Mantra 1 Keep imagery open avoid dense descriptions.Mantra 2 Poems need a beginning middle and end.
Mantra 3 Review revise, revisit.
Mantra 4 Keep plenty of unblended scotch close by.
Oops, I’m sorry about Mantra 4 somehow my grocery list got on my mantra list. I’m convinced multitasking will be the end of me. Once on my anniversary I gave the Dean lingerie and my significant other a paper on the use of iambic abstractions by the Maori tribe of New Zealand. While I did not get lucky in the bedroom I did get tenure. Who knew he wore a size 10?
Settle in folks while I add to the white noise of poetic babble. If you listen closely and use only your left eye you may discover the anagram hidden in one of the sentences in this paragraph. Meaning often can be obscured by the fact that we love to hear ourselves talk, often that talk creates poetic white noise. Try this Mantra 3 exercise at your leisure. Find the last poem you wrote that you did not like. Reduce each stanza into one single line that sums up the stanza. Now once the poem is reduced compare the reduction to the original. Now without looking at the original rewrite the poem around the reduced line or lines. Is it better or worse? Did the poem’s meaning change? How about you put them both in a post and drop a link in the comment section of this post. We’d love to see and comment on it. We can call it “The White Noise Tour.” You can locate this post at anytime using the U.P. link on the right column. Now I have to get to the store I’m feeling Mantra 4 and that decanter won’t fill itself.
