The Editor and I are feeling a little wrung out after yesterday’s exceedingly long post. So we are dedicating the afternoon to frolicking about looking for new blogs to make friends with. And, err, washing up. Before the sink disappears altogether under the tottering stacks of crumb-laden china. It’s already getting a little Withnail and I – I may have to beat the bottom layer to death with a saucepan before I begin.
Archive for August, 2006
Farmutshet
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006Whatever it is that I’ve been doing all morning
Monday, August 28th, 2006I have on several occasions already remarked on Mr Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled, through which my Novice Accomplice (who never ‘did’ poetry) and I are wending at glacial speed. We need a good two hours a session – one to read the chapter aloud (my task, as I’m the one who can reliably pronounce ‘anapaest’ correctly first go) and one to do the recommended exercise at the end of it. And finding two hours in which we are both at home, and neither of us tired, headachey, or rathering a G&T and some telly, is fraught. And when we’ve finished being fraught, we have wasted another two hours. Oh poetry, oh instrument of peace and harmony.
Nevertheless, I at least have got somewhere. Mr Fry spends rather a long (it’s necessary) time introducing a chap to good old iambic pentameter (notes on technical terms for those unfamiliar with them, at bottom of page), that workhorse and fiery steed of English prosody. He then demands that you write sixteen lines in iambic pentameter using enjambement, trochaic substitution, pyrrhic substitution, and weak endings (like I said, bottom of page) as often as possible, just to get the hang of how hard you can slam iambic pentameter around before it gives up and collapses into prose. No rhyme (haven’t got to that section yet), no attempt to write a poem as such, no need even to write all sixteen lines on the same subject. And this is what I came up with:
Describing weather takes a lot of courage:
Verse is but verse, and clichés have abounded
For centuries. The poet that first thought
‘Hurrah! the clouds are sheep-like, white and fleecy!’
No doubt ran home at once to find some paper, (5)
Record his triumph and impress his friends
With so apt and delicate a similie.
Now any child can churn it out in school
Only to have his homework marked in red
Unsympathetic ink, as trite, unworthy (10)
Of such a varied and immortal glory
As these white clouds against the sky.
What can I call them? What would capture them
These days that sheep are trite even to teachers
Who never saw a sheep? What metaphor (15)
Evokes the softness and the distant whiteness?
Blimey, thought I. It’s almost a poem (this did not earn me Brownie points with Novice Accomplice, who considered it cheating. Did the instructions say ‘write a poem’? No? Well then).
At this point I called in the Editor. Oh yes, she has a Proper Job. Griping and abuse is a mere sideline she adopts to keep her mill-wheels running smoothly when I fail to produce any grist. Editor, said I, here is an almost poem. Please deal with it, and see if it can be turned into an actual poem. And I skipped neatly out of the way and went off to make the several gallons of coffee this was bound to take.
[Right. Yes, this is the Editor, but it's a pain to read great swathes of italic on screen, so I am dropping the funny accent for today.
[I have numbered every fifth line, so we can quickly see which bit I mean. The first two lines do not really add anything to the poem. They're cute, especially that line about needing courage to describe the weather, but redundant. I've never been keen on poets that take the first few lines to tell you what point they'll be trying to make in the last few. Anyway 'clichés have abounded'? Erk. So, we'll remove the offending first two lines and the end of the sentence beginning line three. This leaves us three syllables, a foot and a half, short. Happily, a more interesting thought, that of someone who wasn't a poet having a poetic thought for the first time, presented itself. The 'And' beginning the line started out as an attempt to sort out a complete first foot, and stayed because I liked the poem beginning in the middle of something, some chap going about his business one pretty day, and who looks up at the sky...
[Fourth line. 'Hurrah!', while enthusiastic, sounded bonkers. I went with 'I see', partly because coming up with a simile is a way of seeing things afresh, and partly because I liked the echo with 'sheep' and 'fleecy'.
