February 10, 2024. Friday FEATHERS/SONNETT
“Here Is What I Believe”
Write a letter to your younger self, detailing, explaining, sharing, what you now, at this stage of life, truly and wholeheartedly believe. Can start each sentence “I believe”. What age are your drawn to, where are they sitting, what are they wearing, how are they feeling, pragmatic and practical or lyrical and whimsical. Keep short, 250 words, expand later if feeling called.
Book of Delights. Page 188
7 more essays, keep writing
1. 7 essays inspired by the anti num of your first word
2. 7 essays the tonal opposite of what you have been writing (praise or complain
3. change one parameter, more time, few words, write every other day
4.write a different form: emails are essays, speech as essay, grocery list as essay
RESOURCES: Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Allison
The Art of the Personal Essay edited by Phillip Lopate
Hermit crabs essays:
222.chillsubs.com/writeordie/features/unpacking-the-hermit:crab-essay
Brevity. Wordpress.com/2022/05/09/writing-hermit-crab-essays/
Punctuation revealer: https://just-the-punctuaion glitch me/
Long list of prompts:
HTTPS://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises?genre=37
Questions to ask to structure a more likely academic book:
T:TOPIC: the basics of the who, what, when and where. What is the book about?
H:HISTORIOGRAPHY What debates in this book intervening in? What does it add to challenge in these conversations?
O:ORGANIZXATION Is it thematic, chronological, innovative in any way? What can we learn by closely studying the table of contents about the hierarchy of the book’s argument, or by looking at chapter’s internal structure?
M:METHODOLOGY What methods does this book use, which archives, what approach does it take to analyzing its source?
A:ARGUMENT A simple statement of the book’s argument can be elusive, but how does THOM create/recreate the argument in different ways?
S; so what/ Or Stages or Significance. For readers who have no interest in the specifics of the topic or even the argument, why would this book be useful?
WRITING FOR FRIDAY:
Feathers/Thoughts/Whispers/Blue Sky/Sky/Clouds
Why write?
I was once told that if you can’t write a sentence, you don’t have a thought. In retrospect I wonder, if I had known what poetry way, could I have asked, what about poetry? Although insults from teachers were expected, questions from students were not. So, I continue to ask, what about poetry? What was the world I lived in like? It was very very quiet. I slept in a basement bedroom with two small windows, one of which I crawled out of after the sun set and I assumed everyone was asleep, quietly I walked over to my friend Gay’s house and she let me in.. We screamed and laughed and hit ping pong balls in the air, until finally her mother asked, “does your Mom know you’re here?” I don’t remember my answer, but we did quiet down after that.
So in this class once again we are tasked to write what we know, the assumption being that there are words that could paint a picture of silence, dark nights, giggles and goofiness. And if I can write about that, would that subject matter be worth writing about, it IS what I know, what I live and try to relive every day. with my friend Teresa as we go for our morning walks and talks on our cell phones, even though we are separated by over 500 miles. Thanks to her I get up in the morning in anticipation of an 8:15, 7:15 her time walk in the morning.
On Wednesday afternoon at 2 pm, that same friend of mine from grade school, who now lives 400 miles away in Arlington and I get together to learn to play the ukulele. I am learning songs I never knew. You see, she was actually connected to the current culture of our time: 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s, need I say more. I did my best to stay away, it was too noisy for me, and at the time too dangerous (alcohol and drugs were ubiquitous), I worked and decided to define who I wanted to be, to do that I had to regress back to my 15 year old self, isolated and quiet, yet knowledgeable about what she wanted, and I continued to focus on her and what she wanted and followed her desires. Oddly enough, developmentally that was probably the age I stayed at until I became a Mother.
So now when I write about Feathers, I think of a fallen feather, of birds retaining their feathers, of the sound of feathers flapping in the wind, kind of natures industrial sounds. Now I am surrounded by noise: music, visual, thoughts, physical discomfort, the whole 9 yards. At least I’m recovering those decades on my terms: music: keyboard, ukulele, harmonica, concertina……. What a great way to jump in!!!!
So If I were to write a Sonnet a day, what would that look like?
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