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A little peak into the sense of words ...

8/27/2015

1 Comment

 
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"To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears."  So said Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat, poet, and writer, and he has made a brilliant point here; words have diverse affects. 

I recently read that roughly 4% of people live with something called Synesthesia, which involves a cross-wiring between one's primary senses.  Such individuals can sometime taste words or see sounds.

These synesthetic responses to stimuli are involuntary and very distinct.  I don't have Synesthesia, but when I read a story by Edgar Allen Poe, my senses become fully engaged and interconnected.

This is especially true of his poetry, and I was fortunate to have read him so early in my writing career.  Poe's expert writing style became a prime template for me to learn, and initially hone, my own craft.

In 1846, Poe wrote an essay titled The Philosophy of Composition, in which he detailed his approach to writing.  It lays out some rather stringent, and heady, guidelines which I only lightly ascribe to.

But the point here is, Poe's works give off some amazing visuals, sounds, and feelings that lure me into his story or poem so as to  hire me as an accomplice, so that they do not make for passive reading.  

This is what I try to achieve in my poems; to involve the reader intimately within the sphere of the verses, to the point of seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and tasting all that lies there in the poem. 

This is one reason why I rarely do poetry readings.  I prefer that the voices within my poems lead you through the work by hijacking all of your senses with the help of your own boundless imagination.    

This, I learned from Poe, from Edna St Vincent Millay, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and from a great many other highly skilled rhyming poets who wrote so long ago, and who knew the sense of their words.





Image: http://sensingarchitecture.com/11247/architecture-beyond-visual-sense





1 Comment

Re: "Post something new once a week ..."

8/9/2015

2 Comments

 
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It's been so long since my last post that I feel rather like a stranger here, and though myriad needful situations have been interrupting my attempts to post, the urge to be here has continued unabated.

Yet, how ironic that of all of steps outlined in my post on, June 11th of this year, titled What I've learned about blogging ..., the one that reads Post something new once a week ... didn't happen, because ...  


My family and I are currently in the midst of preparing to move our household to another state, two states away.  This has involved making numerous prolonged trips to said state for various reasons.

What is a blogger to do during such erratic times?


Actually, there are some very wise bloggers who keep a roster of completed posts in a queue, and then use an algorithm which kicks in to automatically publish their articles on a regular and timely basis.  

Then, there are the bloggers who, for whatever reason, are so sporadic in posting that it comes as a delightful surprise when their articles surface.  "Oh!  There you are!  I have missed you!"


... which is also how I feel when I first spy Orion in the winter sky.

One might have noticed that there have been some irregularities with this blog over the past few years, going from twice-weekly postings to weekly ones, along with a several very necessary hits and misses.

For me, not posting isn't about having nothing to write.  I've started a post or two when I had nothing at all to say and found that the writing process itself inspired me.  Rather, it hints that I am engage. 

Having access to sufficient, unbridled time to write, ruminate, and rewrite is essential for just about any writer, even for one who sometimes composes spontaneously, or "on the fly," as I often do. 


And writing afresh still requires that I research my source materials thoroughly, which can take a while, also.  So, I find myself stuck somewhere between the regimented and the sporadic blogger.  

Cutting myself a little slack for being a self-taught blogger ... not gonna happen.  As I've said before, I aspire to be on time and on point as much as I can, and it is deflating to fail in either of these.

All in all, I totally stand behind all of the elements of my previous post on, What I've learned about blogging...   I do hope that you will forgive me these lapses of late as I endeavor to regain my footing.  


My, but it's good to be back!






Image: bizz3228.com



 

2 Comments

    About the author:

    I've written many poems over the years.  This blog is a preview of my books: Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry (April 2013), Echoes ll, More Neo-Victorian Poetry (May 2014), Echoes lll, Even More Neo-Victorian Poetry, (August 2016), A Compilation of Echoes. (September 2016), and When None Command (April 13, 2019)

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