The Imagotherapy Clinic
by Teflon (Member) - published: October 12, 2004
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I am starting this clinic to cure the image block hindering me from describing imrpessions and images. See how it makes my writing stilted, methodical and bulky?

This thread might help many others, too. The clinic's doctor, Windchime, has been gracious to contribute her time to prompting and providing feedback to the responses.

The first assignment from Windchime( http://www.lit.org/view/18845#47617 )is:

1- Horsebackriding in the forest
2- Your breakfast cereal
3- The couch potato blues
4- Thunderstorm with power failure
5- In the aftermath of sex

I took No. 1 trhough 2:

1. Reins clutched for life,
the chestnut charger yearns
He sees hope for open spaces
And I just trees.

2. Like a promising cocoon
Monring-fresh mind awakes,
the brand-new day grows bright
As the virginal milk,
thoughts crackle and pop
to the rhythm of flakes.

Revelation took No. 3, "Couch Potato Blues":

The promising sun
Winking between slats
Keeps pondering me
Hidden in cushions of images
Pale and shuddered
Weak at the knees

Let's see what the Doctor says.

Comments

The following comments are for "The Imagotherapy Clinic"
by Teflon

In the aftermath of sex

Uncovered flesh, glistening, hot
Candles burned at both ends.
Still thirsting for each other.
Breathless from the pleasure.

( Posted by: snapshot [Member] On: October 12, 2004 )

clinic, first visit
Teflon (#1): Meh. You don't have a "holistic" experience here. The rider, the horse and the forest don't unify in this poem:
L1 sounds like it's about the rider: unclear if this is a first-time rider who "clutches" the reins, or if this is a long-time hourly-rental horsebackriding horse whose reins are "clutched for life" by rider after rider.
L2: here, we see only as far as the horse's colour. This reader cannot visualize what the horse's yearning looks like. What does a yearning horse resemble? Is there a posture change in the horse? What does the rider sense at the reins? What is the horse saying in the sounds he might make? How does the light/darkness fall through the trees on the horse and its rider? What does the horse smell, hear? Is the rider speaking to the horse? Is the rider yearning? Basically, you want to "show" the horse as believably "yearning". What simile/comparison/metaphor might be welcome here to allow the reader a fully focused view of this yearning horse (and its rider)? If these trees are prohibitive to this "charger" horse and he is frustrated down to a slow walk, then you can image them together (gnarled snarled huff highstepping the old growth roots, I don't know...)
L3 How does a horse see hope for open spaces? The reader needs a look at the horse's eyes seeing this hope. Follow the movements of this horse's head and write them down. Again, get tropes in there.
L4 This line can stand on its own provided the rest of the poem develops this horse's yearning and his vision of hope.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 12, 2004 )

Clinic, second visit
Teflon (#2) Ah! I liked this much better. Remember "exhilaration". The topic of your poem can be terminally boring, like breakfast cereal, and you can still experience exhilaration creating a poem on that topic. You're still not having enough fun with this poem, but you're enjoying it more than the first horse poem. How do I know this? You're risking more. You start with a comparison, a great one, a "promising coccoon".
L2: "morning-fresh" is not a universal descriptor for the awakening mind. Night shift workers might not feel morning-fresh as they eat their breakfast cereal before hitting the sack... What does the mind look like, awakening? How does it emerge from its promising coccoon? The mind is something vague and unseen. Maybe you'll need less wide-angle here, as in choosing, among functions of the mind, one only and focusing on it and its emergence: say you choose "decision"; you can then think about which decision (could be which "cereal") and figure out two or three steps in its coccoon unravelling. You've risked this comparison, now you have to stay with it until you've had your fun gambling it at the reader. You identify your idea: it can burst out of its coccoon, or it can peek out of it; you plan to execute this idea, the coccoon falls to the ground, or shrivels, or whatever, you change your mind, another coccoon appears. It was a "promising" coccoon. What does it deliver? Does it grow thinner, transluscent to the bright new day?
L3: you wrote the "brand" new day with, on a preconscious level, the idea of "brand" name cereal. This poem doesn't need a brand-new day. It needs simply a new day.
L4: the virginal milk is nice. I like it. It's virginal as it's poured for the first time from its container.
Last two lines: okay, flakes have no rhythm on their own. People who are "flakes" have rhythm, and, if it's your intention to show people-as-flakes here, it's not clear. If the flakes are actual cereal, you can have them crackling and popping, to the rhythm of thoughts. But then, which thoughts have these rhythms?
which thoughts crackle and which pop? What happens to thoughts after they are lifted on the spoon? which ones fall off the spoon? which ones run down your chin? What do you do with them?
etc. etc. Following this kind of process, letting it run its course is fun, playful, and invites the exhilaration of the creative process. Images will beg to be invited to that.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 12, 2004 )

help?
... hm. i don't get this thread. is it open to ... anybody?

