January 2023 - Workshop Shit!
This month, we talked about imagist poetry, a movement from the early 20th Century, which was a reactionary movement against the romanticism of Victorian poetry that emphasized the use of specific, particular images in a simple, direct delivery.
Probably the most famous of these is the poem by Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro, which is presented here:
In a Station of the Metro
Ezra Pound
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
This very short, direct poem simply presents one metaphor as a visual image, and its impact is in its simplicity.
Another example of an imagist poem from the period is this one by T.E. Hulme:
Above the Dock
T.E. Hulme
“Above the quiet dock in mid night,
Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.”
As before this is the simple presentation of a visual metaphor – direct and simple, but evocative because of its lack of explanation or sermonizing.
Both poems are built on metaphor, which we talked about as one of the foundations of poetry. Metaphor is the comparison of unlike things, and it is, as far as we know, unique to human discourse. It would be hard to find another creature that would say, “He is a pig,” unless the “he” in question were really a porcine animal; however, people use this kind of language all the time. In poetry, we look for metaphors that are unusual but apt, as a way of showing the qualities of both of the unlike things being compared.
Therefore, we embarked on a quick, first-thought, best-thought creation of a list of metaphors, which you will see below, and used this list as a jumping off point for our freewrite. Some of us chose one of these metaphors and extended it, while others tried to use as many as possible. Examples of some of the freewrites produced follow.
The Rules:
List four pairs of verbs and nouns.
Using a graphic like the one below, pair each verb and noun with an image to create a metaphor.
Take 15-20 minutes to free-write based on the metaphors created by pairing words with images.
Don’t be too tied-down to one idea. Some poets might latch on to one metaphor, and write a poem based on extending that metaphor. Others may instead choose several metaphors and find a common through-line to connect them all. Others may even decide that none of the metaphors or images in the prompt are totally appropriate, and use the format before them to compose original inventions.
Graphic from Prompt 01/10/2023
Resulting Metaphors:
“Deciding is an Iceberg.”
“An orange is my world.”
“Implicating is a shadow.”
“A palm tree is a yearning.”
“Dissenting is a burning building.”
“Malaise is a metaphor.”
“Running is freedom.”
“Prestige is just a poster.”
Andrew’s Response:
Prestige is just a poster: printed piss
That’s plastered on a public breakroom wall …
Some gossiped fight, or paparazzi kiss,
Or leader’s languid face before his fall.
Dissent’s a building, burning through the night,
Profanest chanting howling through fair halls,
Where sacred lies, and secrets shuttered tight
Must melt someday into their private hells.
My world’s a lemon: bloody on the hand
Where knife missed yellow, stinging acid wounds.
Small thing. To hammered eyes, a war-torn land
Rests washing under faucets, dead unfound.
Prestige is just a poster: printed piss
That any mundane moron could have missed.
Douglas’ Response
THIS ORANGE
This orange is my world,
Spinning in orbit around my anticipation:
Bright color, bumpy little lights and shadows
Reflecting the morning sun
As it comes thru the window in long, slanting lines
Across the breakfast table;
My world waiting for me to step up, sit down
And admire this perfection of perfect fruit.
I can see myself biting the skin
With my fingernails,
Breaking into its treasure,
Breaking that perfect globe,
Deconstructing its roundness,
Pulling the skin around the sphere
Slowly, carefully
Because I want it to come off in one piece,
Wrapping it around the fruit,
Releasing that bright smell of morning,
The white threads that hold and separate,
And I can anticipate holding the peel,
Curled in its spherical pattern,
In one hand,
And the naked fruit in the other hand,
Cold and light,
And I can imagine pushing my thumb down into the center,
Opening the soft lips of each section,
And the first one in my mouth,
Just before I bite it
And ejaculate all that juice onto my tongue…
But not yet
Because I want to wait,
To breathe
In then out,
To remember where this fruit came from –
That tree behind my son-in-law’s mother’s house in Sevilla,
Around the corner from the patio where we were all too drunk to worry about how we might smuggle it thru customs
And just amazed and delighted by the cornucopia of brightly colored, perfectly scented orbs,
And I want to take a moment to remember
How this round, precious present is spinning,
Like me on this tiny earthen ball
In the middle of a solar system
On the edge of a galaxy
Turning among a multitude of galaxies
Full of endless, uncounted, shining, circular stars…
This orange is my world:
Like me,
Another toy in the play of consciousness.
Rikhav’s Response -
The bleary eyed view of the world on waking is a caricature, the implication of a shadow, and yet, it is the world as I see it, blurred lines and all, edges smoothed by anticipation, a nearly blank canvas on which to paint my perceptions and expectations, my actions a coarse horse-hair brush used with the lightest of strokes to fuel a sense of belonging.
And yet, deciding is an iceberg, a slippery slope slick with slighted somnolence, smoothed by sensory overload and a sense of false salvation, yet filled with ambulation, and sensations that lend themselves to endless direction, filled with skewed perception, and imperceptible deviation.
Each step creates a mandelbrot of opportunity, a beautiful chaos of being, a world in the form of an orange, pits and all, that swirls with activity at a molecular level, feeding our imaginations and seeding our thoughts with dissent, a metaphorical malaise of that seeps into every motion made, filled with analysis and prone to paralysis, the antithesis of existence.
And when the dust settles, does it really ever settle? When our eyes slide shut and our mind slip into unconsciousness, still we are alive, and thrive on the synaptic imagery that flows and floats fleetingly, feverishly flying from neuron to neuron, a freedom that releases us from ourselves.