[Fifth, sixth and seventh line. Well, for a start, seven is metrically shot to buggery. I like the neat tripping pattern of 'apt and delicate', so I put that aside and scrubbed the rest. Lines five and six were rather snarky in tone. Hard as it may be for you to believe, I am not an unremitting snark-queen, and I decided they didn't suit the wistful tone the poem was developing. And anyway, most people prefer to point things out to other people. The urge to ferret everything away on paper comes with practice. I recalled Reed's habit of waving her hands and pointing at rainbows, flowering trees, and interesting squirrels, and prettied it up a bit so I could use 'apt and delicate' after all. And I also got to make the transition from pointing things out to friends, to recording them permanently, via the marking hands. I felt quite pleased with that.
[At this point Reed's brain had clearly kicked in, because I couldn't find anything much to do to the rest of the proto-poem. I am still not entirely sure about 'Of such a varied and immortal glory/ As these white clouds against the sky,' mind you. It seemed a little redundant and veering towards (oh dreadful!) trite. But I had already hacked the poem down to 14 lines, any more trimming and it would get a bit stump-like, and I felt, thematically, we needed to see the clouds again or the whole second part of the poem would merely be invective against modern educational methods. So I handed it back to Reed for titling and typing purposes and went back to my lair with the remains of the cold coffee.]
Clouds Like White Sheep
And someone – not a poet yet – first thought
‘I see! The clouds are sheep-like, white and fleecy!’
Did he at once look for his friends, his hands
Marking the apt and delicate resemblance
Both in the air and later then on paper?
Now any child can churn it out in school
Only to have his homework marked in red
Unsympathetic ink, as tired, unworthy
Of such a varied and immortal glory
As these white clouds against the sky.
What can I call them? What would capture them
These days that sheep are trite even to teachers
Who never saw a sheep? What metaphor
Evokes the softness and the distant whiteness?
This has turned into a jolly long post, and we still haven’t done the notes. I hope you all think it’s worth it. Or at least, not not worth it. I decided it was all worth it when I found this picture by the artist Peter Callesen (on this wonderful page of A4 papercuts):
Notes on technical terms, for those who didn’t spend years footling about with an English degree, or even those who did and wouldn’t dream of using up precious brain-cells remembering all that crap:
- Iambic – the basic, two beat di-DUM of verse, pentameter – five feet, or five iambs. You know, what Shakespeare constructed entire plays out.
- Foot – in musical terminology, you’d probably call this a bar. How you divide verse up by its metrical rhythm. Can be one, two, three or more beats or stressed syllables. English as she is spoke naturally has stressed and unstressed syllables. Other languages construct poetry differently – Ancient Greek for example (from which we get all these cute iambs and trochees and whatnot in the first place) had syllables of different length, rather than stress, and constructed patterns of l-o-o-ngs and shorts rather than dis and DUMS. The above poems have five feet to a line, with five stressed syllables.
- Oh Lord, what have I begun? The notes’ll be longer than the post. Umm, enjambment is when the clause or sentence does not end with the line of verse (the most natural place for it to stop) but runs on into the next line, creating an impression of breathlessness or hurry or momentum.
- Trochee. Right. Iambs go di-DUM, trochees go DUM-di, so a trochaic substitution gives you lines of verse starting DUM-di, di-DUM di-DUM etc., swapping the emphasis to the first syllable and making it thereby even more emphatic.
- Pyrrhic substitution involves replacing a di-DUM with a di-di, two more or less unaccented syllables, so the line runs di-DUM di-di di-DUM. The verse speeds up, skips almost, and the next stressed syllable is sort of extra-stressed by contrast. Though there are many that argue that Pyrrhic substitution does not exist in English and we are all disappearing up our own backsides.
- Weak, also known as feminine endings, are an extra unstressed syllable hanging about on the end of the line. Has distinct effect of softening and relaxing the rhythm of the verse. Also called a Hendecasyllabic ending, but only when applied to pentameters. Can make reader back up and re-read verse, counting feet as they go. Apply with caution. Unlike I did.
- Please don’t make me now tell you all WHY you’d want to emphasize or not emphasize or speed up or slow down words and lines. Especially as I don’t really know if I did it to any worthy effect in the almost-poem anyway.
