• About

Oceantics

~ because the waves and tumbles of life are only as serious as we make them.

Oceantics

Tag Archives: writer’s craft

Erato’s Vow

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, light erotica, poetry, the muse of love poetry, writer's craft

Boucher, François_Boucher_-_The_Education_of_Cupid3

Give me the poet
who knows the power
of a line break’s precipice

hears the rush
of stanza demarcation
space and pause

like hooves
in open gallop
raindrops in collision
with resistant clay

who plays
with lightning balls
of energy that aggregate
to words, as if they
were eternal

loving sound
beyond all boundaries
rolling with her
cross the bed
where rhyme
and meter wed;

and of this poet,
I shall make a scientist
with flows of thought as
gentle and immutable

as goosedown
traveling the evening
breeze with news
of revolution.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image is “The Education of Cupid”, by
François Boucher (1703-1770)

Advertisement

Hero

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

creating reality, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, manifestation, mythology, nagual, personal alchemy, plot devices, septime, seven stanza verse, subtle bodies, the hero archetype, writer's craft

hero_lemminkainen

A hero comes to me in dark of night,
mandolin strapped to his back, with shoulders
curled against the wind. Chinooks are moving
in. I think they may have blown him here,
though hard to tell. He moves with equal ease
through stillness, scaling walls in minor keys,
ignoring doors to broach this gate of mine.

My hero cannot be possessed. He’s mine
at best of times, a realist, nowhere
to be found when I have lost my keys
or sense of self. His breadth of shoulders
frames serenity while chaos storms the night;
he fends me from imagining dis-ease
and keeps my languid spirit moving.

On cloudy days, he plays mazurkas here
beside the fire until the pulsing night
surrounds us, and desires that I mine
with little hope by day spring free with ease.
My hero stands on solid ground of shoulders
that precede him. Our whole procession’s moving
toward an assembling One who holds the keys.

When I acclimate to ease
inside, I feel my hero moving
fully aimed to please the now and here,
delivering friends and lovers with the keys
to ships and fantasies, a diamond mine
without the cruelty. His silhouetted shoulders
steps ahead, he entertains no dark night

of the soul, adept at holding shoulders
loose, my hero is a player strumming keys
in octaves you can only hear at night.
His eyes and smile I have made mine.
The rest is me, a subtle body moving
with the cellular eccentricities of here
as best of all & better coming. He’s my ease,

the plot and action to my story keys,
reminding me, accept no substitutes! Mine
is the right to happiness by means of ease,
pursuit of joy. He is my rock, unmoving.
From him, I catapult and build us here
a cityscape of dreams. We love at night,
create by dawn the slope of light’s soft shoulders.

Through brighter times we are now moving,
he and I, receptive to the exponential ease
of Creation sprinkling across our shoulders
bold imaginations of the tumbling, lusty night.
Tolerate no whimpering fakes with rusty keys,
he quips. The hero’s role is yours and mine
to be enjoyed through mortals here.

The peace that’s mine brings more of same. The hero’s keys
to each with ease is given here, where comedy is moving,
masked, our shoulders squared encircling day and night.

~~~

This poem is a septime, a form of my own devising with seven repeating end words in seven, seven-stanza lines. The three-line envoi counts down the original 1-7 words, 7-1.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Lemminkäinen’s mother,
artist unknown

Love Your Villain Like You Know Him

31 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Campy Verse

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

a bit of silliness, characterization, Elaine Stirling, Halloween verse, poetry for fun and learning, villainy, writer's craft

Bela Lugosi

This is more an exercise in characterization than a poem. If writ in prose, it would sound campy, and I hope it still does. For thousands of years, probably longer, rhetoric, prose, and poetry lived together in the same fine house. Delivery was what mattered, and flow—and perhaps, one’s table manners. Somewhere, I believe, they still cohabit.

I lurk
in shadowed
porticoes
in fear
my outcry splendid
in its firework
might reach
some ear, and
frozen by its
opposite,
that no sound
from my
orchestrated
anguish will be
heard—but if
it is…aah, if it is,
and if the Earth
brought to her
knees in dazzlement
by my fine argument
agreed to crack the
bones of those whose
tyranny I am so certain
of—what if they all,
of sudden, turned,
those men of might,
those women of
sagacity, and in
their final groveling
moments that they so
deserve they saw that
it was me who singled
out their villainy?

I would
be doomed.
I am already
doomed for having
wished the ones I
fear a ghastly end.
I bring ten-fold dark
curses on my head
and so I lurk…
and let you think
that I’m a jerk.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

For Writers Only

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, authenticity, chasing markets, discipline, Elaine Stirling, Emily Dickinson, glosa, medieval Spanish form poetry, writer's craft

business-woman-writing

Superiority to fate
Is difficult to learn.
‘T is not conferred by any,
But possible to earn

A pittance at a time,
Until, to her surprise,
The soul with strict economy
Subsists till Paradise.

—Emily Dickinson (#1081)

