I am assuming this is what counts for some good old fashioned Calisthenics when I decide to write about the smell of peanut butter. We were in class when this assignment happened to me, and I found myself in a tough spot--I suppose I've never written a poem dedicated to a single smell, and I was a bit confused at first. I don't honestly know what drew me to the smell of peanut butter, but I found that I busted out a couple lines on peanut butter. I ended up actually building on each one progressively until I ended up with some strange preschool smell which I didn't really want to go any further with--mostly because urine and playdough were bound to happen next, and I didn't want the earthy, warm smell of peanut butter to remind me of urine. Here are the many variations for you--I'll not make you guess the ridiculousness that I jotted down for peanut butter:
PEANUT BUTTER FROM VARIOUS NOSES
an amalgamation by: David Mathis and his many noses
Smells appealing in the way a surge protector does--solid. Stout like the Earth.
Smells of clods of dirt, moist, but processed into something better--Earth meat.
Scented vaguely like a lion napping in a canyon of obsidian--it slopes gently against the nose.
Precisely the smell of sandwiches served to small mouths and uncoordinated fingers, groping.
It's like cinder blocks whitewashed, overlooking tiny tables which feature fractured goldfish with apple juice.
First off, I have extreme 'writer's envy' of your blog in general. Next week once I have oriented myself further I can only aspire to detail as cleanly as you have thus far. Secondly I chose to respond to your calisthenics exercise about peanut butter, mostly because I was interested in the progression of that lion and his home canyon.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I found things that I did like and things that I thought you could improve or change. The second half of the poem was the better half for me. I liked the line, "It slopes gently against the nose." Great use of the verb in relation to nose, as a nose itself seems to slope. Then the last two lines are a great use of the 'ladder of specificity.' I can identify with that scene, its 'filmable' as Dr. Davidson would say. I liked your word Earth-meat, very accurate and strange way to portray it. I feel like the word smells/smell/scent was overused and perhaps could have been left out altogether. In fact when I re-read it without those words, it still seems to work. The use of dashes was interesting and I may try to implement that technique in my own writing when I find the right way to use them. Perhaps a pointer or two is in order?
I appreciate your praise. It's always flattering to have someone envy something I do--on the rare occasion someone DOES actually envy something I do.
ReplyDeleteI believe that a reason I left the smell part at the beginning was actually because originally they were completely separate. As in, they were not supposed to form one body of text, so I had to say that the scent was like the description I gave. I suppose my fault was presenting them as an actual singular body, even binding it with a name. As it stands now, I completely agree with your suggestions--I should cut the first word off certainly.
As for the dashes, it's not too hard to learn placement. It also depends on if you often use semicolons. Mostly because depending on how you use them, sometimes dashes can replace semicolons. Otherwise, the rule is that they signal an aside. Any information that is relevant, but not necessarily part of the sentence. They work really well in speech because there are so many asides in actual speech. They can really make dialogue pop. Use dashes instead of parenthesis--people will read what's inside a box of dashes where they will ignore parenthesis.