Sestina lente
Saturday, August 26th, 2006(I just crack myself up, really I do).
This is the long-awaited sestina that has been driving me nuts since May. I wrote the first two verses, made up all the tables of end-word shifts, realised I’d screwed up the second verse, tried to re-write it, lost heart and buried the note-book under the bed. Not that it’d leave me alone. I found myself muttering ‘grass green grey stone white sky, sky grass white, err, oh damn,’ in the small hours of the morning. Time to fish it all out and try again.
Obviously three months’ maturation is rather good for finicky verse-forms. Absolutely whanged the old nail over the crumpet in one afternoon. I am so breaking out the G&T when I’m done here.
Six Graveyards
Above the dust-pale road the walls stand white
And blazing in the heat. The sun-bleached sky,
Drum-tight with hidden thunder, bakes the grey
Deserted paths between the polished stones.
Outside the gate a shrine stands in the green
Damp shade between Mimosa trees and grass.In here the plots are overgrown with grass.
Each headstone wears a photograph bleached white,
The face and name beneath it gone. This green
Space no bigger than a room, roofed with sky
And walled with shells of mortar, falls of stone -
The sons of those who left it are now grey.For six months of the year the sky is grey,
And yet the tourists pick through long wet grass
To find that one or other famous stone
Amid the multitude that glow near-white
Under the luminescent winter sky
Or in the shadows of a summer green.Beside the railway-tracks the trees stand green
Above the bitter sorrows carved in grey,
The granite teddy-bears. The warm sweet sky
Rests softly on the bright toys in the grass,
And years of weekly visits, flowers, and white-
Bleached scraps of birthday cards stuck to the stone.Since this was once a graveyard, slabs of stone
Still lie behind the benches on the green,
And lines where letters once cut into white
And hard-edged marble, now a softer grey,
Are moss-filled scribbles buried in the grass;
No readers stand between them and the sky.And under an immensity of sky
With many stands another fresh-cut stone.
Here someone comes to trim away the grass
And the last rose-bush planted is still green
And blazing in the jumbled rows of grey.
They’re bridal flowers, luxuriantly white.Alas the bright and ruthless sky, the green
That wears away the stone and hides the grey
And white beneath the dazzle of the grass.
See how it works? You choose six ‘hero’ words to end the lines (iambic pentameter for me, but it isn’t de rigeur), a through f . And then you shuffle them in each progressive stanza, f to line 1, a to line 2, e to 3, b to 4, d to 5, c to 6. And then you have a new order of a to f to shuffle for the stanza after that. And then you try and get all six in a three line envoi in a new order: the last stanza’s 1st and 4th, 2nd and 5th, 4th and 6th. And if you are really running with the big boys, you end up with a poem that all makes sense, and an envoi that recaps and/or comments on the whole.
It may be rubbish, but it’s clever rubbish, and I have rarely felt so smug.
The coffee’s gone cold. Again.
Friday, August 25th, 2006Back in June I posted about the agonistics feeding the blog. Here we are again, sitting about, staring at the screen, fiddling about with iTunes, trawling through other people’s blogs in search of inspiration, writing a sentence, glaring at it, deleting it, over and over. I wonder, does every blogger put themselves through this, or have I missed some colossally obvious point? Do the other bloggers whose work I admire spend hours in a frenzy of composition, or does it all drip from them like honey from the bee-drowsing comb of late summer? Are we a band of (slightly deranged) brethren of the pen, slaving in world-wide concert for no other reward than the sweet savour of words and some few lines of admiration and pleasure in the comments? Or are you all staring at me now thinking ‘Christ, no, it takes me about ten minutes to write a post. What on earth is the matter with you?’
[I thought we were toning down the self-pity - Ed]
Drat
Thursday, August 24th, 2006I was, honest to God I was, working away at a very technical and clever post about poetry, revising of, with insights into exactly how much muttering and counting on one’s fingers it actually takes, and here we are within coughing distance of midnight and I have not finished it.
I am thoroughly embarrassed.
Delay partly caused by trying to remember which one of these:
contained the actual poem.
