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Nancy Bauer (A Slow Motion Move)
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MJ (David Horowitz: Verminous Anti-Intellectual Hack)
alan (Happy Thanksgiving)
Dan Biston (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
jd (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
Dan Biston (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
jd (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
Five Exercises for Beginning · Aug 29, 08:40 PM
Carole is headed off to Spain for a week to teach a bookbinding class to American students studying in Madrid. So they will have books, but nada to put in them. That’s where I come in. These are four exercises I have used with beginning students to get them writing & to get them outside themselves. Use at your own risk.
Note: In doing these exercises, it is best to avoid abstract language, relying instead on direct description based on the five senses.
Zen Walk: When I say “Begin,” please get up & leave the room, walking at less than half your normal pace. Keeping this pace, go wherever you like as long as you can return here in fifteen minutes. As you walk, look around & make mental notes of anything that strikes your imagination. Don’t try to consciously remember, just make a mental note such as, “The light along the base of the wall,” or “a fly trapped in a spider’s web,” or “the sound of a truck going down the road.” Just say the phrase to yourself a couple of times & move on. When you return here, write down an account of your walk in any form you like: paragraph, list, poem, or a combination of these or other modes of writing. [Adapted from an exercise by Steve Kowit]
Memory Boxes: Imagine that you have two boxes into which you put memories. Not just any memories, but particularly strong or important memories. One box is for good & happy memories, the other for bad & unhappy memories. Sit still & fully imagine what each box looks like. Write down a detailed description of each box. There is no need to open either box, though you may decide to do so later & to write about what you find there. One way of doing this might be to make parallel lists in which you pair a good memory with a bad. You could then let the list become a poem or story.
What I Should Have Said: Recall an occasion when someone defeated you in a public argument. Recall how you felt. Begin writing with, “What I should have said was . . .” Be exhaustive. Go into great, even exaggerated detail. Demolish your opponent with your wit, superior intelligence & with plain old insult. Hold nothing back.
Writing the Blues: The traditional blues stanza consists of a pair of lines repeated more or less identically, followed by a line that makes a comment or tells part of a story:
Crying, ain’t going down this road myself
Said, I ain’t going town this long road myself
If I don’t carry you, girl, gonna carry somebody else.
Woke up this morning, looked around for my shoes
Woke up this morning looked around for my shoes
I swear to my soul I got them mean old walking blues.
Without necessarily using the diction of these lines – though perhaps an updated, slangy version of it – write a blues of at least five three-line stanzas. Imagine you are singing it.
Sentences: Write a sentence of one word followed by a sentence of two words followed by a sentence of three words & so on. See how long you can continue this exercise.
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