The Creative Writing Handbook, Chapter Four

The previous chapters concern, really, how to get going, from finding a comfortable space or place to mining your experience in its broadest definition to unearth the specific details effective writing requires.

And then you move to an introduction to the kind of language poetry and, really, effective writing must include.

This chapter concerns how to relate in words your experience in an emphatic manner. In this chapter and in your writing, you will practice the use of Figural Language, one of the writer's most precious tools that you began to utilize, perhaps, the first week of the term-- certainly you will do so in your revisions.

Now, read the pages carefully, for your authors present a wealth of practical information. Become familiar, for example, with metaphor and simile, with personification and metonymy.

You will discover quickly that these "rhetorical devices" will enrich all your writing even if using them "feels" at first awkward.

But you must often break old habits to get into the new habit of making your language richer and more evocative.

At first, using a metaphor or a similar or practicing with personification in a Haiku might feel odd--but jump into the world of fun and experiment with a certain glee. Anything new, from a new pair of shoes to a stick shift feels uncomfortable or odd at first.

This interesting web site, for example, offers some fine examples of rhetorical tools and provides you with a feel for the rich variety of choices available to you. Search the web for others you can share on the blog--or excellent examples from writing, such as that of this week's featured authors, Don Welch and Irish poet Eamonn Wall, who now teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. And, of course, Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry provides superb poetry from all over the country.

As the authors argue, "Although this chapter is primarily concerned with poetry, you will find figurative language in all writing genres" (62), including, I might add, e-mail and post cards: experiment, experiment, and enjoy the process and the results.

HOWEVER, you must practice. And, really, this class for eight weeks provides you with plenty of opportunities to practice and to share with a group of folks who share this experience and interest with you, a very special context for honing skills and building confidence.

When you do your writing exercises for this week, therefore, concentrate on making the comparisons that create rich images and sensations that fit the context in which you work--think, too, of tone.

Remember, too, that you must practice because you want to break old writing habits and instill, if you will, new ones. In other words, you want to get in the habit of producing energetic prose and emphatic images.

And, clearly, as e. e. cummings's poem indicates, images come in all shapes and sizes--and so do poems. What makes Cummings' "loneliness" work?

In the poem, the images connote certain emotions about, in this case, "loneliness." Indeed, the poem resembles with all the breaks a falling leaf. In cummings's capable hands, the very simple poem evokes certain feelings he attributes to the image. And we can, if you will, share in the experience and the feelings.

Now, in your poems for this week, you will have many opportunities to work with vivid images and figurative language. You will take, in one poem, a familiar object and make it special and specific to your readers.

Effective poetry is all about creating sensual images for a specific reason in a condensed format.

As the authors note, "Poetry moves from inside. Let your vision emerge first; then decide what form best expresses that vision" (66).

In effect you "image" for the reader your ideas, presenting "word pictures" (67).

Look at the wonderful images in "Fog" and the comparisons, cats and mist. And as William Carlos Williams indicates in "This is Just to Say," you can also have fun with poetry.

In your writing assignment about "food," you should feel free to imitate Williams's poem. If you do, however, read the poem very carefully, noting that Williams does not say directly "I am not sorry for eating that plum." Instead, he utilizes implication.

Well, you should feel free to write with zeal about zucchini if you like. Just work on making the images sharp and on using both figurative language and an appeal to the senses to bring the images and your ideas alive for your reader.

And you have images with which to work as well, specific photographs you will use this week and the next.

Note the connection between Breughel's famous painting (71) and William Carlos Williams's poem.

We will work more with William Carlos Williams next week, when you will do some specific poems inspired by various photographs. You, of course, will write this week a Haiku inspired by series of photographs linked previously.

For this week's writing, therefore, you want "to expand your word palette" (72), developing new ways to look and to use, well, words that you use to paint images on a page.

Read carefully, again, the section on Figurative Language and look over the web page linked previously. Check out the internet and post other sites of interest on the Discussion Threads for your fellow writers' enjoyment and edification.

You want to become familiar with the various rhetorical tools at your disposal, from allusion to alliteration, putting these tools into practice.

One of the Discussion Threads, in fact, asks you to discover these devices at play in the works by this week's featured writers from Road Trip--and, of course, from Ted Kooser's anthology of poems collected for you at American Life in Poetry. Feel free, too, to make references to what your fellow writers share.

Learning to spot these devices will help you utilize them in your own work and to appreciate all the more their powerful impact on the imagination. Play then with metaphor and simile in your assignment on simile (#3, 77) and on metaphor (#1, 78).

And enjoy this serious fun, by the way. Make the exercise both fun and revealing. And share your work with your fellow writers.

I. A. Richards offers a famous definition of metaphor, using the terms tenor and vehicle. Study the distinctions on Page 78 and put them to use on the second Discussion Thread, where, among other things, you will use a series of words as both a vehicle and a tenor.

This particular web page offers an interesting analysis of Richards's distinctions. Note what he has to say about ground:

A metaphor states that something is equivalent to another thing which is not usually associated with it--a metaphor tells, in other words, a lie.

A simile states that something is like another thing which it is not usually associated with. For example,

Your exercise asks you to use specific items as both tenor and vehicle; as you will see, the "ground" shifts.

Check out, too, what the previously linked page has to say about other "figures of speech," including synecdoche, metonymy, personification, conceit, and apostrophe. Use these devices with a certain economy to ensure their vibrant impact on the reader and your writing.

This link provides a very nice glossary of literary terms you might just mark as a favorite.

Pay attention to the distinctions made, for anything can serve as a symbol, especially a personal symbol. For example, you can write a poem about a tree in your grandfather's back yard that played an essential role in your childhood.

On the other hand, an Olive Tree has certain literary connections; and you have public trees as well, ones connected, say, with a specific country, as in Cedar in Lebanon.

Do not let the word "symbol" trouble you. Just try your best to make the image with which you choose to work resonate, if you will, with particular associations that hold together and reinforce one another.

Therefore, when you write your poems about an object, use evocative details, senses, comparisons to make the object come alive. The bringing alive in a specific context breathes life into the image.

Relying on your personal experience will help you firmly ground the poem, reaching the truth as discussed in your text.

In addition, refrain from trying to sound profound. Again, aim for the truth through vivid details.

Remember that you will have an opportunity to revise as we progress thorough the semester. And you will learn a lot from your fellow writers.