( Posted by: die_daily [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Sure is..............
Here is the start of this idea. Should clear everything up. ;)
http://www.lit.org/view/18845#47617

( Posted by: snapshot [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Three, Revelation
I applaud this for how you asssign your two most important images in this poem.
First, the image of the sun being the active participant in L1-3, and the speaker, the passive "receiver" of this sun. How better to show a human's passivity than to ascribe personifying qualities to something like the sun?
This, in particular, was the best choice you made writing this poem. It reaches for, and quenches, the reader's thirst for a poet's vision.
Second, the reader gets another pleasant surprise, in that the actual couch potato is not the speaker, but the images. The image of the "images" being couch potatoes in L4-6, and the speaker being left weak from this, is also a winner.
Ordinary, image-poor, would have been the speaker looking at the sun, and the speaker being the couch potato. You have allowed your poet's soul to play games with your images. Exhilarating, eh?
Again, a boring topic for a poem, made exhilarating by the poet's choices.
In addition to the exhilaration, the poem-in-making needs to be the poet's "sacred ground". A realationship of respect between the poet and the poem must exist before the poet experiences the glory and exhilaration of a successfully imaged poem.
I suspect this happened to you, Revelation: the speaker in your poem begins at a "respectful" distance from the "promising" sun, and ends, with the sun, observably, continuing to "promise".
L3-4: an overlay of imagery exists here: the images are stuffed into cushions, hidden, and the speaker is, him/herself, hidden among these. This is another treat for your reader, another "discovery".
Overall, this poet's poem about writing, is an image of hope: the now-passive writer is weak at the knees, hence "going nowhere" away from images, and will write again.
Here, hope found its image, whereas the horse seeing hope for open spaces, did not.
Congratulations, Revelation, on imagery well chosen, well assigned and nicely vehicled. No follow-up necessary (cliche clinic image...)

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Four, Snapshot
Before entering into the poem, entering into the poem's topic, with imagination: here, a presumably easy topic, easy to imagine, everybody has sex, everybody knows what it feels like to "have had" sex, everybody can relate to a universally accepted set of images. Easy topic=easy poem to write, with easy access to good images. Not necessarily that simple, cut and dry.
Unlike breakfast cereal and couch potatoes, sex is not perceived by most readers as a boring topic. Rather, it is perceived as an exhilarating topic, hence, exhilaration should be easy to access in order for the most incredible images to enter here unresevedly. Again, not necessarily: there can be a most boring dearth of good images in the aftermath of sex.
Luckily this is not the case in this poem.
Here is the first "image choice" Snapshot made: The topic became the poem's title. This restricts both the choice of subject and the choice of images that will come into this poem. The reader now knows that we will not be in the presence of two turtles or two llamas having "gotten it on". We will be in the presence of humans. And the reader will expect human-related images in the poem.
The reader is fine with the poet's choice, even if this topic has been "done to death". It doesn't matter. The reader gives the poet the benefit of the doubt and sets out to discover what poetic vision lives here.
L1: without any mention of it, the reader gets the image of a source of light. These lovers are not in total darkness, because no flesh glistens in total darkness without a source of light external to itself.
L2: the source of light is identified: "candles", which is what the reader might have suspected, this being one of the "universal-type" images associated with humans having, or having had, sex. No surprise there, no discovery yet, no hint at the exhilaration this poet felt in the play of creating this.
Ah, but then, the rest of the poem is having its fun! The lovers are shown as being candles burned at both ends, which is suggestive of a complex, emotionally untidy, human experience. This is believable: we are all creatures of complexity and a measure of emotional untidiness. The reader relates, the image of the candle has been "extended", played with, and the reader still feels free to imagine actual "candlelight" in this scene. Image-poor would have been a candle being only a candle. The fact that a metaphor was used here enriches the imagery appreciably.
L3-4: Snapshot makes another "image" choice, and narrows choices down, at the same time. Any (or every) body part could have been focused on, or even casually alluded to, in the aftermath of sex. Snapshot chooses the mouth. Note that the word "mouth" is absent from this poem, yet this reader finds this word anyway, through its images, conveyed in "thirsting" and "breathless". The image of the aftermath of sex here then becomes one of these lovers and their mouths, an image that, most often, is seen in the "prelude" to sex. From the image to the meaning, there is consistency, in that they are "still" thirsting, so the aftermath could very well become a prelude and they will have sex again. Again, another example of hope finding its image.
Snapshot, images are more attracted to ideas than they are to themes. A suggestion: write your poem first, find its title later.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Imogotherapy assignment #4

Jagged light, crashing downward,
taking tree limbs from their homes.
Eerie darkness fills the air,
Tired linemen, grab their gear.

* Subject not the title ;) Thanks for taking the time to comment Lucie.