~~~

“The art is not the person,”
says a writer I adore
as much for his career
as what he pens in crevices
between celebrity. It’s hard to take
oneself un-serious at every turn
and still enchant, and not keep
fan-slaves penned out back, whipped
to not admit your writing’s fit to burn.
Superiority to fate is difficult to learn.

Today is garbage day, so I’ve thrown
out a metaphor gone saggy at the knees:
the one about reflections—I’m a mirror,
you’re a mirror, everywhere a mirror,
mirror—fairest, squarest, cock-a-doodle—
worst excuse there is for taciturn
refusal to let go of people,
places, memories that grind you down.
The healthy, gorgeous self discerns;
‘tis not conferred by any, but possible to earn.

I knew this guy shortlisted
for a Pulitzer who spent his days,
not writing but elbowing those, like me,
who didn’t care much for his work.
He didn’t win; contracts dried up
and so did he—before my eyes,
from plum to prune he shriveled. Chasing
markets, dangling your pretty bits are yard sales
of the pseudo-soul that, masquerading, dies
a pittance at a time, until to her surprise

she learns she never had to try
so hard, except—oh, damn!—the writer’s dead.
Your option, if you’re serious and not
just putzing for applause is to die alive
to expectation of the muddled kind. Pay full
attention to determination to feel better. Size
up that in words—begin, if need be, with,
Once upon a time… “True enough” will
fast become your truth. From shining eyes
the soul with strict economy subsists till Paradise.

~~~

I’ve borrowed a two stanza verse from Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) to write a glosa, a poetry form that first appeared in the courts of medieval Spain. Strictly speaking, glosas originate from quatrains, but Emily’s work is far too electric to fall nicely into brick-shaped lines. So, I rearranged her eight to four, allowing that she often wrote on envelopes and curved around into margins, and probably wouldn’t mind.

If the glosa form intrigues you, you can find a whole book of them written by my heteronym Alain C. Dexter, here.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

How to Write a Novel

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Writer's craft

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#HowtoWriteaNovel, authenticity, characterization, dialogue, Elaine Stirling, exposition, fact vs. fiction, free verse, novel, plot, poetic narrative, structure, The Corporate Storyteller, writer's craft

bookwright_1

Coil of a rope in a series
of events, you gotta build it
strand by strand, by hair
and reed and garter
snake, the strongest
threads you lay out
first, align them, see
what holds and don’t
be fooled by glam
or what’s been done
before—molecular in
breadth will change
the world no less
than Hannibal who
crossed the Alps,
the lector had his day
and it was fine
but this one’s yours
and no one else
despite their crawling
through your dreams
and peering through
the windows you’ve left
open for the ventilation
can do anything but add
by their attention to your
task, so now you have
the anchor threads, the
four or less or more
who have the most to
gain or lose by what
unfolds, you hold them
loose and weave them
into one another’s
oscillating forms, you
must be deft of hand
and bold enough
to laugh when herrings
red you’ve planted
let them talk and cuss
they’re smarter than
you anyway, they’re
fictional, not bound and
nothing kills a novel
like the blunt of exposition
blah, blah, blah, take out
your knife and slice—the
moral and political they
have their place inside
the heads of every character
not yours, who gives a crap
what you think of recycling
and loyalty? The novel is
the property of those who
populate its pages, and if
you would invigorate you’ll
give them a strong footing
in a setting that expands
or squeezes like a noose
along with purpose that
commands and maybe
drives them off a cliff but
not because your Uncle
Billy drove his tractor off
a cliff and he’ll be looking
for the facts—you get them
right? Buzz off dear family
and friends, be firm. I’ve
chapters here amassing
when it’s finished you
can prove how much you
care by setting down your
nickel, not before the rope
is fully coiled and strong
enough to hold the weight
it was designed to swing
around adventuresome
and merrily what’s spinning
has no need to seek approval
and a million pretty pebbles
who appear to sing your
praises are the burble
of a brook that’s nice to hear
but doesn’t matter, it’s
your characters that
in the end will prove
your mettle for the better
or the worse and when
you’ve typed the final
words the world you set
aside will still be here
slow turning and you’ll
see with different eyes
the you’s and we’s that
used to be they’ll shine
with greater clarity, it’s
why we do this thing
called noveling, we
bookwrights, and the
first chance that we
get we’ll do it all
again most willingly.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

The Sweet Anarchic World of Association

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Essay

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

belief, characterization, Elaine Stirling, free association, imagination, James Wood, probable realities, self-censoring, shame, vertical thought, writer's craft

