Carl’s First Law of Art: Thou Shalt
For any "thou shalt not" rule of writing, art or music, you can find counter-examples from the greatest works of literature, art or music.
Take for instance the monotonously-repeated caution against "-ing" words in poetry. Count the number of such words in Eliot's "The Waste Land." Or read the opening line of Yeats's "The Second Coming":
Turning and turning in a widening gyre…
Three of the first seven words are "-ing" words!
Picasso practically made a rule of breaking the rules. So did Richard Strauss. ("No parallel fifths, huh? Okay, what do you think of Ein Heldenleben?")
I'm not saying you shouldn't learn the rules. All those warnings have their place. But keep them in their place. Speed limits and stop signs won't get you to your destination.
Excessive worry about Don'ts comes from fear. Negative rules are a source of easy comfort. "I can't tell if I've done anything good here, but there are 29 bad things I haven't done!"
The fact is, anything can work in the right context: passive voice, symmetrical composition, anything. Avoiding mistakes is the relatively easy and safe part of art. Figuring out what the work at hand demands, regardless of rules -- that's hazardous, hard, and the only thing worth doing.
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 30, Poem 2: Dreams
Yesterday I introduced a poetic form I invented, the zoad. You can check the entry for 5/29 if you want the definition. Today I tried a looser variant, the free zoad. The rules for this form are:
- Five stanzas, each from 3 to 5 lines long. The lines can be of any length, and need not rhyme.
- A one-word title.
- Each stanza must include the title word at least once. Variations are allowed. For instance, if the title is "Tower," you can use "towers," "towering," etc., in the stanzas.
- Stanza 1 makes an imaginative statement.
- Stanza 2 makes a factual statement.
- Stanza 3 makes a reasoning or deductive statement.
- Stanza 4 makes a statement of judgment or evaluation.
- Stanza 5 makes an imaginative statement.
Dreams
A dream is a charge of meaning
sparked from lives not lived
to this life's lack.
Long before Hobson, Lucretius
called dreams noise
and stopped his ears.
If dreams are bits of brain trash
assembled into a story, I still ask:
why this tale,
and from whom?
Lucid dreams:
set the Sibyl
on your knee
and throw your voice.
My room is painted
the color of reason,
but the floor is dream.
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 30, Poem 1: Listen
I wrote two poems today, to bring my total up to 30 poems in 30 days. (I wrote no poem the day of the Boston Marathon bombing.) First, a poem for May Day:
Listen
They will tell you,
We take your days to build you wealth.
We take your shoes to secure your freedom.
We take your clothes to protect your pride.
We let you know who to fear:
those who plant
and want to reap;
those who have less
and want you to have more;
those who walk
and beg you to stand;
those who set your minds itching,
your bellies aching,
your hands clenching.
We hide them for your comfort.
We throttle them so you can hear the show.
(Haven't you earned your entertainment?)
We kill their children to keep you safe.
They tell you, and tell you, and tell you,
lest you listen to the silence.
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 29: Reasonable Things (Updated)
Playing around with inventing a form, called the "zoad" (two syllables, accented on the first; the O is long as in rode, the A is short as in hat). The name comes from Blake or Seuss -- take your pick.
The rules of the form are subject to change as I try it out, but presently they are:
- A zoad has five stanzas, each 3 to 5 lines long.
- Each stanza uses a different prosody*. (Stanza 1 here uses a prosody of my own devising, which would probably be hard to figure out from even an extended reading or hearing. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is.)
- Within a stanza, all lines are the same length, whatever the unit of measure.
- Here, for instance, stanza 2 uses syllablic prosody and each line is 8 syllables long. Stanza 3 uses word-count prosody and each line is 5 words long.
- Stanza 1 makes an imaginative statement.
- Stanza 2 makes a factual statement.
- Stanza 3 makes a deductive or reasoning statement.
- Stanza 4 makes an evaluation or judgment.
- Stanza 5 makes an imaginative statement.
1. Baleful unicorns lurk
in the great god Pan's grave.
Ditches along the highway.
Hairy vetch is his body.
2. A master of the abacus
can add or subtract large numbers
faster than someone using a
calculator, and look cooler.
3. What we can't define, we
can't argue about. What can
be defined, is not real.
We debate stories we've told.
4. Pastel petals: children
in clean clothes, the teacup
dogs of gardeners. Snakes
whisper. Flowers shout.
5. When we set out to reach the Leng Plateau,
no one told us it's only nine feet high.
Nonetheless, the edge makes me dizzy.
Dark shapes approach, and I'm surrounded by
my sins, their songs of welcome, the clank of gifts.
-- Carl Bettis
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 28: Apotheoses
Apotheoses
Dirt transmutes itself into corn,
into sugar cane, into grass;
grass into cowflesh, goatflesh, milk;
wheat to mouse to fox
to carcass and back to dirt.
Add humans and add syrup, muffins,
fish sticks, dog kibble, butter,
jam: all manifestations of dirt.
Chattering or chirping or barking or purring, we
are noisy mud. Earth is where earth
looks at itself, sings to itself, holds itself,
forgets itself, hates itself,
uses itself, kills itself.
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 27: Let’s See What Happens
Let's See What Happens
"Ever notice that 'What the hell' is always the right answer?" -- Marilyn Monroe
Some of us are -- okay, I was --
born timid, or learn to fear mistakes before
learning to make them. Silent:
a blind friend would ask "Are you still here?"
every ten minutes. But jokes are good, jokes
are something you can hide
behind. I mean, I can. If you, or I, must
speak straight, quote. Keep
enthusiasms secret, nurse a crush
untold, and if you (I) make anything --
drawings, poems, songs -- know
it's nothing worth. And still
you, I, stumble, bruise, bleed
and cry. Still what I want
doesn't come nuzzling to my hand.
Some of us have to learn
to say What the hell?
For instance, you.
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 26: I Have My Reasons
I HAVE MY REASONS
(For Anne)
the tulips are deaf but that's not why
I don't like them
because they're pastel and of Sylvia Plath
milkweed crooks a finger and monarchs come
but not
no but
with sticky sap and smell and seeds tug fly
is milkweed so far there ago
your hair's a waterfall a lionleap an earthglow and
yes some
as well when my hands lose all weight and flutter every
where they nest
-- Carl Bettis
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 25: Bright bodies
Another visual/verbal thing. The graphic is assisted collage, but the text is my own. Click on the image to see a larger version.
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 24: Walking thru stubble
An untitled haiku-type thing.
Walking thru stubble
of grass and wild strawberry.
My forehead's growing.
-- Carl Bettis
NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 23: Shakespeare Shake
Today, April 23rd, is celebrated as Shakespeare's birthday. Above is a melding of three portraits of Shakespeare, and below is a mashup of lines from "The Rape of Lucrece," "Venus and Adonis" and the sonnets. (I have changed the punctuation here and there, but only that.) Happy Bard Day!
Shakespeare Shake
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,
I see a better state to me belongs
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.
That thou hast her it is not all my grief.
Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write;
From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view
Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head
To be admir'd of lewd unhallow'd eyes.
"What have you urg'd that I cannot reprove?"
This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear.
All entertain'd, each passion labours so,
Yet love breaks through and picks them all at last.
And all this dumb play had his acts made plain
And then my little heart were quite undone.
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- Carl’s First Law of Art: Thou Shalt
- NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 30, Poem 2: Dreams
- NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 30, Poem 1: Listen
- NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 29: Reasonable Things (Updated)
- NaPoWriMo 2013, Day 28: Apotheoses
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