Cat in the Echo Canyon

From


Spelling teachers book of lists
Cat and echo

Schezuan, The cat found himself in a dark dingy place. He said 'Meow' and he heard th other cat say 'Meow..meow..meow..' He thought this is a speedy cat who cant wait before the next are-you-listening-to-me meow. But the speedy Cat Meow would never start his/her own meow first. It always followed his meow. Was this a shy cat?
Schezuan then recalled that this sounded much like a blast from the past. He heard this same cat in Golkonda fort, which can echo.

Cat and Ketchup
Honey Mustard, the Cat was drunk on ketchup.

Finger guest
Know the song. Daddy finger Daddy Finger, Mommy finger Mommy finger.. Guest finger is when a person has more fingers than family.

Jam Refrigerator

Steel Llama


Canal Knot
Rabbit Leggings

Familair stories with a new look

Creative writing

Glad to wake up

It was raining.
I'm in the town I grew up.
I wanted to tell some people
who I was
To see if they could recognize me
I hadnt changed, still a child

A miscreant next to us
My husband snatched his phone
and another device and dropped
it into a well.
We dropped him too.
some fellows were helping us
One of them turned against us

I am on the run and hiding
in a hospital
in the rooms of doctors
a helpful acquaintance

alas, I have to leave
I reach the edge of a building
contemplating falling
and then I glide down

All around the building trained women
are looking for me

Then little dogs catch my scent
I enter into a farm house
and they fall into the dung



PS: Essay staiger odyssey. For times when you itch to write a long essay.

Article

This article A brief history of wrapping paper, could have begun with the stalwart Hallmark's of greeting card fame. (Hallmark). But it ended with it. Usually we go after the inventors, but in this case, the product with its sole purpose of glitz is the cynosure.
exercise: Leave aside the person, focus on the thing, let it tell its tale independent of the inventor. Let Galatea tell her story. For example, To what Miserable wretches have I been born?


Zadie smith on joy. This article can help maintain a log of your personal experiences by mood.

Science behind the beauty

In elementary school we had a question about the difference between a Creeper and a Climber. It wasnt apparent then but now just from the words, I feel it must be the directions they take. I am about to learn the science behind the Tendril.

The form of a tendril
an organic spring, twirlie
curls
DNA helix and the scientists
also call it coils
always seen fully formed
How long does it take?

Unwinding the cucumber tendril mystery

As kids we are awed by beauty. After growing up, finding the science behind is the beauty of it.

Exercise : Pick words in the dictionary to find all things beautiful and find their history and science and see if there is a poem in it.

A soft boiled egg can hold finger prints on it.

How to rev your writing?

Let the words find you

Annie Lopez's work was exhibited as part of  Family Matters exhibition at Tempe Center of Arts Gallery. She conducted a writing workshop too.


Art Workshop: What's Your Story?
GalleryNoon-4 p.m., Aug. 25
Exhibiting artist Annie Lopez will lead a workshop about art making and writing. Visitors of all ages can bring their own copies of family photographs or use miscellaneous photocopies provided by the artist. First, participants will write short stories, poems or statements about the images and then color and decorate the work to tell a family story. Free

I was apprehensive about the story part. Still I went. Few years ago I had gone for a painter's workshop where the artist made the portrait of a live model's face. 
When I walked in, a granddaughter - granddaughter pair was working on their story. The artist had a couple of pre-made tiny journals tied with colourful strings. She had some family photographs scanned onto white sheets with sample stories on them. That was on her table.
On the participants table were many paper cuttings of texts and pictures.
I took a couple of family pictures with me. One was with my family marking the time when the whole family started to live under one roof. Another was at my cousin's ceremony similar to Quinceanera. I was set to write about how my cousin's father picked us from the hostel to join the ceremony. From the paper clippings a blue butterfly caught my eye. And there I had the concept of morphing into an adult. I kept turning the tiny pieces of paper to find the text underneath. That aimless text guided my story to what I had not planned to reveal. I see the power of words lying on the table like this for braiding the story. Fixed words of Magnetic poetry might not yield good poetry if you stick to using just those words but with a budding story in mind it can add fuel to the fire.
Keep cutting those words out of the paper into your story.

