Hello all! Welcome to Day 15 of NaPoWriMo.
NaPoWriMo: April is National Poetry Writing Month!
In these heady days of widespread conspiracy theories—QAnon knocking at the door—I thought we might give this writing exercise a whirl, maybe take back some psychic space that the gullible have stolen from us like a strange squatter taken residence in the garage.
This exercise comes from Lee Upton, found on pages 73-74 of The Practice of Poetry. It’s called “Tabloid Tone Exercise.”
After dividing sections of supermarket tabloids (the more sensational, the better) and distributing them among ourselves, the class and I read through for our favorite headlines and stories. A few before me, at random: “Farmer’s Wife Turns Hubby into Scarecrow,” “Cow Pregnant with a Space Alien’s Child,” “Dead Woman Wakes Up Wearing Bracelet from Heaven!” We are, in this exercise, presented with a narrative—usually an invented, fanciful, outsized narrative of dubious value. I ask that we write our new invention in the third person, in an attempt to create tonal distance and to avoid a first-person narration that might too readily avoid a significant change in tone. (Although I do not use the tabloids for a persona exercise, I realize that it might perhaps be peculiarly gratifying to write in the voice of the homeowner of “The House That Drips Blood!”)
The elements of the exercise are simple: (1) Choose a story from a tabloid; (2) Using the story as a starter seed, compose a poem in the third person that treats the subject of the story in a serious manner. Our goal, then, is transformation.
Although they are often narratives of grief, rage, and shame, the tabloid pieces caricature our common vulnerability. We can attempt to reverse this process by adopting that most alchemical of reactions, a tonal shift. Even death in some tabloids is made into a jokey moment: “Golfer Killed in Brawl over Flubbed Putt.” And desire—in inflated terms—is ever-present: “Genie Rises from 1000-Year-Old Bottle.” Newly transformed into a third-person view that differs significantly from the tabloid’s lurid and alarmed sensationalism, the poems resulting from the exercise may prove more compassionate or, conversely, more brutal in a way that breeds revelation.
Emphasizing invented details about an incident may unmask desire or grief. Or we may find that the contours of a story suggest provocative possibilities. (Reconsider “Farmer’s Wife Turns Hubby into Scarecrow.” Surely there are spouses who have done the same?) When most successful, the results of the exercise often take on a dreamlike quality, the raw material of the tabloid mutating into symbol.
This exercise brings to mind the methods used by the agents in Men in Black—take those tabloid stories (semi-)seriously!
At least, skim the titles for inspiration. Or turn to any of the conspiracy theories currently bandied about our culture, if you can stand it without gagging.
Best of writing to you!
➡ IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
- National Poetry Writing Month: an invitation | NaPoWriMo: a short exercise
- NaPoWriMo, Day 2: Telling a Secret | NaPoWriMo, Day 3: Still Life
- NaPoWriMo, Day 4: One out of many | NaPoWriMo, Day 5: Hanging together
- NaPoWriMo, Day 6: Home and introspection | NaPoWriMo, Day 7: Like this or that...
- NaPoWriMo, Day 8: No more short shrift | NaPoWriMo, Day 9: Poem as voicebox
- NaPoWriMo, Day 10: Caught between the horns
- NaPoWriMo, Day 11: Living in the spaces in-between
- NaPoWriMo, Day 12: What’s the occasion?
- NaPoWriMo, Day 13: They say it’s all about timing | NaPoWriMo, Day 14: Mad Libs
Finally, as promised as a follow-up from yesterday’s prompt, here is the original version of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies”:
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.
And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it's much too small, because she won't curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God! Oh, God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
—mothers and fathers don't die.
And if you have said, "For heaven's sake, must you always be kissing a person?"
Or, "I do wish to gracious you'd stop tapping on the window with your thimble!"
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you're busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, "I'm sorry, mother."
To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,
who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.
Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries;
they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake
them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide
back into their chairs.
Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.