( Posted by: Snapshot [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Five, Snapshot
Overall your aftermath of sex piece is more successful than this one, imagistically. Why?
L1: in an attempt, perhaps, to tighten your text, and to step away from triteness, you have done away with flashing light and crashing thunder. Then, you have ascribed crashing to the light. Of the four words, three are great: jagged, light, and downward. Crashing is iffy, as a "good" image. Zero in on how the lightning looks, in the brevity of its strike: it could look like a "spastic torch", maybe, one of "unseen origin". These are just my free associations, not necessarily good examples, but you get the process: it's about a search for the most accurate, perfect image to convey the experience.
L2: this is pretty good: the reader gets that a tree limb is a branch and its home is the trunk, and imagines the trunk as shedding branches into homelessness. There should be no ambiguity when you create an image, and here, there isn't. Well executed image.
L3: eerie darkness is good. Fills the air, meh. Why? Because the air is always filled with something. It is a trite expression. How do you fix this? You can find something else for the eerie darkness to do. Or, you can find soomething else to situate your eerie darkness in the air. Or, you can play, exhilarated in the creation of an image. Let me play with this one. Okay: "eerie darkness fails the air". Fails rather than fills. Big deal, right? Well, wait a minute; it creates an interesting image, one that is unusual in this experience: the air had some kind of expectation from its darkness, and the darkness did not deliver. The reader begins to think hmmm, maybe the expectation for more lightning is not met. Maybe lightning is less eerie than darkness. Again, it's just me playing. I'm sure you can come up with something incredible, in the place of the rather ordinary "fills the air".
L4: Uh huh. And what if the linemen were afraid, in their fatigue, what if the reader got a sense of their panic? It would be unexpected. The linemen are rock solid dudes unaffected by lightning, and we all expect that. It would be an exciting surprise if they were just like the rest of us poor chickens... The gear could grab them, or they could freeze, terrified, or, whatever you decide might create a privileged moment here.
The fun part is imagining these linemen as possibly going to work, or possibly going home.
You've left this up to the reader: nice move.
Overall, I found it very interesting that no thunder is heard. The usual "choice" is about the moment of the "right here" storm, where thunder follows lightning almost immediately.
This is a welcome twist.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Teflon-Homework 1-2
[I had the whole day to meditate on Doctor's feedback. I submit my redone homework}

1.
My macho stallion obeys a tug on the rein,and we are one brawny animal flying through Mad Bear clearing, splashing along Lone Wolf Creek, through brazen nettles, thundering by the ghoulish Big Foot's Cabin, barraging through the labyrinth and right onto the highway. No, Mr. Ranger, I didn't know there were grizzlies back there.

2.
Ah, the bouquet! The creamy utopia of the down-at-the-farm cream, the ice-cream flavor pasteurized down to the aftertaste of rich tofu! Yes, this is definitely a gift from a Holstein flock after a perfect day at meadows of clover and bluegrass and a some oat straw. Sugar-frosted flakes? It�s a sin! I�ll have Lucky Charms on the side, to rinse my palate with this white-as-the-heavenly-snow balsam, to suddenly remember myself as the happiest of breast-fed babies.

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 13, 2004 )

Inspired by my cereal
I was inspired by breakfast this morning, and here's how I feel about my cereal:

I am struggling still with these choices
A box of yellow
A box of blue
Some are grand old classics
Some are sweet and bright and new
I like the plain, or peanut-buttery
But honestly
In the scope of things
Too tired to care
Too tired to choose

( Posted by: Revelation [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Teflon's "new" horse
Now, you're playing! And the images have responded to their poetic rendez-vous: they're all over the poem, all clamoring for space and importance, all succeeding in acquiring these: "one brawny animal flying"..."splashing"..."thundering"..."barraging", "brazen nettles", "ghoulish...cabin"; then "highway" so soon after labyrinth": an image serving to accelerate the already rapid "pace": very effective.
Certainly, if "Mad Bear Clearing", and "Lone Wolf Creek" exist anywhere in the world, you have taken your readers there.
You have unified your poem, too. It is a far cry from your rather fragmented first horse poem.
Yep: vital signs much improved! Images are now what creates the life in this poem, to the point of ecstasy.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Teflon's next cereal
From the beginning to "oat straw": a vista of wine-tasting applied to milk: I love it! Especially inasmuch as all the steps of wine-tasting are observed, no, wait a minute, the first one is missing: you're not "looking" at the milk: maybe start with "looking" at the milk, so you can have a perfectly executed image-for-image parallel to wine-tasting.
This first part of your poem was fun: you got into it from the beginning. You respected your poem-in-making, and you let your images in through the wide-open door of an "idea": "milk-tasting".
Second part, after "oat straw": you're staying with your vista, and developping it, with the same parallel, i.e. only cooking wine gets mixed with food, and, seeing as you've just gone into "milk-tasting" and given it your connoisseur's approval, there is going to be only one logical way to eat cereal, now. ON THE SIDE!
What a treat it was for this reader to discover all that in a poem where exhilaration enters with the bouquet and maintains its effect until the breast-fed baby.
Teflon has allowed images into this poem by way of a "vista": once the milk-tasting decision was made, the images crowded in: "...farm cream", "ice-cream flavor", "aftertaste of tofu", "Holstein...in meadows...of clover...bluegrass...straw"