Holorime

Take as long as you like to do this.

Still describe

Two visual inspirations.
Blue Antelope and Orange Elephant got me started for the theme 'lush'.
The orange colour of the elephant reminded me of Hanuman

When I thought of the theme of lush, I couldnt think of anything but green, but now I think from what has struck me luscious in these pictures, any single colour in abundance has the same effect of submerging us in its hue.
Green lush is of nature, artists have defined lush in their own terms by the lusciousness of their imagination.

Monochromal flourishes

1. Blue antelope
With a buoyant
Web of blue
Antlers

Antlers poking
in different directions
Like birds of paradise

An artist settles
a white bird on
the head
two on the back

2. Orange elephant in the room
with gold floral patterns
matches the wallpaper
orange like
the statue of Hanuman
smeared with the sticky paste


While revising it, I stopped at the 'like' and was reminded of the shadows game. I then removed the description of the white birds and replaced it with

like fingers held in
the dark to cast
shadows
thumb and forefinger
join to form the head
and the rest antlers

Writing Exercise:
When I saw the elephant picture yesterday I couldnt explain why I was taken with it. Today I looked at the blue antelope, a thing like that stays with you for a while. So I just described them. After that when I came to the like
, it was like stopping at a log in your way to look around more for something
the like was my passport to many other lines.
A like in a poem is the starting point of infinte things to be said. Massage the like which has a hold on half of the poetry world.

Describe

In The ransom of red chief 0.Henry talks about a town called Summit.

It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class ofpeasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Describe humorously by changing the subject to an object reflecting the culture of the subject.

Welterweight

The border is what joins us

- Border lines, Alberto Alvaro Rios

The fence conjoins us
Cosmos contains us

Every pencil is filled with a book

- Alberto Alvaro Rios

Every brush is filled with a scene
Every sword/gun a blood bank
injection a florentine of wellness

Boxed letters

1. Write a poem from the words in a crossword

2. Write a poem from the letters on a scrabble board

3. Write clues for words in a crossword or a scrabble game

Poetic exercises

Write a syllabic poem. This is from Ted Kooser's 'The Poetry Home Repair Manual'. ted Kooser writes that Frost's Stopping by woods on a snowy evening is written in a form. In the article Mark Richardson defines 'what a poem describes—its content; what it has in mind—its theme; and how it holds together—its form.'

Another:
Write a paragraph about a poem you have written, to an editor. In the explanation I have found a good ending to an incomplete poem.

Weather

We see 28C on
the thermometer magnet
Dad says its cooler
than that
Maybe its not working
We check later
Its 15C

Its working

Its funny that its
on the refrigerator
whose insides are lot lower
than the room temperature
that the magnet shows.

Exercise: Write a poem on any instrument that fascinated you as a child - stethescope, weighing machine, compass, windvane, any others? On your coveted posession.

Android voice

In jane shore's Dream City poem on pg 45,

A voice called out "This is your room.This is your bed"

Frances Mayes in 'the Discovery of Poetry' says that she tacked Loveliest of trees poem on a cherry tree. people stopped by and read it. Imagine such a tag on everything you see. Write your lines on it. When you revisit, feel free to revise and update it.

Exercise: Write from a thing's point of view not in their inanimate sense but in a way that reflects them through their voice.

Metaphor at poem level

Jane shore's Shit soup poem.

She begins with a recipe but extends the poem to other events in life.
The pot gets extended to the grave ditch. The food to one's lived life.

In pg 84 with the example of 'The Envoy' poem, Ted kooser calls such a thing as 'lifting the eyes' in words of Chinese poets.

Detoured from the poem

Jane Shore in 'Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium' poem describing the ongoings at the place, writes of
'.. a grumpy
French-Candian family with three wired kids
detoured from the Cabot Creamery,
...'

I would have thought that kids love to go zoos and planetariums but the expression that they have been detoured from a place they like lets another poem going on not only of what one likes or does but of another of what one doesnt like or doesnt.

Exercise: Write a poem where you did something but in terms of what you didnt.