Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Hallmark Guerrilla: A Writing Exercise


This morning, someone in my household (hint: his name rhymes with Schmyler) came up with the brilliant idea of going through a bunch of document boxes to see if there was anything in them that could be tossed. So I spent a couple of hours going through old correspondence (yeah, I grew up in the days when the USPS occasionally delivered something other than the Tuesday Penny Saver), and then, in a sudden frenzy of “I need to throw something away NOW, or I will have wasted my entire morning!” decided to chuck several folders full of teaching materials.

There's one writing exercise I decided I needed to save in electronic form. It's something I used in the poetry writing class I taught back in – what, 2005? I'd totally forgotten about it, so it was kind of fun to encounter it again.

Here's how it works:

  1. Each person brings to class the schmaltziest Hallmark love poem they can find. (It isn't necessary to actually buy the card – it's fine to simply copy the text. Yes, anyone who wanders down the greeting card aisle will look at you askance, but at least you won't be “voting” for bad poetry with your hard-earned dollars.)
  2. Each person reads his/her candidate aloud to the rest of the class, followed by a brief explanation of what made the poem schmaltzy.
  3. Mock writing workshop: identify what's not working in the poems, and come up with suggestions for improvement. (Sorry, all you Hallmark poets out there: I know this is like being tried in absentia....)
  4. Class discussion: What common problems did we observe? How do we avoid making those kinds of mistakes in our own poetry?

I'll copy two examples here:

I. Sometimes I wish
you and I had just met
And we had a whole lifetime
ahead of us yet
It's fun to imagine us
starting brand-new
with so many wonderful
things we could do.
And maybe this time
we'd avoid some mistakes
Or manage to catch
a few luckier breaks
But you know, I just can't
imagine a way
We'd be happier, ever,
than we are today.

II. I love you
I love your eyes
I love your smile
I love the way you eat spaghetti
I love the way you kiss
I love the way you look at me
I love the way you spoil me
I love your walk
I love it when you act silly
I love the way you look when you wake up
I love the way you love me...
And that's just the beginning.

The first poem sounds like Dr. Seuss wrote it: there's that sing-songy anapest, the predictable end-rhyme – catchy enough, but pretty silly sounding. What would happen if it were written in a different meter, with a different rhyme scheme, or no rhymes at all?

The second poem might as well be titled, “One Love Fits All” – it's just a catalog of generalizations. What if each line were made much more specific, even absurd? (e.g., I love the way you eat spaghetti / With your fork between your toes)?





Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Review of Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit


Twyla Tharp (yes, the choreographer – how many Twyla Tharps could there possibly be?) begins the second chapter of her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life with the following revelation:

“I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 a.m., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and thell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours.”

Dude.

I mean, seriously: 5:30 a.m.? Two hours? Every day? How am I supposed to take this woman's advice about anything, given that she's obviously made of different stuff than I am?

To make matters worse, there's this gem, from her last chapter: “When I look back on my best work, it was inevitably created in what I call The Bubble. I eliminated every distraction, sacrificed almost everything that gave me pleasure, placed myself in a single-minded isolation chamber, and structured my life so that everything was not only feeding the work but subordinated to it. It is not a particularly sociable way to operate. It's actively anti-social. On the other hand, it is pro-creative.”

A paragraph like that is confirmation of my worst fears. Well, okay, not my worst fears. Still, I find it discouraging to think I've got to make Tharp's pact with Devil Discipline if I want to have a hope of creating anything worthwhile. (What next? Burnt offerings? Every last guest at my would-be dinner party? Awww, really? Do I hafta?)

As you can see, I read the whole book through a haze of suspicion, looking for reasons to discount what Tharp had to say about developing the creative habit. So maybe it's no surprise that my favorite passages were those that seemed to contradict her more characteristic “singleness of purpose” through-line.

I particularly liked what she had to say about luck: “Habitually creative people are, in E.B. White's phrase, 'prepared to be lucky.' The key words here are 'prepared' and 'lucky.' They're inseparable. You don't get lucky without preparation, and there's no sense in being prepared if you're not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.”

Later, she suggests that being generous is the surest route to luck in the creative arena, because, “If you're generous to someone...you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself to a community of good fortune.” The most fortunate people Tharp knows, she says, have a few characteristics in common: they are prepared, they work hard, they're alert, they involve others in their work, and “they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.”

Hmmm. I don't know about you, but these ruminations on the importance of community and collaboration don't jive (is it “jive” or “jibe”?) with her claim that spending extended periods of time in The Bubble is probably a necessary evil for those of us who want to create.

So...here's to many more dinner parties, chez moi. Cheers!

Friday, February 17, 2012

The Fine Art of Noticing


A couple of nights ago, I saw a raccoon cross the road, hurrying to get out of the way of the approaching car. A couple of nights before that, it was an opossum that my headlights had picked out. At first, I'd thought it was a large, ugly cat – and then I noticed the pointy snout and the long pink tail.

The noteworthy (beautiful, strange, idiosyncratic, ironic, thematic, defining) details of our lives often appear suddenly and disappear just as quickly. As writers, it's our job to be open to them – and sometimes, it's our job to record them, even if we're not quite sure why.

Here are a few of the things I noticed today:

*A group of several tiny birds, greenish-yellow, with white chevrons at the tips of their wings, busily picking at rust-colored catkins in the birch tree outside my bedroom window.

*The way a downtown newspaper vendor held out both of his arms to test for rain – a gesture that reminded me of religious statuary – before pulling the hood of his parka over his head.

*Branches curving up like candelabra, strung and studded with raindrops.

*The first open daffodils.

*A menagerie of plastic dinosaurs placed among the rocks and ferns of a front yard landscape.

*The feral look in a stranger's eyes right before he passed me on the sidewalk: “Slutwhore,” he said, aiming the comment straight at my face.

*That clover honey doesn't taste like mesquite honey, even mixed into tea and milk.

*Strata of memories and associations attached to a specific song (in this case, Coldplay's “The Scientist”): within 20 seconds of hearing the opening notes, I was in tears, even though I had been feeling really happy only minutes earlier.

What are some of the things you've noticed today?