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Pen's horse
Here is a good example of making choices in imagery and narrowing these choices down.
First, making the choices: The poet decides what will be important to the rider of this horse and how the importance of this is going to move the reader.
Penelope decides that experiencing this ride through the senses will be important to the speaker in the poem. Then, she decides how she will convey the importance of this to the reader.
She goes with "sense" and "sensation".
Second, narrowing down the choices: of the five senses, Penelope stays with three: touch, smell, hearing. Then, she chooses how much to give to each:
L1-3: all tactile, for maximum effect of both sense and sensation: the hair, boots, and thighs are all touched differently by the branches. The reader "sees" this horse in motion with its rider among the trees. It takes eleven words to do this, and the tactile experience is already more than satisfactory. The order "brush"..."slap"..."poke" is random, and the repetition of these tactile sensations is written into the "ride".
L4: olfactory, and this sense needs only one line to achieve "sensation".
L5: auditory, with two very different sounds, in their nature, quality, and intensity. Together, the snapping twigs and thudding hooves create a sensation.
L1-5: sense and sensation combine, for "sensational" effect, successfully.
L6: I don't know enough about horsebackriding to decide whether this statement is a fact, an observation, or a feeling. The "visual" of the peat doesn't take on the same importance as the senses in the previous lines. And that's because of the informative undertones of this statement-type line.
L7-9: Ah, the surprise! The late-but-welcome introduction of a visual element specific to this horse and this rider: there are no reins. The rider is "clinging to the matted mane". The combination, here, of the visual and the tactile, creates another aspect of sensation, one more complex, and appropriate for the end of this poem. One gets the feeling of something that starts out with one sensation at a time, then progresses.
It is in these three lines, also, that the poet is "playing".
Again, about respect for the poem and exhilaration: in this poem, the respect is in L1-6, the exhilaration, in L7-9. No exhilaration is possible without respect. No exceptional image arrives without exhilaration.
Penelope has done "respect" of, and "exhilaration" in, her poem, chronologically.
This poet needs only a few words for many images. And her images are all zoomed-in and focused.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Pen's cereal/couch potato
Okay, how much fun is this? Every line plays here, in what the poet has created as privileged circumstances.
Just like in her horse poem, Penelope makes choices. This time, they are not "sense" choices, they are "circumstance" choices. Either way, both choice processes come from an idea. Ideas invite images. Good ideas invite good images. Great ideas invite great images.
Pen's great idea, and first choice: [a poem about "me" at my vegging-out best and for that I'll need both the couch potato and the breakfast cereal topics.]
Why is this a great idea? Because it stems from the "ordeal" in the poet's creative process. No creative process is fun-to-begin-with. The fun comes after the process is engaged in. Before the play, there is the ordeal, i.e. finding the best initial thrust to the creative process.
Okay, back on track, with the circumstance choices: place and person. Again, narrowed down.
The choice of place: the poet chooses not to repeat the word "couch", which is already implied in the topic given.
L1: from the get go, an image: the reader doesn't expect to see more than head and neck of this speaker. An afghan is big enough to wrap into.
L2-3: the person. The person flashes back to a past that pokes fun at "good old days" and "industrious". The person pokes fun at self. Spoken, these two lines would pause before "good" and "industrious". The reader is swept into this, excitedly anticipating what might be better than these good old industrious days. There is going to be a surprise. The poet is playing. The reader is exhilarated.
L4-6: Yep. Still in that afghan. To the neck. Doesn't need a spoon...The image of this particular milk is vivid, precise, specific, any more focused would be impossible to achieve...
L7-11: where the poem comes together with both topics for double the fun. How better to illustrate a couch potato, than to write the crunching of cereal as an effort?
again, the person: patience and waiting, from the ordeal to the fun, crispy ordeal, rigor, soggy fun, playfulness. The poet's respect for the poem is here too, as is the respect for the choices made.
This is a poem about "me". Which images of "me" must be chosen for this thread?
Ones that will create a counterpoint to the good old industrious days...

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Revelation's cereal
Exactly. Who says the cereal needs to be eaten, or even seen? In the same way the aftermath of sex can be royal jelly around a queen bee...
L2-3: cereals are, usually, boxed; and the predominant background colour on the box is what distinguishes them by type, brand name, contents. This is plenty enough to "imagine" the two cereals. Blue and yellow are colours commonly found on cereal boxes (Shreddies come in a yellow box and Rice Krispies come in a blue box, for example; everybody knows this).
L4-5: here is where it gets interesting. The "grand old classics" is an identifier which is not specific to boxed cereal. The same goes for "sweet and brand new".
The grand old classics can be 18th century composers of music, 19th century novelists, Antiquity philosophers, and the list goes on.
Sweet and brand new can be an infant, a little girl's dress, never worn, Charlotte Church when she was 13...
These 2 choices of wide-ranging images distract the reader from the breakfast cereal. Was the poet writing this momentarily distracted as well? Perhaps. The act of choosing requires distraction, and this whole piece is about choosing. The "distraction" here is a component of the poem. It does not fragment the poem.
L6: getting more specific. Started out with just the colour of the box, went from that to how long each cereal has been on the market, and now, we're down to what's inside, in terms of flavour. Again, "plain, or peanut-buttery" are not specific descriptors of boxed cereal. Plain can be anything unadorned, from a hat to a gold band to a finger nail. Peanut-buttery can be toast or cookies or muffins or the kiss of a small child eating peanut butter.
It is entirely appropriate, here, to be choosing non-specific descriptors. The cereal is still in the box!
L1-6: We can imagine this speaker just looking from box to box, elbows on the table, chin perched on hands. Or maybe, lifting one box in one hand another in the other hand, putting both down...etc.
L7-10: "honestly"; this is important. The distraction is what wins out in the end. The choice will not be made. Maybe sleep is preferable...
For those of you reading this thread, notice I haven't said anything about fun or exhilaration or play in this poem. This is because this poem never got there. Why not?
This poem is still struggling with its "ordeal", its pre-creative imprint. This ordeal must be appealing to the poet. Lack of appeal of the ordeal will not invite the best images. A poet repelled by the ordeal will be "blocked".