Pointless retrospective moment – send wine
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006I have been blogging for six months now. Over six months. It is indeed a sobering thought, and yes, I am feeling rather uninebriated. Twenty-five weeks of yakking happily on [and whinging. And procrastinating - Ed]. Oh, very well, that too.
For what, Gentle Readers, is the point? Oh, I don’t mean in that in an ‘I’m going outside now, I may be some time,’ way. I’m enjoying myself hugely [When you're not 'moping', you idle young trout - Ed] and in the process I am discovering an astonishing thing: I do actually have some thoughts on writing, incoherent and footling as they may be. And I am not the only person on this planet who finds myself amusing. Glory be. Having established that I can do this without boring anyone’s ears off, I am now planning on striking out for Cape Pointful, by actually discussing writing a little more intelligently and mayhap toning down the self-pity just a gnat’s eyelash [Hallelujah].
But is there any point at all in this for the Gentle Reader? Will I be blogging myself off into a dusty little corner marked ‘Please ignore – contents tedious’ if I persist in versifying and maybe reviewing books in a temper? Or is that where whining and venting will land me? Like Buridan’s ass in reverse. I am now, and alas probably forever will be, sorely afflicted by the fear that you’ll realise it’s all some kind of trick and I’m not actually interesting at all and then you’ll all laugh harshly and storm out [Impostor Syndrome, this is called, apparently. It may well be an arse to have, but by God it's an arse to sit next to].
And anyway, what makes a sticky blog? Is it having a point, a mission [however woolly and self-indulgent]? Is it wittiness and clever writing? Being as regular as that writer’s senna, coffee, can make you? Is it being faithful to your readers? Does this blog have the fabled sticky?
Or are you all just being nice to me because you’re my friends?
[Oy vey, with the self-doubt again].
Mount Unreasonable
Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006Where have I been? What do you mean, where have I been? Here, obviously. Moping. Oh, you mean why haven’t I been blogging like a good little blog-keeper for – let me check the sidebar – ah. Quite a few days. Over a week.
Like I said. Moping.
Fear not. The Editor has got her pointy stick out and I will be blogging every day for a week again, in penance.
Meanwhile, did I tell you I have a thing about notebooks?
Out of these, surely, one day, something astounding will blossom. Probably the cursing when I rupture myself lifting them all onto the floor again tonight.
Coffee triolet. Café-au-lait?
Thursday, August 10th, 2006Right. As Reed has utterly humiliated herself, and me, with the above stupid pun, I am taking over this post.
Reed, go and make the coffee.
What drove the first of us to try
This bitter, dark, and devilish drink?
To steal an hour as day slips by -
What drove the first of us to try?
And did he watch the midnight sky
For many nights, and sourly think:
‘What drove the first of us to try
This bitter, dark, and devilish drink?’
Any thoughts? See if you can spot the one line that took the longest to write and gave us the most heartburn.
Seen it? Yes, indeed. The third line. The rest of the triolet more or less turned up in one lump, after some initial dithering about whether rhyming ‘drink’ and ‘think’ wasn’t too cheesy for words. And then the third line just refused to materialise. Reed was reduced to writing all the rhymes for ’sky’ she could think of down one side of the page and then drawing daisies, cats and expertly shaded cubes down the other. When the third line finally did show up, muttering about cuckoo clocks (made in Germany, I think you’ll find), we were underwhelmed. See what comes of trying French forms in bloody English? You wait and wait and the line never comes.
P.S. It has just been pointed out to me that the triolet is a very obscure little verse form and not everyone will get quite what a) I was trying to do and b) what the Editor is ranting on about. So here is an explanation for a). I can’t help you with b). – Reed 12th August 1:30 am. Indeed.
How to… write in public
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006I was stranded in a café without a book earlier this week. I was considering expiring from boredom when I remembered the large black notebook and biro in my bag. So I duly fished them out and wrote (what? Oh, stuff, you know. I think it included a shopping list, possible names for assorted minor characters in any given novel set in my imaginary world and the beginnings [wretched - Ed] of a triolet about coffee. Not bad for half-an-hour’s work).
