A book of Estimable Value

When I graduated high school, I promised myself I would never write another book report. Well, like most vows and New Year’s resolutions, there comes a reckoning. I must pass on to you the excellent book by Noah Lukeman: A Dash of Style , W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006. Lukeman is an author and a literary agent (Lukeman Literary Management, LTD), who shares his knowledge of punctuation as creative writing tools. Using simple, conversational language, the author describes how clarity and enhanced style can result from understanding how masters of writing such as Poe, Melville, Hemingway, and others used punctuation. Along with the major marks (period, comma, semicolon, colon, quotation marks, dash, and parentheses), he discusses little-scrutinized tools such as short sentences versus long sentences and paragraph and section breaks, including comments for poets on line breaks. If you have been looking for a way to clear up confusion over punctuation, this is the book. Especially helpful is his perspective. He is a literary agent, who has read hundreds of manuscripts. His insight and advice may help your writing get by that first critical read by editors and agents. The book can be found at your local library or at Amazon at varying...

Learn More

“A Perfect Unwonder”

In a September 22, 2014 article in the Ames Tribune, David L. Ulin of the Los Angeles Times quoted from a Shane Salerno and David Shields biography of J.D. Salinger: “It just seems to me a perfect unwonder, that writing’s almost never terrific fun. If it’s not the hardest of the arts — I think it is — it’s surely the most unnatural, and therefore the most wearying. So unreliable, so uncertain. Our instrument is a blank sheet of paper — no strings, no frets, no keys, no reed, mouthpiece, nothing to do with the body whatever — God, the unnaturalness of it. Always waiting for birth, every time we sit down to work.” In this quote, Salinger speaks to poets and writers of all stripes. He has captured the essence of our discipline, and its difficulty. The next time you sweat over a poem or a piece of prose remember even the most successful authors share your...

Learn More

Before the Haiku

The direct ancestor of the haiku is generally considered to be the tanka. Also known as the waka, the poem’s early structure was influenced by Uta, Japanese songs to the gods. A favorite of the Imperial court for over 1,300 years, twenty-one anthologies of tankas survive, compiled between 905 and 1433. This record of publication has preserved more tanka over a longer period than any other poetry form worldwide. The first of the court anthologies is the Kokinsu, A Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems (ca. 905) and may be found at your local library, if not on the shelves, through interlibrary loan, or can be purchased at various sites on the Internet. Adapted into American form the traditional tanka consists of five lines in a 5,7,5,7,7 pattern (thirty-one or fewer syllables). Example: Since I have loved you I compare my former thoughts to those I have now, and realize that I then had no ideas at all. Atsutada, 10th century. tr. Frances Stillman The form is untitled and unrhymed, and like much other poetry, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and occasional repetition may be used. In Medieval Japan, tankas were routinely exchanged between lovers. One partner would send the first three lines to the other printed on a fan or on paper knotted around a flower, the last two lines to be completed by the recipient and returned. Write some tanka, you may find a use for the...

Learn More

A performance Art

Our overwhelming exposure to poetry is from the printed page. However, the art of poetry predates the manufacture of paper and writing. The story of Gilgamesh, over 4,500 years old, circulated in oral form for many centuries before someone impressed its words on cuneiform tablets. We know The Iliad and The Odyssey were recited by storytellers from memory, before a conclave of scholars gathered to compare versions and write down a final adaptation. Poetry in our long and ancient history was performed more than read. I am sure not more than fifteen minutes after language was invented, some one of our long-ago ancestors grunted out the first poem to the delight and amazement of his/her companions. Minstrels and jongleurs or equivalent singers of tales carried on the verbal tradition among populations that could not read. Only recently, have we been limited to printed versions of poetry that lack the rhythm, intonation, and fire of the author. We cannot savor the poem in the way they dreamed it. So, gather your courage, practice in front of the mirror. Join in a group reading, or go solo at an open mic. Let’s go back to our poetical roots, be missionaries for the...

Learn More