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Toxic
Okay, I hope I can jump in when the tide of patients slow down a bit.

( Posted by: PETERPAULINO [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Pen's aftermath
Same as her other two poems, Penelope is, again, making choices. Just as she made a sense/sensation choice in her horse poem, she is now making a conscience/consciousness choice in this one. This is going to be about inner thoughts and about awareness. How are the images going to find their places in this "playground" of intra-psychic processes?
It will happen in a string of consecutive "moments", with a very subtle, almost imperceptible, progression between these "moments". It will happen with attention to detail. Choices of process. This is a good move. Content will follow process.
L1-2: Awareness of the first of the moments. The rumpled linen and salubrious sweat are comfortable, and comforting. A good entry into the subject.
L3-4-5: Awakening to the second of the moments. I am my body. You are your body. I'm touching you. All of this is both believable and expected. Sex is physical. Women touch men after sex. This gesture in itself is not part of the playfulness of creating the poem.
L6-7: Entering the third of the moments, with some reverence. A moment of the "conscious". These lovers have had their aftermath of sex cigarettes and the ardent aroma mixes with that. This is a good image.
L8-10: This fourth moment comes up short on imagery of consciousness because the word "slumber" is followed by another awareness in the final two lines. It comes up short on imagery of conscience because of the word "mutual". There was mutuality in the image of snapshot's candles burned at both ends. Snapshot illustrated his mutuality. Penelope did not.
L11-12: creating a final moment from an afterthought: this image is outstanding and certainly compensates for the failed mutuality in the previous lines. First of all, it is a product. A wonderful surprise for a reader who "got used to" this process-driven poem. Secondly, this assumption is as refined as it is sensual. Finally, "I am a shucked pearl" is a gutsy, primal affirmation. Ending with a metaphor always appeals.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 14, 2004 )

Teflon-The Ride and Milk Redone
1.
A tug on the rein
and we are trotting through the Meadow of Death,
the brawny stallion is my ship,
I have no fear;
We are flying through Mad Bear clearing,
splashing through Lone Wolf Creek,
stomping brazen nettles
leaping over the hulks of Devil�s Logs pines,
thundering by the ghoulish Big Foot's Cabin,
trampling the labyrinth of ferns
and right onto the Dismal Moor highway.
Yes, Mr. Ranger, I know there are grizzlies back there.

2.
Ah, the bouquet! The wintry-field utopia of the down-at-the-farm cream,
The ever-perceptible viscosity of the plentiful whiteness lingering at its shores,
I swirl the ambrosia onto the walls of the glass � what a heavenly treat to watch the lissome flow return to the nourishing lake,
And though its ice-cream flavor has been pasteurized down to the aftertaste of rich tofu, I still savor it.
Yes, this is definitely a gift from a Holstein flock, I can almost taste the idyllic day at meadows of clover and bluegrass and bountiful oat straw.
Sugar-frosted flakes? It�s a sin! I crunch Lucky Charms, on the side: the sugary stars, crescents, hearts, the rumpus-room taste of marshmallows � it is nothingness, it is lowly cat food which I rinse off my palate with this white-as-the-heavenly-snow balsam.
Suddenly I am the happiest of breast-fed babies.

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 15, 2004 )

Wow windchime!
Your analysis was very perceptive. "Lack of appeal of the ordeal will not invite the best images". Now THAT is a revelation. Thank you.

( Posted by: Revelation [Member] On: October 15, 2004 )

My storm
Too thick a noise for any song-maker,
a discarded rumble gathers its effort
at synapses firing from heaven
into the junction of a mountain's pain.
The nerve center of this lightning
escapes me into electrical coma,
pulls at my own darkness.
My candle, a comfort prop.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 16, 2004 )

classic windchime: Verb Liberation
This Storm is an example of the most liberated imagination. That's a pathetic description. I'd say, learning the meaning of verbs, metaphors and similes, that's what I am doing here at the clinic.

Even the scientific "synapses" from which I would shirk, are instantly un-nerdified by the liberated verbs. That's it--the verb liberation!!!