Having gone through ['Gone through' implies that you have in any way emerged from it. Which you haven't - Ed] the ’sucker’ phase of buying and borrowing as many books on writing as I could lay my nail-bitten little paws on, I am aware that many people swear by writing in cafés. Heck, one even swears by park benches [Something along the lines of: 'Damn and blast this horrible bench, there's nowhere to rest my notebook and some bastard has been sick under it,' I assume].
Julia Cameron
And anyway, this is entirely the wrong sort of café. I am sitting in the middle of a well-lit, airy room, on a leatherette banquette (I keep sliding gently forward. If I don’t concentrate I’ll be off it and under the glass-topped table). I am drinking earl grey tea. Barring the need to keep one knee firmly wedged against the table-leg, I am perfectly comfortable. I should of course be in a darkened corner (bugger the eye-strain), on a wooden stool, perching the moleskine carefully in between the sticky rings on the bar. I should be drinking absinthe. Or at the very least, recklessly strong black coffee with four sugars (to make up for the fact I haven’t eaten for 36 hours. Rather than having had quite a nice sandwich a few minutes ago.) The other clients at the right sort of café will also be clad in black polo-necks, deeply hung-over, having complicated love-affairs with each other and chain-smoking away like an industrial city sky-line. The conversation at the nearest table will be fascinating – jealousy, Freud, ménages à trois, anxst, and Engels. As it is, I am surrounded by Yummy Mummies in pastel pashminas with the occasional infant in tow (pastels and toddlers? Do you suppose they actually live at the dry-cleaners?).
[On the other hand, this is the perfect café to write in, because it is a) comfortable, b) quiet and c) you are the most exciting thing in it. Now go finish that damn' triolet]
Nothing to see here
Saturday, August 5th, 2006I am working on three different posts for your delectation. I am hoping to have them all done, dusted and readable over the weekend [Hah - Ed]. However I am having trouble sticking to the subject in hand [Oh God! Cliché! And Son of Cliché! Subject in hand! - Ed]. Trouble sticking to the subject, I was saying, partly because the Editor is being unusually intractable [And I last had a coffee on Thursday] We were keeping off coffee, remember? The insomnia? It was your idea? [Yes. Now you are rested and I am going cold turkey]. Do you know, I have absolutely no idea were this paragraph was going any more. [You were having trouble sticking to the subject].
Yes. Well.
Whenever I start typing something apropos on these said three posts, I get hijacked by the melancholy conviction that a) I am writing a whole lot of rubbish [Mea culpa], b) I could be doing something considerably more useful, like hoovering [That's your mother talking, not me. I'm the one reminding you you have a demanding public these days who couldn't give a flying fer-crying about your dustbunnies] and most troublesome, but sort of related to b, c), there are beloved friends and family out there who care not that I write anything at all about anything ever. I don’t even mean the Usual Subjects, parents and siblings who see me in that precious, special family way [As a permanent eleven-year-old clutz]. Of course, there are a few friends-and-family out there who know I write, ask about the writing, pour out into my bosom the balm of unsolicited advice on everything from which notebooks I should use to what publisher I should approach, and yet would clearly sooner put their own head down the pan and pull the flush than read anything I write. I do quite wisely put most of this down to the fact it’s only polite to show an interest, however faked, face-to-face, and to the fact some people just have to have the biggest, hairiest, cleverest, chest in any given interaction.
A couple of people, however, break my heart. Well, OK, that’s the lack of caffeine talking, but they do crumble the old ticker at the edges just a little. These are the people who I do truly love, and respect. They do not read anything I write. They do not read this blog, for example. They know it exists. They occasionally ask how the writing thing is going. They care, vaguely. But not enough to read anything. They read other people’s blogs. They read other people’s stories and poems. They are not illiterate, or stupid, or phobic about books. One or two of them even write a bit themselves. But they do not read me. I have no idea why not. I daren’t ask, in case the answer crushes me to the ground. But I suspect that I must come across as just about as boring as possible in Real Life.
Or am I whining? [You're whining. Hush now and go write something interesting].
