not surprised that he didn't - it wasn't really in his interests.  His brief was to introduce poetry to those who had hardly even read never mind written a poem in their lives. I think he did it rather well. 

I wasn't alone, some talked about his accessibility. One female actually confessed something of a crush on him. But many, many CR students, when getting to the poetry section sought refuge in Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Traveled'. Fry's book was actually tougher to get through than the BRB in my view, and was written by someone who wasn't a poet but merely wanted to spout, perhaps even grandstand about the mechanics of poetry rather than discussing how ideas are formed.  Herbert's was a gentle prod on how you might tip your toes ever so gently into the poetic pool and see if there's room for them to splash around a bit.

Fry's approach (I love Stephen Fry by the way) is great for starting to write formal poetry, but what about the deeper definitions of poetry? the articulation of something that almost defies words, and how that might be done by rethinking the use of language and its concepts, to disrupt ordinary forms of expression to achieve ultimately a greater understanding of something? Fry comes across as a reluctant obsessive who perhaps because of his lack of credentials and being  fearful of accusations about not being a poet, never quite gets the tone right. It's slightly ironic that Fry the comedian is the serious, buttoned up guy here; don't let the little strained for jokes fool you he's not that comfortable. Herbert however is the chilled-out bohemian, sucking on a joint and chatting about postcards and photographs long before he starts on about iambics and metre which in any case seem to be, to him - a published poet - a little bit of 'here are the rules now go and break them.'  This contrasts with Fry's constant refrains throughout his book about the artificiality and wrongheadedness of free verse.  

Anyway, I'm going to go through the chapter again - maybe even do some of the exercises. I'm pretty sure that it's Herbert's chapter rather than Fry's book or for that matter the poetry chapters in the Big Blue (Oh yes, the BBB's spawned a sequel) that will get me writing poetry again. Then and only then will I look elsewhere.