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 16, 2004 )

cj's post, "Darkness"
No lights
Darkness in and out
Feel stumble candles lit
A hush, patience stirs, shadows dance
Black out

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 17, 2004 )

Teflon, take three
Sorry I've been gone. I'm on 12-hour night shifs this weekend and it's fairly busy. But let's look at horse and cereal again.
I don't know what you mean by "verb liberation", Teflon: is it free the poem of all its verbs, or free the poet into employing liberating verbs, what do you mean? Anyway, I wasn't going to touch "language", was going to look only at images, or the lack of them. I still want to do that.
Okay, the horse:
Choices: speed, trotting, galloping, i.e. the forest is not an option. The choice will be to begin the poem with an exit from the forest.
L1-2: don't touch a thing!
L3-4: "we are one brawny animal flying" (from your seceond draft) is a more intensely immediate image than what you have here.
L5-10: only the structure here needs tweaking. The way you have it now, all the lines resemble each other in structure. If you vary the structure, this ride will be even more fun. In your second draft, you gave your reader a sense of the horse's sudden arrival on the highway, and the reader imagines this horse coming to a sudden, dead stop in front of the ranger. This was good. Maybe you can play with these lines here before you reach the final two, in a way that will accelerate the "progress" of the horse, and up the ante of his dead stop. For that, you'll have to tweak your verbs a little.
Your place names are fine.
L11: I would get rid of "right onto", maybe put in something announcing the meeting about to take place; "face to windshield with a jeep" is just my idea, but you get it, the horse needs to stop before the rider talks to the ranger.
L12: Don't touch a thing.

Next, the cereal, or rather, the milk.
Okay, now there is too much in here. Now, you have to make choices about what you want to stay with and what should go. You can keep everything if you want to, but it reads with more difficulty this way.
L1- you have not one, but two hyphenated adjectival stand-ins. Pare the line down. The bouquet can stay. The rest needs editing.
L2- again, too much here. So much, in fact, that the meaning becomes unclear. Shores of what? I would stay with "plentiful whiteness", maybe "lingers, viscous", and toss the rest.
L3- "what a heavenly treat to watch" is, again, excessive. I love "lissome flow". What "nourishing lake"?
L4- wordy. How about "ice-cream flavour pasteurized/ and I savour rich tofu,/ an aftertaste" (just a thought...)
L5- wordy. How about the idea, again, of narrowing the focus on behalf of the image. " An entire Holstein flock, one single gift, one perfect day :/clover, bluegrass, bountiful oat straw, vintage".
Then, from the Sugar-frosted flakes, to the marshmallows is fine. After that, it might be a good idea to showcase this as an "afterthought", a counterpoint to the "aftertaste" of the tofu. Here, you can keep your much-hyphenated adjective: it's on its own...
Images can lose their clarity in too much language. Also, they can lose their beauty.
Don't let this happen...

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 17, 2004 )

Teflon
I hope you can have part two of this, with a new set of topics.

Would you post a new one? :)

( Posted by: PETERPAULINO [Member] On: October 17, 2004 )

Peter: up for grabs

Take whatever number. Just be easy on Dr. Windchime.

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 17, 2004 )

Cj's darkness
L1: "no light" would have alluded to any light, one of natural source, (sun, stars, moon) or one of manufactured source (fire, electricity). By choosing "no lights", plural, cj narrows down her choice of light source, to "electrical". Immediately, the reader is in the presence of a power failure.
L2: this image is open and versatile, merely by the language cj chooses for it: the "in and out" could be indoors and outdoors, or it could be the lights going in and out of darkness, which would be a nice way of saying "flickering", or it could be a darkness within the observer and exterior to the observer speaking. Carol gives the reader several possibilities for understanding the world she creates. Because her image of darkness is clear and focused, albeit abstract, her image remains powerful and effective, and does not slip into ambiguity. A boring, not-so-good image of darkness would have been restrictive, such as darkness in the house and outdoors. The reader's imagination would nave been given no "play".
The way Carol chooses to bring "darkness" to the reader is more fun and more satisfying.
L3: another choice was made in the space between line 2 and line 3: the choice of illustrating blindness. Carol said to herself :"in the darkness, I can't see". Which is absolutely true. Sighted people see nothing in darkness. The blindness that results will be sudden, transitory, and disquieting. The reader expects this now, because the assumption is made that this is not a blind person speaking to begin with. This is a sighted person experiencing blindness in the dark. A blind person will not stumble in the dark.
The choice of "feel" and "stumble", and the order in which they've been written suggests the unreliability of this "feeling". You feel yet you still stumble: another reminder of how much a sighted person relies on eyes and on light to see by.
L4: "A hush" suggests there was not total silence before, otherwise the hush wouldn't have been noticed. Indeed, it is quite possible that the feeling and stumbling in the previous line were "noisy", even "voicy", to warrant a "hush" now.
Aha, the stirring of patience: an image which carries with it its own antithesis. The reader perceives patience to be still and quiet, and to risk becoming "impatience" if it should "stir". Again, patience could be stirring something external to itself: does patience stir the speaker? Perhaps. This is the "play", in "patience stirs", where something might be risked, in the name of exhilaration. However,
"shadows dance" doesn't do it for me. Too many shadows have danced for too long. Shadows, I think, need something else to do in this playground, besides "dance".
L5: All the lit candles from line three have blown out: this potentiates the stirring of patience up one notch. A stirring patience can play tricks on you, to the point of blowing out the candles this speaker lit when patience was still "still".
These indoor consequences of thunderstorm are a nice result of an externally-determined process of choice, in this case, the form of the poem itself.
The poet still needs to choose, internally, the imagery that will adorn the poem, "tame" the images enough to inhabit the wilderness the poem was, when in the making. Images are not the fancy finishing work on a construction site, waiting for their task of beauty. If the poem is the construction site, whether or not it has a set form, images are the construction "sight". They are the poet's vision.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 17, 2004 )

