Monday, May 13, 2013
Week 1, Image Junyard 3
My feet pound the cobblestones used for centuries carrying me towards the distant hills, their vibrant green spotted with orange and pink buildings. The sun shines brightly in the sky above, unobscured by clouds and mirroring my high spirits. Children run circles in the park, playing tag or kicking soccer balls beneath graffiti of English swears and sacrilegious art. Flowers of purple, yellow, orange, and blue line my path, dogs of various breeds lead their owners towards territory that must be marked. A young couple dances and laughs in the shade of trees reaching into the skies. I feel eyes from all sides bearing down on the oversized American Viking strolling uneventful Spoleto streets, far from home but not a thought of it in his mind.
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Find the names of those flowers, those dogs. Work toward increasing levels of specificity in your language.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm going to pretend like Davidson didn't totally steal my moment to shine and comment on this. I think there are some interesting moments for delving into, which is one of my favorite things to look for in writing (remember when I said your friends will generally help you find what you're writing about--hi, I'm your friend). So yes, up the specificity a la Davidson, but now it's my turn. So I think you have two primarily interesting moments (and I imagine these two things go hand in hand) but these particular moments, I think, bring the greatest opportunity for depth in your work, the first being the phrase "cobblestones used for centuries" and the next being "American Viking." It's always a great deal of fun padding your awareness with the grandeur of history, which I recognize could be cliche, but the idea of narrowing that down to the streets, which have carried not only your feet but the feet of so many ancient Roman men and women (not to mention the sort everyday musing of where those feet were in a hurry to be—the market, the bathroom), it’d be a great deal of fun. Not to mention the amount of repair these buildings and streets go through, so the idea that where you're walking might be only partially real (and "real" is a whole other can of worms, the idea of real, what defines real, so I obviously need to move on at this point). I also like the idea of combining Viking history and Roman history--a compare and contrast of their similarities, differences, and how all these things work together to create, as you put it "an American Viking". Also investigate how one might Americanize said history. Anyway, not necessarily all outlets you want to take right now, especially in one shot, but all of which are potential expansion possibilities.
ReplyDeleteThomas,
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, for a newbie you’re rockin’ it, already. I’m extremely impressed—keep it up, man. You obviously have an ear for sonic language, sensitive to your surroundings. That, alone, takes special talent and, often times, several (intensive) creative-writing workshops.
For one thing, if you were considering poetry, I would challenge you to really push yourself, your language—when it comes to imagery—into the realm of show. That is, are your images capable of being captured on film or would a director have a difficult time capturing these scenes on camera/video? Also, try to constantly remain conscious of poesy and prosy language vs. the poetic. ‘Prosy’ is rather self-explanatory: language that is representative of prose, that caters more to the stylistic of prose; however, ‘poesy’ tends, typically, to be overly sentimental and artificial writing—cliché and a little too colloquially heavy-handed.
On another brief note: try to resist Latinate words; they tend, more often than not, to be too syllable heavy and flowery (which leads to the poesy). Rather, seek out the Germanic. These words will not only provide your drafts with more uncanny and odd pairings of language/imagery, but also give the draft more power. The draft, interesting, will, in turn, put pressure on itself, its images, and those reading it—creating all sorts of weird and fascinating dynamics.
Good work. I’d like to read your workshop piece, too (if you don’t mind, that is).