“Allow me to relieve you of that budding enthusiasm. Here, do let me nip those tender dicotyledons [editor’s note: the first two leaves of a plant] unfolding left and

wood engraving, 1865, by Dalziel from www.victorianweb.com

wood engraving, 1865, by Dalziel from http://www.victorianweb.com

right, boop, boop, before the stem pushes up further , encouraging more, perhaps unmanageable foliage, and thence—forbid, forbid—a tree, a fore—”

Okay, that’s enough. I’ve hung the orator who opened this blog by the armpits like the letter T on two hand-turned oak pegs a couple feet above floor level, where he can sputter and dangle and go bullish in the face until his top hat falls off and I’ve finished writing what I choose to say here.

A character of mine from long ago has become a best-selling fiction author. For the purpose of this post, I shall call her Joy Berry-Hansen. It is not her real fictitious name. I see her nomenclature spelled out, JOY BERRY-HANSEN, in bold white caps on the cover of a whopping trade paperback—600 pages, easily—on the lap of a notably calm man sitting across from me at my usual coffee haunt.

Joy starred in the bestselling book of my first writing career in 1988. In her 85,000 word arc, she helped to overthrow a dictator, fell in love with and married the rebel leader who’d escaped, bravely, of course, from political imprisonment and who threw himself at her mercy in the book’s inciting incident with a fake passport and a refugee claim. You can understand, I’m sure, why I’m excited to see where life has taken Joy.

What, wait a minute…you’re not excited? You’re not sharing my unbridled, happily galloping certainty that a figment of my imagination found a way to continue her existence apart from mine, to thrive and make her successes known to me in a most elegant and charming manner? That’s okay. Certain fringe particle physicists and New Age feel-gooders might agree that such things are possible, if not probable, but for the most part, they don’t associate (with each other) either. The size of the airplane hanger I’d have to rent to allot each specialized belief system and its entourage of non-beliefs enough space to feel comfortable would be so gargantuan, I might as well wash my hands clean of it and pass the whole concept to that being-state we call Infinite.

To think, perchance believe, is beautiful. The process of thought enjoys giving us the impression that what we think/believe/know resides on a flat plane, concrete and highly polished with a clear sightline to whatever appears at its perimeter, or pops up from the center, or creeps into the neatly planted rows between. If life happens to feel messy at the moment, you might view this plane as more of a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wilderness, in which case, of course, you’ll be armed and ready. With a dictionary, with a pack of memories, a sawed-off something you can use to shoot holes.

In the front inside cover of How Fiction Works by James Wood, I wrote in pencil, dated precisely, Dec. 21, 2008:  “To write in a free, indirect style allows me to say whatever I want about a character, through the multiple vertical layers of his thought process.” I also wrote the words, “I’m about to launch.”

I have no recollection of what was going on that solstice to make me jot something so definitive, and I don’t know whether my comment on style is original or lifted from Wood’s book. And I don’t care. I’m not going to listen to my little friend, the Diminisher, who’s expounding from the wall with, “Citation, mutter. . . lawsuit, mutter, mutter . . . cover your tracks. . . mutter, mutter, mutter.”

He’s quite red-faced by now. Seventy-seven degrees hotter than embarrassed, he’s boiling at shame level, poor dear. He’ll implode any minute for lack of attention, achieving whatever it is black holes achieve in the service of Creation. Meanwhile, I am so proud of Joy!

I went to the grocery story right after the coffee shop where a handsome little guy about three, riding in the toddler seat of the shopping cart, dropped an entire package of blueberries that he’d wanted to hold to help his Mom. Their fall created a spectacular constellation of cobalt across alabaster tile; a sea of blueberries they were, a Jackson Pollock masterpiece of antioxidants.

We, who are mothers, who witnessed the incident, reacted or associated in two distinct steps. There was a moment of empathy for the mother—been there, erk!—but it lasted mere nano-seconds. Our hearts reached far more enthusiastically to the boy who stared bemused at “what he’d done” while his poor Mom bounced from wanting to mother well in front of everyone and the floor to open up and swallow her.

When I left with my groceries, she was still pushing the cart from store employee to employee, her face a burning scarlet, saying, “It was my son who dropped these blueberries, I’m sorry, it was my son.” Meanwhile, two clerks, a generation older than her, squatted, deadly serious, picking up the berries one by one like gaunt, 16th century penitents. You’d think the Blessed Pietá had shattered!