Pen's power outage
Just as the storm itself appears a random incidental occurence, the poet chooses to show the experience of the storm as thoughts and gestures in no particular order, amassed as the result of the "incident".
It is a left-brain disposition of everybody's to want to make order out of chaos, and to restore a sense of the comfortable, in any given situation. At first glance, it looks exactly like that here, somebody looking to exert control over the loss of control a power outage causes. Except this poet's right brain takes the poem over:
L1-4: images of disorder and disorganization are created by the sentence fragments, which answer to no syntax. The poet's consciousness goes from her own thoughts and gestures to the dog with no transition, just as storms go from one physical manifestation to another with no observable transition.
The "flashes" are that of lightning, but could also be "ideas": where might those candle stashes be? The image of "flashlight" also enters here.
L5-8: the ante is up: the random disorganization of everything accelerates with more direct manifestations of the storm. There are more consequences to how this storm persists in being "savage": the speaker can't "tame" a disposable lighter. Again, the "wick" could be a candle wick, or a kerosene lamp wick, but here, it's a trope: the poet's patience/wits/etc. shown as a "wick" and shown as being made shorter by "blunders".
L8: thunderbolts as highlighter for blunders: isn't that fun?
L9-12: response, after the initial reaction of needing to "see": the realization that electrical appliances don't work, the realization that there is nothing productive left to do, that nothing was brought "under control" through the aimless thoughts and gestures. The decision: "bed", and one can easily see the dog following this speaker there...
Okay, creative, right-brain decisions and imagery.
There have been 3 recent posts of the storm topic: mine, Carol's and Pen's. While I chose to look at what the storm is and does, Carol and Pen chose to look at what they are and do in the storm. How do these choices get made? Preconsciously. On some level, some associative work is done, and I suspect it's right-brain activity, as a precursor to the creative impetus. It's long, long after this that Carol's poem becomes a cinquain, and Pen's poem becomes a work of ABBA rhyme. The images any finished poem will finally showcase come from that creative impetus, not from the concrete crafting of the thing. That's why the attraction to the ordeal of creating is so important. May that attraction always be there!

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 17, 2004 )

Dr. Windchime: Verb Liberation, Milk �n� Horse
By verb liberation I mean liberating verbs from their average roles, associating them eith images heretofore unknown to them.

I am still doing exercises with the multi-adjective images. Something pull me into that direction. Can you give me general pointers, maybe you see in the Milk �n� Horse work a pattern that gets in the way?

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 21, 2004 )

Teflon, my friend
First of all, my deepest gratitude to you for getting me my own thread the way you did. This vote of confidence did wonders for my self-worth as a poet. I love that you, and others, believe in my ability to do images in poetry.
As far as your horse and milk exercises go, your second set (of the 3) appealed to me most.
I always get a sense of the "pompous" when too many adjectives arrive on the poem's scene. Rather than serving to clarify, and perhaps rarefy, the image, adjectival excess is only that, "excess". Choose the adjective that sounds best when spoken. Play with its placement, even though the English language (in prose) likes its adjectives in front of its nouns; write your noun, follow with a comma, place your adjective, follow with a comma.
The way you have your third milk exercise now, would work as a stand-up routine to parody a wine-tasting snob posing at a poetry reading (...) Mind you, there's money in that...

Again, thank you, Tef.
Lucie

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 23, 2004 )

Dr.? Wind? how wonderful
I wanted to stop by and tell you I enjoyed this thread alot. I want to read it over several times again and I think this was such a GREAT idea, kudos to you and your Patients Doc. Suitable name even on here Wind.......Like that.
You deserve to have your ego boosted.

Dar

( Posted by: dareva [Member] On: October 23, 2004 )

On Dr. Windchime
I guess what's at work here is "what goes around, comes around." I didn't think I was anywhere good enough where I needed no constructive criticism. So I openly asked for help. In helping me, Windchime found unexpected help too.

I am back to drawing board, doing exercises on verbs and adjectives, reading them over, just like the doctor advised.

Maybe I'll come up with standup comic material!

