Hello all! I am crunched for time, so I am relying on The Practice of Poetry to provide us with an exercise for today, Day 4 of NaPoWriMo. I hope to be more expansive tomorrow and the remainder of the week. But here we have, from page 33, Michael Pettit’s prompt called “One’s Self, En-Masse.”
One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the world Democratic, the word En-Masse.
—Walt Whitman
With the above in mind, write a description of two or three paragraphs (no longer than one double-spaced page) in which you describe one particular member or element of a set:
- one sparrow in a flock of sparrows
- one baby in a nursery of babies
- one fish in a barrel of fish
- one scream in a stadium of screams
- one somersault in a series of somersaults
- one Rockette in a chorus line of Rockettes
The challenge is to perceive the qualities of the group, and to distinguish what makes an individual member of that group both a part of it and apart from it. Avoid the above examples if possible; instead use sets (groups) that you can observe directly, or observe them in your imagination. Try for clarity and simplicity in your language.
“Perception,” said William Carlos Williams, “is the first act of the imagination.” This exercise is intended to alert you to the world of words, to alert you to make distinctions and create particular images rather than vague emotions.
This is a prose exercise. Although there is no reason you can’t use lines, beginners usually are not at ease with either free verse or conventional line. I [Pettit] prefer to have my students look at the line more closely and exclusively in later exercises.
I focus upon concrete particulars, and how they can express the writer’s vision to the reader. Although beginners often describe one rather than both subjects well (e.g., the one mackerel, but not the barrel full), it is an exercise at which students can succeed. A reminder for subsequent revisions: look before you write.
I hope this exercise is a fruitful one for you. Happy writing!
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