Back in the days of the Inquisition, there was an instrument of torture called the Iron Maiden. It was a cage with spikes pointing inward, designed to perforate the heretic, to poke holes into his or her audacity of belief. Sometimes, as in the case of today’s berries, we’ll take on torment to spare an innocent, but really, where was the harm? And where is the harm in letting people think what they think and experience their doing? Would our Earth have spun off into an asteroid belt if someone at the store had laughed and we’d shared spillage stories for a few minutes?

Ah well, that little fellow is going to do just fine. He’s made his story debut here, and meanwhile, I’m going to take Joy whom I recognized on the cover of that big fat novel to heart. I’m going to bring her to my sweet paradoxical center of anarchy where all manner of beasts and free wild things associate.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

A Storyteller’s Christmas

22 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Christmas, creativity, Elaine Stirling, holiday season, inspiration, letting go of politics, poetry, trust, writer's craft

artwork by Leonid Ivanovic Solomatkin, 1863

artwork by Leonid Ivanovic Solomatkin, 1863

Friends in every corner,
in every dip and knoll,
the characters you’ve come
to love, the ones you’ve
yet to know…await you,
storyteller, in the vales of
Christmas time regardless
of the names you hang on
God the father, son,

for story does not circumscribe;
the crescent moon, the candles
lit, return of light belong to all of
us, and dialogue that’s truly spoke
the muses offer joyfully—agendas
and false claims, though, she will
nine times trample with more vigour
than those weary steeds of yesteryear
whose revelations cease with
every moment fully lived.

There is no greater danger here
nor will there ever be to storyteller’s
page than politics; it is the Herod
king, the tyrant of the writer’s
soul, desirous only of the murder
of your firstborn, tender words,

so banish all interpretation, friend,
your knee-jerk reflex, let the heralds
bring instead with angel voices
infinite the merciful blank page,
for given space, they’re fashioned
well to sing with you of fearless tales
whose twists and turns and frights
delectable will muster you to
boldly stand and say:

Get thee behind me, tragedy,
for I’ve a romance in the making
here—I’ll travel every word on
sleighs of ink and nib, discarding
with my happy wake the agitation
of your concretizing reigns of hell
while flow surfeits my veins and
carries me as lovers do to
snowy mystic realms;

and when the New Year greets
us with her precious infant smile,
we two shall look upon the wintry
hillsides where your audience, well
gathered, toasty warm with flasks
of chocolate and brandy, wait ready
to receive the story of the gladdest
tidings yet, sweet born and seated
on this noble Christmastide.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Sucking Nymphettes Through a Straw

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Erotica

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Elaine Stirling, erotica, love, narrative poetry, romance, writer's craft

Image from Little Fin and the White Lie, 2009

Image from Little Fin and the White Lie, 2009

It’s 2:00 a.m.
I’ve had another boundary
dispute with my budding writer
neighbour who feels sorry for
anyone who isn’t as pretty as he;
you answer on the second ring,
pretending you don’t know it’s me
before I can apologize you mumble
that the bed is warm and nothing short
of nuclear disaster will induce you to get
up, but if I’m in a mood to vapourize,
the key’s beneath the mat.

2:08

A half drunk bottle
(bottle’s drunk, not me)
of Writers Tears* in the front
seat beside me, tail light needs
fixing, I’m working on a poem
for the cop who stops me.

How many laws
were you planning to
break tonight, Ma’am?
Fewer than yesterday, Officer.
I’m a writer—no, not starving,
far from it, and I’ve a hot date with
a novelist. They have more staying
power, did you know that?

He doesn’t get the joke, but
he lets me off with a warning so
I hand him the ghazal scribbled on
a zesty Baja Subway wrapper.
Bring this home to your significant
other; it’ll pave what needs paving.

2:43

We’ve had our first quick
fix of each other mouth
to mouth, direct and alternating
currents flowing smooth, my head
rests on your Persian carpet belly
while we talk about the Beats
and why the poets with vaginas
in the 50s were short-shrifted and
you shift your weight to take me
in a headboard-clawing A-frame
pose and Irish tears—no, make that
French & Flemish, fuck the DNA—
the whole damn lot of us are smiling!

4:12

I think we fell asleep, I wake
to find you reading my new chapters
with an Itty Bitty Book Light, and I
reach for you know where
but you keep reading.

I sit up to watch your hazel
eyes, their optic nerves affixed
sweet grazing cross the pages that
I’ve fought stupidities in excess
to achieve.

The pages brought me
you; I know that now;
I knew they would.

I tiptoe naked from your bed,
it hums irradiant, to pour us each
a linger-fingering of whiskey and
the moon decides in that cool moment
to appear, her busty lusting gibbous
self, no mincing sisterhoods, no fake
gratuities, just you and me and her,
my words writ huge, our story,
sucking nymphettes through a straw.