Teflon

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 24, 2004 )

Windchime-The Couch Potato
[an]Windchime, I couldn't write this as a poem[/i]

(1)It is a circus of commercials, its colors strobing, mesmerizing, as California voices peddle plastic.
Back to the show, adjust the volume, like this, loud enough but definitely not deafening.
My cordless phone-where are you? And where are you, the remote? Here�s the remote.

(2)Push the special button, it rouses my cordless, my link to the outside world, what else would allow me do business with my banks while watching the reality shows.

(3)I love them, I can�t afford to go to the bathroom. I drink fluids after the shows only. Maybe I should think of rigging up a bag, like those hospital patients have, so I don�t have to go the bathroom? I�ll make a note of this on my snack table on wheels. If I kick it right it will scoot straight into the kitchen.

(4)MTV! Finally, the silky Whitney Hughston. I don�t see her much these days. What a treat! What a paradise: my VCR is blinking and ready.

(5)Here�s my space-age remote. It blinks, too, a reminder: channel 55, TV Classics, Star Trek. I switch over to 55, and hear the trippy, dreamy intro, it transports me into my high school days, to eating cheese-and-pepperoni pizza and sipping gallons of Dr. Pepper.

(7)What a cherry-perfect nostalgia! Talking about bathroom - I can wait another ten minutes, while I check MTV. Everything is set and perfect - the Doritos, unopened, I am sure crunchy and fragrant. So what that my girlfriends says they smell like men�s socks.

(8)Wait a minute, what�s that smell? Smells like a laundry fermenting in a basket, like a taxi cab, like a seat in a taxi cab - that�s right. I forgot to shower. Three garlic and pepperoni days in a row.

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 26, 2004 )

Couch potato Teflon
Please don't apologize for not writing this as a poem, hehheh, this clinic specializes in images, after all, eh?
OK, the "circus" is a good choice to begin with, it connotes drawing crowds to sensationalism, which is what commercials would like to think they do...Colours that strobe always have the same effect: they are mesmerizing. Except, by now, I've read the word "mesmerizing" so often that I always think of Mr. Mesmer, and how his name has become trite from overuse. "Hypnotic" works just as well, or just plain strobing, because this viewer is really not hypnotized. This viewer is a multi-tasking couch potato...
I like "you" as the remote control and the cordless phone. These two are a far more evolved species of couch potato sidekicks than the table on wheels, which is "it".
A very "teflonizing" first segment...
Second segment, nice, but the more specific the better: name-drop, for eclectic effect, anything...(The Apprentice, Vatican Citizens' Trust...)
3- Funny, I LOL, but then, I'm familiar with the rigging (for real) and, trust me, you'd rather go to the bathroom (...) Besides, it would change the smell in segment 8...
The snack table on wheels being kicked right is a great image!
4- the silky Whitney Houston being recorded for later, but the "treat" and the "paradise" and "finally" are overkill for the visual alone. I would be very surpised if MTV were on "mute". So, what song is she doing?
5- I am disappointed that the snack table on wheels has not been dispatched to the kitchen in the hope that its return trip will "deliver"...
you forgot to "number 6"
7- Name your girlfriends, then maybe mention that Whitney Houston doesn't think Doritos smell like men's socks: this would add to the "paradise" of seeing her after not seeing her much these days...
Segment 8: don't touch a thing!
This was delightful: not much work to do here, image-wise...
And, again, teflonizing!
Lucie

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 28, 2004 )

Windchime-please remind me.
Thanks for the assessment.

Please remind me, where does the "Vatican Citizen's trust" come from? Soemthing i wrote?

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 30, 2004 )

No, Teflon, not you...
You never wrote the Vatican Citizens' Trust into anything. It's just something I made up, reality TV/unlikely Bank (...) I'm crazy that way, please forgive me, OK?
Lucie

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 30, 2004 )

the Vatican theme
I remember writing something like that but it is hopeless to check since it is buried in comments and the Search feature doesn't look in them.

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: October 31, 2004 )

Teflon for Dr. Windchime
The Aftermath

The feeling of boredom I feel is exact equivalent to the aftermath of sex,
to the morning after a promiscuous fling: once the conquest is over, the return to the trysting grounds is as onerous as caroling outside your Scrooge-like neighbor�s house on a minus 70 degree night.
I have entertained the images, I have played with them, I have sketched them on paper, erasing, I have exposed them to my favorite music, I have dined with them, I have computerized them, I have taken them out in the finished form to show them off to everyone I know, I have sent them to my on-line friends, I have harvested praise and admiration and compliments.
I look at them written on a crumpled piece of paper just like at a bed churned by the night of voracious gymnastics. I look at them and the butter stains of the morning omelet, of the orange juice �designating nostalgically where I kept coming back to the real fun stuff, where I gasped at seeing my own work � just like the stains of love on the sheets of Sax Fifth Avenue satin.
It is not boredom but promiscuity. She is a genre, I used her once and she must be left behind.

( Posted by: Teflon [Member] On: November 7, 2004 )

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