~~~

* “Uisce beata” in the old tongue. Doesn’t that just make you want to drink it with a Dubliner?

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Dialectics on a Walking Trail

13 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Writer's craft

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry, writer's craft

Ancient of Days, W. Blake

I
Author, stand behind your work, not
in front of, or above. Directing traffic is
for cops—lording over, for small gods.
~
Language is the tongue of universal
man: lisps, stutters, dialects and drawls
are the click of a grasshopper’s legs,
and he clears entire fields, singing.
II
Be wary of the language of contempt,
though it be succulent and swift to draw
admirers. Cockfighters in round collars
lobby too against cruelty to animals.
~
Only the mute are permitted to rest
their uvulations, and yet they elocute
with gesture and abandon. Were you
not born with a thousand fiery tongues?
III
Dynamite left
out in the rain
abhors detonation.
~
Guard well
the contents of
your tinderbox.
~
The purveyors
of wet blankets
are gathering.
~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Recent Posts

  • We are family, Dytiscidae…
  • The Boy Who Played with ABZs
  • Distancing
  • To Begin, Begin
  • I Cross the Street When I See You Coming

Archives

  • November 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • April 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogroll

  • Discuss
  • Get Inspired
  • Get Polling
  • Get Support
  • Learn WordPress.com
  • Theme Showcase
  • WordPress Planet
  • WordPress.com News

Blog Stats

  • 40,622 hits

What I’m Tweeting these days

  • I just submitted "H.A.G." to @fadeinawards via FilmFreeway.com! - 4 months ago
  • Delighted that my animated musical feature TOAST has made the quarterfinals! twitter.com/screencrafting… 4 months ago
  • @SimuLiu I'm halfway through the prologue and already in tears. So, so happy for you! 7 months ago
  • RT @SimuLiu: Guys I think I made finally made her proud https://t.co/EnC4mvyfiV 7 months ago
  • In this uncertain Holiday Season, wishing all of you Peace, Joy, and Patience. And a splendid 2022! 1 year ago

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,344 other subscribers

Top Posts & Pages

  • We are family, Dytiscidae...
  • The Boy Who Played with ABZs
  • Distancing
  • To Begin, Begin
  • I Cross the Street When I See You Coming
  • Moistures & Excitements
  • The Clowns Are Staying Home Today
  • Viral Ides
  • A Sonnet for Sir Terry
  • Secrets to a Happy Life

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Oceantics
    • Join 1,152 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Oceantics
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...